Five Bands Besides The Eagles Who Made Radical Changes In Musical Direction

Five Bands Besides The Eagles Who Made Radical Changes In Musical Direction

I admit that I was a little skeptical about buying Hotel California, the iconic album that forty years later is still considered the best by the Eagles. My dad years before had been the first in our family to discover the band, when he first heard "Peaceful Easy Feeling" on the local AM rock station.

The rock and roll fanatic that I was had wanted no part of the Eagles, who to my young ear amounted to nothing more than a country band. They even had a banjo player, for crying out loud.

Just a few years later here I was buying Hotel California after hearing the rock and roll element that had been added along with guitarist Joe Walsh. When Dad heard the title cut, he lamented on what a bad turn the music of the Eagles had taken.

Four decades later I can appreciate both aspects of the band, its country offerings as well as its rock. Those early Bernie Leadon days produced some great tunes before co-founders Glen Frey and Don Henley took their band in the more electric direction.

That transformation was not nearly as radical as the changes undertaken by other long running groups, usually after departures and additions of band members. Here are five rock ensembles whose music changed drastically over their long tenures.

The Bee Gees

In the late sixties the Australian brothers created mellow hits such as "How Can You Mend a broken Heart?" and "I Started a Joke" nearly ten years before they became pioneers in the Disco Era with songs like "Stayin' Alive" and a host of others from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Fleetwood Mac

When bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood founded their band in the mid sixties, they were rooted in blues music. Guitarist-singer leaders like Bob Welch and Peter Green gave the group a more psychedelic sound on songs like " Oh Well" and "Hypnotized" before the late seventies additions of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks put them at the very top of the pop charts with the Rumours album.

Jefferson Airplane (Starship)

Grace Slick and gang played California psychedelic rock with sixties singles like "White Rabbit" and "Somebody To Love" before they years later again charted with milder hits such as "Runaway" and "Miracles." By the time the Jefferson had been dropped from the name, the group was nearly unrecognizable on tunes like "We Built This City" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now."

REO Speedwagon

Their self-title debut from the early seventies was an all out rock album, complete with jam sessions in the middle of long songs. Singer Terry Lutrell left and was replaced by Kevin Cronin before the second disk was completed, and from then on the quintet would be increasingly pop oriented.

Deep Purple

Richie Blackmore and his fellow members first became known for charting with cover versions of pop singers Neil Diamond ("Kentucky Woman") and Joe South ("Hush"), but a few years later they helped define the hard rock birth of the early seventies along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Their album Machine Head, which contains the well-known Classic "Smoke on the Water," is still considered one of the greatest hard rock albums in history.

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