Randy Meisner, 77; Eagles cofounder sang ‘Take It to the Limit’
Randy Meisner, a cofounder of the rock band the Eagles who used his sweeping vocal range to hit the falsetto peaks of the group’s first major hit, “Take It to the Limit,” but was later pushed out amid quarrels with other members during their rise to fame, died July 26 in Los Angeles. He was 77.
The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a statement posted on the band’s website.
Mr. Meisner helped shape the Eagles’ blend of rock, country, and folk in the 1970s with his lilting bass lines and high harmonies that seemed to capture the sunshine and mellow vibes of the group’s Southern California base — even though Mr. Meisner’s own roots were deep in Midwest farmlands.
He co-wrote and sang lead on 1975’s “Take It to the Limit,” the band’s first million-selling single and whose success with harmonies became a cornerstone of an evolving California sound that influenced bands such as Fleetwood Mac and the Doobie Brothers in the 1970s.
Mr. Meisner said the inspiration for “Take It to the Limit” came from the spirit of youth and the battles to make one’s mark. “And just take it to the limit one more time, like every day just keep, you know, punching away at it,” he said in a 2013 documentary, “History of the Eagles.”
Mr. Meisner stayed with the Eagles through the band’s first five albums with cofounders Glenn Frey (guitar and keyboards) and drummer Don Henley as they built a catalog of hits including “Take It Easy” (1972), “Desperado” (1973), “Lyin’ Eyes” (1975), and the classic “Hotel California” from 1976.
But Mr. Meisner grew increasingly uncomfortable with his stardom as the Eagles exploded in popularity, on their way to selling 200 million records worldwide. Mr. Meisner’s biggest hit also became a burden, as he fretted over taking center stage to hit the difficult high range in “Take It to the Limit.”
“I was always kind of shy,” Mr. Meisner said in a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone.
The band, meanwhile, was going through its own upheavals by the mid-1970s. Guitarist Bernie Leadon, who formed the Eagles with Mr. Meisner, Frey, and Henley in 1971, left the band in 1975 after his proposal to take some personal time away to “regroup” was rejected by the others. During one backstage argument, Leadon poured a beer over Frey’s head.
Leadon was replaced by Joe Walsh, injecting a more traditional rock sound to the band as it moved toward its crown jewel, “Hotel California.” The song, with allegorical lyrics about hedonism and self-destruction, won a Grammy Award for record of the year in 1977.
Mr. Meisner’s strained relations with the band reached a breaking point that summer. At a concert in Knoxville, Tenn., Frey and others wanted “Take It to the Limit” as one of their encores. Mr. Meisner refused, saying he was recovering from the flu and was afraid he couldn’t handle the song. Frey and Mr. Meisner scuffled backstage, according to various accounts. “That,” Mr. Meisner told Rolling Stone, “was the end.”
Mr. Meisner left the band after the tour and returned to his native Nebraska. His replacement, Timothy B. Schmit, remained with the group for decades, along with Henley, Walsh, and Frey, who died in 2016.
“Those last days on the road were the worst,” Mr. Meisner said, recalling his final weeks with the Eagles. “I was made an outcast of the band I’d helped start.”
Mr. Meisner embarked on a solo career with the 1978 album “Randy Meisner” and 1980’s “One More Song,” which includes backup vocals from former Eagles bandmates Henley and Frey on the title track.
Mr. Meisner later performed with various bands, including Randy Meisner & the Silverados, even as he struggled with health issues and bouts of heavy drinking. In 2015, a court ordered a period of 24-hour medical supervision for Mr. Meisner after he threatened to “gun everyone down” and claimed he would kill himself with an overdose, according to court records and news reports. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
For one moment in 1998, Mr. Meisner was back onstage with the Eagles. At the induction ceremony for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the band and former members performed “Take It Easy” and “Hotel California” in New York. “It’s just great playing with the guys again,” Mr. Meisner said.
In 2015, he said he rarely listened to the songs from his years with the Eagles.
“It is only when someone comes over or I am at somebody’s house and it gets played in the background,” he said in an interview, the Associated Press. “That is when I’ll tell myself, ‘Damn, these records are good.’”
Randall Herman Meisner was born March 8, 1946, in Scottsbluff, Neb., to a family of tenant farmers who grew crops including alfalfa and corn. He recalled that Elvis Presley’s performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1956 prompted his interest in the guitar.
“I didn’t graduate from high school and never went to college,” he was quoted as saying in the 1998 book “To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles” by Marc Eliot. “I was a dropout, and so music was the only thing.” Mr. Meisner later picked up the bass easily, he said, never learning to read music but figuring out his parts by ear.
Mr. Meisner married his childhood sweetheart, Jennifer Lee Barton, while still in his teens and formed a local band, the Dynamics, and later joined a group called the Soul Survivors, which headed out to California. The band fell apart. Mr. Meisner, however, tried to stick it out in California. He eventually landed a gig on Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band and with the country rock group Poco.
Poco gave Mr. Meisner his first break when the group landed a deal with Epic Records. Yet Mr. Meisner soon felt he was pushed to the margins by the core duo, Richie Furay and Jim Messina, who had played in the band Buffalo Springfield. Mr. Meisner quit after being blocked from participating in the studio mixing sessions for Poco’s 1969 debut album, “Pickin’ Up the Pieces.” In the artwork of the band on the album, Mr. Meisner was replaced by a dog.
His replacement in Poco was Schmit, the bassist who later took his spot with the Eagles.
Mr. Meisner bounced between Los Angeles and Nebraska — once working at a John Deere tractor dealership — before getting an offer to join country singer Linda Ronstadt in her band. Also in the group were Henley and Frey. They decided to split off into their own band and received Ronstadt’s blessing. The newly formed Eagles were soon signed by Asylum Records, releasing a debut album, “Eagles,” in 1972.
“From day one,” Mr. Meisner said in a 2016 interview with Rock Cellar, “I just had a feeling that the band was good and would make it.”
An essay by music journalist Parke Puterbaugh, published in 1998 by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, described the band as “wide-eyed innocents with a country-rock pedigree” who later became “purveyors of grandiose, dark-themed albums chronicling a world of excess and seduction that had begun spinning seriously out of control.”
While Mr. Meisner preferred to stay out of the spotlight, he wrote and sang lead vocals on a handful of Eagles songs including “Try and Love Again” (1976), “Is It True?” (1974), and “Tryin’” in 1972.
Mr. Meisner reunited with Poco for the “Legacy” album (1989) and tour. He was bitter, however, at apparently being rebuffed by the Eagles when he asked to appear at various events in the 1990s. “They act as though I never even played with them,” he said in 1994 on the syndicated television news show “American Journal.”
Mr. Meisner’s first marriage ended in divorce. His second wife, the former Lana Rae Graham, was killed in a self-inflicted accidental shooting in 2016. Survivors include three children from his first marriage.
As he reached his 60s, Mr. Meisner appeared to put aside any lingering rancor toward the Eagles. He told the New York Daily News that the band paid for medical treatment in 2013 after he choked on food at home. He described how he broke down in tears after learning of Frey’s death in 2016.
“You’re like brothers in a band like that,” he said. “Sometimes we got in arguments, but it was like a marriage, we all loved each other.”