# Eagles – Their Greatest Hits…. Why so many album sales? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 27, 2020, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056 "2020-01-27T16:57:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/21 "2020-01-28T00:43:58Z")
Consider me educated. I have always heard the term “lead sheet” as just referring to lyrics with chords. (I’ve never written out melody lines for the 100+ songs I’ve copyrighted). I’m still unclear, though, as to the part about the copyrights being granted overnight. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/22 "2020-01-28T01:03:43Z")
> [@jaycat](#): > > Consider me educated. I have always heard the term “lead sheet” as just referring to lyrics with chords. (I’ve never written out melody lines for the 100+ songs I’ve copyrighted). I’m still unclear, though, as to the part about the copyrights being granted overnight. Although I worked in a related field, I am not a legal expert in copyrights, and the US law has changed in the last 50 years. You may have seen lead sheets as lyrics with chords, but that is definitely not the musician’s definition. As long ago as 1965, I saw “fake books” (illegal, as they did not pay any royalties) with 1000 songs, 3 lead sheets to a page, with melody, chords, and lyrics. I used these in bars to play songs that I never heard, but a bar patron requested. How else could you play the song without the melody if you didn’t know it? AFAIK, copyrights, trademarks or patents aren’t granted overnight. But the date of the _submission_ is critical. Cf. [Alex Bell’s patent](http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/March-April-08/On-this-Day--Alexander-Graham-Bell-Patents-Telephone.html') and Elisha Gray’s patent application of the telephone. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/23 "2020-01-28T01:48:23Z")
> [@jaycat](#): > > Also not sure why it would take 2 guys all night to write lead sheets for 10 Eagles songs. We’re not talking Beethoven here. Maybe I’m missing something. But we are talking _Hotel California_. It probably took at least half the night to write out Joe Walsh’s guitar solo. ---
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/24 "2020-01-28T01:49:26Z")
> [@Typo\_Negative](#): > > I got it the same way I got the Beach Boys and the Guess Who’s greatest hots > > Columbia House Record Club. 8 for a penny! > > Man, am I ever old. Actually, that may be the main reason it sold so many. [This article from a chart obsessed website](https://chartmasters.org/2016/10/understanding-music-clubs-part-2/2/) uses a lot of hard facts to conclude as many as 8 million copies of “Greatest Hits” were sold by Columbia House alone. That also explains the Soundscan/RIAA differences, since mail order sales such as record clubs aren’t covered by Soundscan. I wonder how many of those copies were really bought and how much were given away as record club freebies. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/25 "2020-01-28T02:05:18Z")
One word - Freebird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/26 "2020-01-28T03:07:28Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > But we are talking _Hotel California_. It probably took at least half the night to write out Joe Walsh’s guitar solo. No doubt it would have. But a lead sheet doesn’t (typically) include the details of a solo, just the chord progression, and maybe not even any solo sections. The lead sheet is the “meat” of the song; the nucleus, the basics. There are exceptions. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/27 "2020-01-28T03:17:57Z")
speaking of the 70s Dark Side of the Moon from Pink Floyd in 73 sold around 45 million copies. It was on the Billboard top 200 album chart for over 900 weeks / 17 years. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/28 "2020-01-28T03:29:22Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > But we are talking _Hotel California_. It probably took at least half the night to write out Joe Walsh’s guitar solo. Except _Hotel California_ was not on the Eagles’ Greatest Hits 1971-1975. ---
**Author:** ![tripthicket](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripthicket/32/297_2.png) [@tripthicket](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tripthicket)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/29 "2020-01-28T03:37:12Z")
But did it come in the mail with packets of Tide? 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/30 "2020-01-28T03:38:24Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > Except _Hotel California_ was not on the Eagles’ Greatest Hits 1971-1975. But **Musicat** was talking about Hotel California. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/31 "2020-01-28T04:17:44Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > I’d imagine the best-selling album for many established artists will be their “greatest hits.” > > From the [RIAA’s 100 best-selling albums](https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/26/100-best-selling-albums-artists-2019/) list, I count at least 25 that are greatest hits, live albums, or other types of compilations. It still is. If you go to iTunes too 100 album list any day, many of them are greatest hits albums. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/32 "2020-01-28T05:43:49Z")
