No. 92

Take It To The Limit - The Eagles (1975) - When the subject of the greatest bands of all-time comes up, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd usually come up. They all obviously belong in the discussion, but there's a 5th entry that many omit. Whether it's because they weren't ever very controversial or that they didn't change the way music was played is irrelevant. The fact that shouldn't be ignored is the sheer volume of awesome music that the Eagles produced from 1971-1980.

Take It To The Limit is a song that gets lost in the shuffle of all the great tracks the Eagles laid down, but in my opinion, it's one of the 3 best. The thing that made the Eagles great was that there were 4 virtuosos in the group. Take It To The Limit was sung by bassist Randy Meisner, the first A-side sung by neither Don Henley nor Glenn Frey, though Joe Walsh would later sing lead on several songs. There didn't seem to be any drop-off in the musical quality, regardless of who was leading. Never has there existed a better collection of multi-talented musicians, not even the Beatles.

Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings made a very respectable cover in 1983 (Video).

"All alone at the end of the evening, all the bright lights have faded to blue. I was thinking about a woman who might have loved me and I never knew. You know I've always been a dreamer (spent my life running around) and it's so hard to change (can't seem to settle down) but the dreams I've seen lately keep on turning out and burning out and turning out the same. So put me on a highway and show me a sign and take it to the limit one more time. You can spend all your time making money, you can spend all your love making time, if it all fell to pieces tomorrow, would you still be mine?