A witty and informative deep dive into the (many) highs and lows of the legendary ’70s band that continues to rock to this day. . . . Wall takes readers out on the road with the Eagles and paints a vivid, no holds barred portrait of the trials and tribulations that the country-rockers faced as they soared their way to the very top.”
—Entertainment Weekly, “The 27 Best New Books to Take on Your 2023 Summer Vacation”
“Call it The Battle of the Band, Mick Wall’s Life in the Fast Lane captures the conflicts and conflagrations that fueled the incredible rise—and endless farewells—of the Eagles, America’s best-selling rock band. Hip, wise and witty, Wall knows these beatniks out to make it rich for who they were and spares nobody in his bare knuckles account, a sordid only-in-Hollywood tale that could have come from James Ellroy.”
—Joel Selvin, author of Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day
“Mick Wall treats us to a savvy, authoritative chronicle of the flight of the Eagles, immersing us in the heady world of the Topanga Canyon scene and the other aspiring musicians who would rise to fame together. The Eagles persevered through obscurity and management and recording challenges to finally realize their dream, but the brilliance of their songwriting and musicianship was juxtaposed with the menacing tide of cocaine abuse, a broken brotherhood, and too much money. Life in the Fast Lane is a comprehensive history of a band that burned so bright, yet finally succumbed to the heat.”
—Sandra B. Tooze, author of Levon: From Down in the Delta to the Birth of the Band and Beyond
“Entertaining and often edgy. . . . Wall captures the spirit of that era’s ‘fast lane’ in a manner reminiscent of a highly caffeinated Tom Wolfe, treating the band in the manner that Wolfe did Phil Spector or the Merry Pranksters. . . . [A] rock bio in which nobody, including the author, takes it easy.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"Life In the Fast Lane is not the definitive Eagles bio...But it is the most entertaining, full of attitude, and rollicking on any feathered friend's reading list."
—Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press
For When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin
“Music Book of the Year.”
—A Sunday Times
“Sensational.”
—New York Times
"Entertaining, thoughtful."
—Los Angeles Times
"His access and attention to detail make this a definitive work...an essential source for anyone eager to learn about the era when rock stars ruled the world."
—Publishers Weekly
"Wall does well to shine light on the myths and music magic of Led Zep—rendering what could have been cartoonish real and sincere."
—TimeOut Chicago
“The definitive final word on this planet-bestriding behemoth from the veteran writer."
—The Telegraph
“This is the only Led Zeppelin biography I allow in the house. Mick absolutely nailed it.”
—Jason Bonham, son of Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, who replaced his father in the band after his death in 1980
For Lou Reed: The Life
“The Lou Reed we find here is straight off the album covers — shades, leather jacket, bisexual, smart-talking, rude to journalists, cruising the streets of Manhattan on his motorbike, doping himself senseless and beating up his first wife – and Wall does it extremely well.”
—Sunday Times
For Last of the Giants: The True Story of Guns N’ Roses
“Wall reminds us how Guns N’ Roses was a necessary tonic to fatuous acts like Bon Jovi; and as singer W Axl Rose descends into racist, homophobic screeds like ‘One in a Million’, Wall doesn’t excuse his subject, or the music industry that enabled Rose’s bile.”
—New York Times
For Two Riders Were Approaching: The Life & Death of Jimi Hendrix
“Two Riders Were Approaching is a fittingly psychedelic and kaleidoscopic exploration of the life and death of Jimi Hendrix. Eschewing the traditional rock-biography format, it is a journey into the dark heart of the sixties, burned in the fire and blood of the Vietnam War, the assassination of Martin Luther King and the election of President Richard Nixon.”
—London Review of Books
06/16/2023
Wall (Like a Bat Out of Hell) plows through the familiar story of the slow rise, the drug-fueled triumph, and the inevitable decline in this book about the Eagles. Beginning with the germination of soft country rock, the book describes how core Eagles members guitarist Glenn Frey and drummer/vocalist Don Henley bonded when they played in in Linda Ronstadt's band in 1971. The Eagles' first, self-named album in 1972 produced three hit singles. After the less commercially successful Desperado in 1973, the band became rock-oriented with the addition of guitarists Don Felder and Joe Walsh. The group won Grammy Awards for "Hotel California," "Lyin' Eyes," "New Kid in Town," "How Long," "I Dreamed There Was No War," and "Heartache Tonight." After six albums, they disbanded in 1980. The book rushes through the next four decades of sporadic reunions and one album of new material in the book's final chapters. Writing in an off-the-cuff style, Wall adds little to the already substantial material published about the Eagles, notably Marc Eliot's To the Limit and Don Felder's Heaven and Hell. VERDICT Die-hard Eagles fans won't find much new, but readers curious about the band may still want to read it.—Dr. Dave Szatmary
2023-05-24
A veteran British rock journalist takes creative flight in a book about an all-American band.
In the acknowledgments, Wall, the author of When Giants Walked the Earth and other music bios, doesn’t thank the members of the Eagles or anyone in their orbits. Instead, he leans heavily on those who have written about the Eagles before, along with a “distillation” of his own “archive of interviews not just with members of the Eagles but with hundreds of other significant figures from the same period.” Much of the material feels secondhand and sometimes stale, and the narrative is often scattershot. However, it’s also entertaining and often edgy. At the very least, Wall captures the spirit of that era’s “fast lane” in a manner reminiscent of a highly caffeinated Tom Wolfe, treating the band in the manner that Wolfe did Phil Spector or the Merry Pranksters. In one early scene, Wall takes us to the Troubadour in LA, where you go “to get drunk, get loaded, and get laid.” There, he introduces us to “Linda Ronstadt—the cute cut-off denim shorts and sweet brown doll’s eyes, the Troubadour girl with the sunny small-town smile and the voice of a cactus mountain goddess, the super-groovy chick that all the would-be groovy guys want the most.” There’s still more to that sentence, about how Ronstadt (apparently) says, “there are two sets of Troubadour regulars, ‘the musician pool and the sex pool.’ ” As an exercise in style, the text provides most of the substance of the band’s stories, including the shifts in balances of power, management issues, and the passage of time that left leaders Glenn Frey and Don Henley at loggerheads. Then they vowed that they would never engage in a cash-grab reunion—until they did, with a “farewell” that has now lasted decades longer than the band’s original “long run.”
A serviceable rock bio in which nobody, including the author, takes it easy.
