A New Style of Rock
Love 1
Haley Love MUMH 2040.001- Music Appreciation MWF 10:00 – 10:50 am 1 October 2014
A New Style of Rock
A New Style of Rock Love 2
One of the first county rock songs to become a hit in the 1970’s was Take it Easy, by the
Eagles. The members of the Eagles over the past years are Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh,
Timothy Schmidt, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner; however, this particular song also includes The Beach Boys as the backup vocalists. This song became extremely popularized because of its significantly unique style: country rock. Many other artists attempted to perfect the country rock style; however, no one was truly able to combine the two properly, until the Eagles released their first hit. Take It Easy was released in May of 1972, and was The Eagle’s first single. This piece of music was originally written by Jackson Browne, but after writing the first verse and not being able to finish it, Browne decided to give the song to the founding member of the Eagles, Glenn Frey. Take It Easy is one of the Eagles most known songs, alongside Hotel
California and Desperado. Take It Easy was eventually put on the album, The Eagles, which is listed as number 368 on Rollingstone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. Most of the Eagles’ music follows a rock style; however, The Eagles took a twist on the style of Take It Easy by adding a steel guitar and a banjo, as well as country lyrics, making it the style known as country rock and folk-rock, according to Olivia Mathers in “Taking It Easy in the Sunbelt: The Eagles and Country Rock’s Regionalism.” While the style of this piece is very important for the historical background of the song, the form is also a very important element of Take It Easy. The form of this particular piece is a strophic form, meaning the melody is the same throughout each stanza in the song. The form, specifically, is A-A-B-A. In The Enjoyment of Music: An Introduction to Perceptive Listening,
Forney and Machlis further explain that “in this structure, while the music within the stanza offers contrast, its repetition also binds the song together” (30). Each verse is somewhat different than the others, but the repetition of the melodies and lyrics allows the verses to all come together to create the united piece of music in a strophic form. Each verse of the song contains