It’s hard to argue with the fact that Eagles had a ton of fans back in the day, and still do today. The hitmakers behind “Take It Easy” and “Hotel California” paved the way for a new era of country rock, starting in the 1970s. They’re legendary, no matter how you look at it. And with that kind of status, it’s only natural that a few detractors (and, dare I say, haters) have come out of the woodwork to voice their distaste. Let’s look at a few times when other musicians publicly beefed with The Eagles. I have to say, some of these feuds were quite one-sided.
Johnny Rotten
Sex Pistols’ former frontman John Lydon (formerly known as Johnny Rotten) once had some choice words to use when describing The Eagles. Though, he has never been one to hold back his negative opinions of other artists, such as The Clash or Guns N’ Roses. In Lydon’s critique of Eagles, though, he went as far as to call them “irrelevant.”
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“They’re [Eagles] irrelevant,” Lydon said very directly in 2007. “A band like that doesn’t write songs that mean anything. We’re the Charge of the Light Brigade, with decent generals, right?”
Stephen Malkmus
Yep, you read that right. The guy from Pavement had some choice words for Eagles back in the day. That’s interesting, considering he admitted that the Eagles (along with Free, Doobie Brothers, Billy Joel, and other classic rock greats) influenced his work. Still, he felt the need to clarify that he actually hated The Eagles a lot and took a jab at Paul Simon, too.
“I still hate them,” Malkmus said in an interview with Salon in 2014. “There’s too much — it’s not even the music. It’s kind of like ‘Graceland’ for me, that album too. There’s levels of evil in it to me.”
T Bone Burnett
T Bone Burnett is a fine musician who also lent a hand to the filmmakers behind The Big Lebowski. When asked to curate The Dude’s signature music taste, he recommended making the main character a certified hater of Eagles. And that is entirely because Burnett hated them, too. This entry on our list of musicians who beefed with The Eagles went as far as to say that the band was a scene-killer during the 1970s counterculture days.
“[The Eagles] sort of single-handedly destroyed that whole scene that was brewing back then,” said Burnett.
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