I think it’s easily explainable. _Eagles_ wrote some very catchy hits that had huge crossover appeal. They were country enough to appeal to country fans, they rocked hard enough to be acceptable to rock fans. Parents and their kids liked them. They were really also a singles band. For the vast majority of people, if you owned that CD and maybe Hotel California, you had all the Eagles you really needed. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Burden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/958977/32.png) [@Jack\_Burden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Burden)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/33 "2020-01-28T06:25:14Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Lemme explain. > > Most professional writers, ca. \<1976, did not file for copyright; their publishers did, as they were (typically, by that time) under contract to the publishers. Performers were often more concerned with recording songs than the esoteric detail of the copyright & publishing business. > > The writers (the Eagles) like many rock artists, typically did their arrangements “by head” or in the studio. They may not have had anything written down, and many rock musicians read music little, if at all. Between the concept of an Eagles’ song and the final recording, there may not have been any written music. (exception: sweetening tracks) > > So by the time of the final album release, it’s entirely possible that no written music existed of the songs other than a scratch chord chart. Not only was that possible, it was common, which gave me an occupation – writing down what was only, until then, a sound. I made a pretty decent living filling that gap. > > The applicable copyright law was from 1909. In 1909, audio recordings, although they existed, were not a serious medium. If you had written a new song \<1909, your medium for reproduction was the printed “piano/vocal” sound sheet. Millions were sold. Sound recordings, not so much. Logically, when the law was codified, a written copy (“the best copy”) of your composition was required for deposit in the US Government Copyright Office. > > If you, in 1909, could write music, you filed that with the CO. If not, you hired someone to write down what you played on your instrument in some readable form. > > A lead (pronounced “leed”) sheet, for those who are not familiar with the term, is defined as follows (my definition). It contains, in written form, the following: > > [ol][li]The **melody** , if any, in standard musical notation, [/li][li]The\*\* harmony\*\*, if any, usually expressed in chordal symbols,[/li][li]The **lyrics** , if any.[/ol][/li] > A lead sheet (theoretically) is sufficient for a professional musician to recreate the original composition. Obviously, given the 60+ years that had elapsed since the 1909 law, there was much to be desired. Nevertheless, a lead sheet was a useful tool for many purposes, including the arranger of the sweetening charts. > > The US copyright office accepted lead sheets for song copyrights for a very long time, so long that Hollywood publishers came to use lead sheets for the de facto copyright medium. I made an occupation of writing lead sheets for pop songwriters; you write a song, you have me make a lead sheet, and with a simple recording, you are good to go. > > (Lead sheets became so much the de facto copyright submission medium that when I was hired to write lead sheets for John Williams’ full-orchestral scores for Star Wars, I convinced 20th Century Fox studios that a Xerox of Williams’ scores was a much better CO submission. I lost a lot of money on that one.) > > Consider the circumstances. Neither of us had ever heard any of the Hotel California songs. We had to hear them for the first time, transcribe the melody, harmony, and lyrics on to paper, using pen & ink, into a sharp, graphics-quality, camera-ready master that could be reproduced (no computers or digital printers, remember) and was unambiguous, enough to sustain any likely copyright challenges. Can you do that in less that 12 hours? On a strictly ignorance fought measure, this may be the greatest post I’ve ever read on this board. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Burden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/958977/32.png) [@Jack\_Burden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Burden)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/34 "2020-01-28T06:32:52Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > But we are talking _Hotel California_. It probably took at least half the night to write out Joe Walsh’s guitar solo. And the rest of the night for Don Felder’s guitar work. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Wayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4bbf92/32.png) [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/35 "2020-01-28T07:55:20Z")
My guess is that they had some songs that told stories - like Lyin’ Eyes and Take it to the Limit. I know that when I first heard those songs - long before the Greatest Hits albums came out, they really resonated with me and I felt there was something special about that band. When the Greatest Hits album came out, I had never previously bought any of their albums and I thought it would be a great opportunity to have some of their best songs for the price of one album. I’d also point to Don Henley. He has one of the best (most soulful) voices of any modern singer. I’ve never been able to discern that he is a better drummer than other drummers. But that is probably owing to my complete ignorance about what it takes to be a good drummer. I have no clue how to tell a good drummer from a bad one. There are some excellent documentaries about The Eagles that document a lot about the way the band was formed and the problems they had. The History of The Eagles is one of the best. So is the series, “Breaking the Bands - The Eagles”. It documents the breakup of many popular music groups. The one about The Eagles is especially informative - except for the fact they hired some actors to play the parts of the band members and the actor they chose to play Glen Fry - IMHO - really doesn’t do justice to Glenn Fry. He kind of spoiled the film for me. But it is still worth seeing. