With the line up of long standing artist in the Eagles group, it is a real question of why they needed to copy some other artist's work for one song?
The song itself was written by three of the members at the time, Don Felder, Don Henley and Glenn Frey] and it was the cord pattern that the Eagles were said to have copied from Ian Anderson.
One of the music plagiarism trials of the early sixty's was for the song "Surfin' Bird by the The Trashmen".
The Trashmen heard the song by the "Rivingtons called Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" being played by another group at the time and added their own lyrics and recorded the tune Surfin' Bird. Which was the Rivingtons brought to court and successfully sued.
But one can not leave out the biggest music mystery of the 1960's... "The Kingsmen record, Louie Louie.”
In the summer of 1963, Ken Chase, the program manager at KISN Radio in Portland, had a problem. Two years earlier, in Seattle, a group called The Wailers had recorded a version of Richard Berry’s 1957 hit single, “Louie Louie,” and it had gotten very popular. It was getting played a lot on Portland radio.
But all that airplay was happening on rival radio station KGON. KISN was not authorized to play The Wailers’ song.
So Chase asked the house band at the dance club he owned if they’d be up for recording a version of the song.
Chase’s house band was a group of five Portland teenagers who played a sort of rough-hewn party music in the “Mersey Beat” British-invasion style popularized by bands like The Beatles and The Zombies. They called themselves “The Kingsmen.”
A few years ago, one of the rankest bulls in the PBR was "Hotel California". Almost unridden during his career, they played the guitar intro over PA system before he came out of chute. It gave me goosebumps. Those breeders have a sense of humor by names they give their bulls: Little Yellowjacket Crankshaft Bo Howdy Hammer
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