i have been listening to some full albums lately. building the perfect beast has the great tune on it - the boys of summer. it is hard to find a decent second song on this album.
shareBut...what a song-- "Saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, a little voice inside my head said Don't look back, you can never look back..." Kind of sums up the country's obsession with nostalgia and nostalgia's relation to infantilism.
i.e., why we don't have adults anymore in this country.
i.e., why we don't have adults anymore in this country.
Go back and watch TV from the 80s, the same decade that this song was released in. Emotional maturity wasn't exactly abundant back then either
Henley played an cracking acoustic version on Howard Stern's show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoxEcD4PCco
Boys of summer was actually written by Mike Campbell who is the current guitarist for Fleetwood Mac, and former guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The Heartbreakers didn't use the song. So, it was given to Don Henley. don changed the key of the song and wrote the lyrics. I'm guessing that the rest of the album is filled with don originals and that's why just about everything else on that album isn't on par with Boys of Summer.
shareBoys of summer was actually written by Mike Campbell who is the current guitarist for Fleetwood Mac, and former guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The Heartbreakers didn't use the song. So, it was given to Don Henley. don changed the key of the song and wrote the lyrics.
I'm not following you, '77. You say Campbell wrote the song originally, but then Henley wrote the lyrics once it fell into his hands. Do you mean that he changed the lyrics, or than Campbell had just written some musical notes that he hadn't yet put words to?
Campbell had written the entire song before Don got a hold of it. It was written for The Heartbreakers during the recording sessions for their "Southern Accents" album, but they felt that it didn't fit with the overall vibe of the album. That's why they didn't use it. Unfortunately, I do not know if Campbell had alternate lyrics. If he did I would be interested in reading them. After the Heartbreakers didn't use the song it was then somehow given to Don Henley. Don wrote lyrics for it, and changed the key to better suit his voice, and that's about it. Pretty much the same exact thing happened a few years later with the song "The Heart of the Matter" which was also written by Campbell. "The Heart of the Matter" is a good song too, but it's (in my opinion) not as good as "Boys of Summer".
I've never actually listened to "The Building the Perfect Beast" album. I always meant to as I always though that "Boys of Summer" was an amazing song. However, I never really liked any of the other singles from the album. I mean, as someone else here said "All She Wants to do is Dance" is an alright tune, and I agree, but I also think that it's a far cry from being great. The only other tune of Don's that I really liked was "The End of the Innocence", and that one was (most likely) mostly written by Bruce Hornsby as it sounds just like something that he would have written. However, I don't really care for some of the lyrics to that one. The lyrics were Don's...
henley wrote the lyrics
sharethe album is chock full of great tunes
shareFrankly it is rare to find an album that has more than couple of songs that are really good. Before streaming allowed people to just pick and choose songs it was the norm for albums to be mediocre at best with only 1 or 2 good songs that were use to push the albums.
shareYes, I was always amazed at just how few albums were great from start to finish. Some examples of albums that were great from start to finish are Billy Joel's The Stranger, Sting's Ten Sumners Tales, Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, Stevie Wonder's Songs In the Key of Life, and I was always very partial to the Beatles Abbey Road, the White Album, and George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. Oh, and I really enjoyed Billy Squire's Don't Say no Album.
shareThat's odd ... I guess by decent you must mean less than great?
Good album. Not one I want to hear all that often, but I drove
cross country listening to this one a lot and I really got to like it.
1. "The Boys of Summer" 5
2. "You Can't Make Love" 4
3. "Man with a Mission" 3
4. "You're Not Drinking Enough" 3
5. "Not Enough Love in the World" 4
6. "Building the Perfect Beast" 1
7. "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" 5
8. "A Month of Sundays" 2
9. "Sunset Grill" 5
10. "Drivin' with Your Eyes Closed" 5
11. "Land of the Living" 3