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/36 "2020-01-28T10:52:36Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > But **Musicat** was talking about Hotel California. OK, somehow I forgot that. My apologies. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/37 "2020-01-28T11:13:07Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Consider the circumstances. Neither of us had ever heard any of the Hotel California songs. We had to hear them for the first time, transcribe the melody, harmony, and lyrics on to paper, using pen & ink, into a sharp, graphics-quality, camera-ready master that could be reproduced (no computers or digital printers, remember) and was unambiguous, enough to sustain any likely copyright challenges. Can you do that in less that 12 hours? How did they get the music to you? In a taxi? LP, mastertape, something else? How did you handle unclear lyrics when doing that job? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/38 "2020-01-28T13:59:43Z")
> [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](#): > > How did they get the music to you? In a taxi? LP, mastertape, something else? > > How did you handle unclear lyrics when doing that job? I don’t remember what format that particular album came in, but I got recordings in many formats: An LP retail pressing, a master acetate (copy), an open reel tape, a test pressing, or a Phillips cassette. When I first started doing this, cassettes were uncommon, and I didn’t even have a player. 10 years later, most submissions were on cassette. Since two of us were working on the same album, and since it was much easier to work with a tape than a record, I would have immediately made 2 open reel copies. In L.A., where time is money, nobody has time to wait for a mail delivery, which might take 24 whole hours! So important stuff was always hand delivered by messenger. The normal delivery time around Hollywood was 4 hours, but you could request a rush delivery for extra cost. Since the studios and publishers paid the bills for this, I don’t know what the cost was. If you called for a messenger pickup, they would ask how big the package was, as they often used motorcycles. As long as you could carry it in a motorcycle, that was a pretty efficient way to get around L.A. Few traffic jams would stop you. Slight hijack: I did the copying once for one of most prolific arrangers, Jimmie Haskell (think _Ode to Billie Joe_). A sweetening session was set up for 9AM. Sometime the previous afternoon, Haskell sent over the first string charts and I began copying the individual parts. I wasn’t quite done when he sent me the second chart, then around 5AM I got the 3rd. I had the first two delivered to the recording studio by 9AM, and took the final one to the studio shortly after. Haskell got about 2 hours sleep that night, and me – none. I had a part-time assistant who came to the office a few days in the week to do the bookkeeping, make prints and file. I had regular pickup and delivery days (I think it was Tuesday & Thursday) and as long as the publishers could wait until the next one, there was no charge. Since most music publishers were clustered around downtown Hollywood and along the Sunset strip, she could hit several in just an hour. **Lyrics:** After some discouraging experiences trying to get lyrics off of the recording, and finding out that the publishers often had lyric sheets in the file that they didn’t give me (“you need that?”), I started charging more if the lyrics were not supplied, and gave no guarantee that my takedown would be accurate. Then I modified that policy to say that the lyrics had to given to me _on paper,_ after one publisher sent me a tape that Barry White had made. He played his final mix on speakers, and spoke into a mic on a portable tape recorder, repeating what he said. Not very helpful. _Put it on paper._ Typed! Sometimes I would get lyric sheets from the composer, other times the secretaries wrote them down. I didn’t care; I just wanted a guide to save me time. If the songwriter ever complained (rarely), I told them to get me the lyrics in advance next time. And if they wanted me to rewrite the lead sheet (that was a rare request), I just charged by the hour. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/39 "2020-01-28T15:08:28Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I think it’s easily explainable. _Eagles_ wrote some very catchy hits that had huge crossover appeal. They were country enough to appeal to country fans, they rocked hard enough to be acceptable to rock fans. Parents and their kids liked them. > > They were really also a singles band. For the vast majority of people, if you owned that CD and maybe Hotel California, you had all the Eagles you really needed. Yeah, this is my take on it, also. Very rockabilly stuff that appealed to most everyone. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2020, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056/40 "2020-01-28T15:56:49Z")
Thank you Musicat, very interesting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eagles-their-greatest-hits-why-so-many-album-sales/847056.md?page=3)