Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc has been releasing stupendous SACD of EAGLES‘ albums, now 2023 it’s the time for the great 1979’s “The Long Run“. This remastered Mobile Fidelity’s Numbered-Edition Hybrid SACD is sourced from the Original Analog Master Tapes for Audiophile Sonics.
This collectible edition plays with extreme clarity, organic richness, tube-like warmth, spectacular dynamics, and microscopic levels of detail. Songs come across with an epic sweep and feature front-to-back soundstages that give the music unprecedented air, roominess, and separation.
Though the Eagles are renowned for great-sounding albums, ”The Long Run” might be the most note-perfect work in their catalog – the result of more than 18 months of painstaking recording sessions. This SACD demonstrates why. The placement of the rounded bass lines, extension of the piano accents, and golden tones of the blended harmonies are constantly identifiable and practically take you inside the arrangements.
Intentionally simple, the album cover is designed by John Kosh, who devised the art for the Beatles’ Abbey Road and The Who’s Who’s Next. The stark black-and-gray color palette speaks to the exhaustion the band was feeling at the time as well as the malaise conveyed in several songs.
Kosh’s creation also can be seen to reflect a gravestone, and though the Eagles would fall dormant for more than two decades, the tombstone interpretation is line with the tongue-in-cheek nature of the album title: The Eagles would return and outlast a majority of their lesser contemporaries and joyless critics.
Originally intended as a clever poke at the era’s trends that critics maintained were making the band irrelevant, the title of and music on ”The Long Run” continue to prove the Eagles got the last laugh. Created in the wake of the group’s demanding tour for the blockbuster Hotel California, the 1979 record ultimately became the final record the Eagles would create for nearly three decades.
Stacked with first-rate material and three mammoth singles – ‘Heartache Tonight,’ ‘In the City,’ and one of our favorite Eagles song ever, ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’ – the seven-times-platinum effort ensured the Eagles never drifted far from the public’s consciousness.
Indeed, the album’s enduring merit, performances, and melodies confirmed the beliefs of core members Don Henley and Glenn Frey. The Eagles are still thriving. They made it. The long run continues.
Highly Recommended
01 – The Long Run
02 – I Can’t Tell You Why
03 – In The City
04 – The Disco Strangler
05 – King Of Hollywood
06 – Heartache Tonight
07 – Those Shoes
08 – Teenage Jail
09 – The Greeks Don’t Want No Freaks
10 – The Sad Cafe
Don Felder – guitars, organ, vocals
Glenn Frey – vocals, guitars, keyboards
Don Henley – vocals, drums, percussion
Timothy B. Schmit – vocals, bass guitar
Joe Walsh – vocals, guitars, keyboards
with:
Jimmy Buffett – backing vocals on “The Greeks Don’t Want No Freaks”
The Monstertones – backing vocals
David Sanborn – alto saxophone on “The Sad Cafe”
Bob Seger – backing vocals “Heartache Tonight”
Joe Vitale – piano, electric piano