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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4

WP:LAME: "Eagles vs the Eagles"

Since the issue won't seem to go away with the removal of "the" in front of the band's name, I have added this ongoing "dispute" to "Lamest Edit Wars". I put quotes around dispute because it is not even a dispute except for a very small minority of editors. Don Felder's book is not titled "Heaven and Hell: My Life in Eagles (1974-2001)", the official website constantly uses "the" when speaking about the band, and multitudes of reliable sources (particularly interviews with the band members themselves) prove conclusively that we are not about to "rewrite the rules" here and start calling them "Eagles" strictly and across the board. It's not going to happen because it is provably incorrect. While I know this isn't the end of this, I hope anyone out there watching this page who still believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that "the" needs to go understands that WP is supposed to follow standard norms, and it is simply not standard anywhere to eliminate "the" when referring to the band in most instances. Anyone disagree? Let's discuss it if that's the case. Thank you! :> Doc talk 04:06, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

P.S. - Just for the heck of it, here are some totally random excerpts from each band member (from reliable sources) describing the band...
In every quote we have a lower-case "the" in front of "Eagles". From their own mouths. What more is there to say, really? Doc talk 08:36, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
Please point out One studio album cover with "The Eagles". Mlpearc powwow 15:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, there was The Very Best of the Eagles for one. On the others you don't find the definite article but that is a stylistic choice, just as you won't find it on albums by the Pretenders or the Ramones. That's why the article is simply titled "Eagles" but that doesn't preclude the necessity of the definite article in running prose. Please see the past discussions on the archived talk page and the edit summaries on the history page for consensus on this subject. As Glenn Frey used to say at the start of every concert: "We're the Eagles from Los Angeles California." Piriczki (talk) 19:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
The band is certainly known colloquially as "the Eagles", and I think it's fine to refer to them as such throughout the body of the article. However, the band's actual name is "Eagles" and I think that should be addressed in some form in the lede. How about "Eagles, known colloquially as the Eagles", or "The Eagles, officially Eagles,..."? Joefromrandb (talk) 04:36, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I made a bold edit, just to see what people think. Another possibility is to stick with "The Eagles" and add a footnote. The footnote could say, "While the band's official name is "Eagles", most people, including the band members themselves, refer to the band as 'the Eagles". (Or something like that.) Joefromrandb (talk) 04:53, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I have no objections to your changes to the lede, and we must remember that the "The" is capitalized only in the beginning of a sentence, and is lowercase in any other instance. All reliable sources follow this standard. I wouldn't add the footnote you suggest, as it would be original research without proper attribution. Doc talk 08:34, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I have restored the lead to the correct grammatical form. The name "Eagles" is bolded but is correctly preceded with "The" which is NOT bolded because it isn't part of the official name but is still grammatically required in this sentence. Why some editors find it so difficult to understand this simple fact is quite astonishing. Afterwriting (talk) 12:10, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

It most certainly is not "grammatically required". The band's name is "Eagles" and there is certainly nothing ungrammatical or wrong about refering to them as such. The fact is that almost everyone, including the band members themselves refer to Eagles as "the Eagles". That is what I was attempting to distinguish with my edit. Joefromrandb (talk) 17:15, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
It most certainly is grammatically required in most instances as Eagles is a plural noun. Therefore whenever the group's name appears in a sentence it is usually grammatically correct to have "the" before it - and incorrect not to. The only exceptions to this principle would be in sentences such as "The first Eagles album to be released on CD was ..." I also agree with the comments below citing Led Zeppelin. If this band were called the "Led Zeppilins" (plural) then "the" would also be ordinarily required before the name. And if the "Eagles" were called "Eagle" (singular) then "the" would not usually be required - but would be in instances such as "the Eagle album with the highest sales was ..." The principle is not a difficult one to grasp and implement. Afterwriting (talk) 15:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
So by that standard we must say, "Axl Rose is the lead singer of the Guns N' Roses"? Joefromrandb (talk) 05:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
No, because nobody else out there does that, and WP would look foolish if we did it when no reliable source does. They would omit the "the" in that particular example. But you also can't say "ex-Guns N' Roses Slash", as you'd have to add "guitarist", "member", etc. after the band name. But you can singularize the Eagles name to say "former Eagle Randy Meisner". It is done all the time. And you could say, "former Eagles bassist...", but not "former the Eagles bassist...". One would write, "former bassist with the Eagles" vs. "former bassist with Eagles". And no reliable source writes, "Don Henley is a founder of Eagles", they add the "the" in front of the band's name or write it in a different way. Doc talk 20:31, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Again, I'm not contesting that sources use "the Eagles" and we should follow that. I'm contesting Afterwriting's assertion that it is "gramatically necessary". And I repeat, by that standard we would have to say "the Guns N' Roses", which you have correctly pointed out would sound ridiculous. Joefromrandb (talk) 20:58, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
I don't know about grammatical correctness and all that, but the way the Eagles are treated is much the same as Red Hot Chili Peppers. There's no "the", yet some major reliable music sources[1][2][3] show that "the" is very commonly added to their name (which is often shortened to just "the Chili Peppers"). That's what they (and we) do for the Eagles. I can't speak to any other case. Doc talk 21:43, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
It kind of is grammatically correct to use "the" when referring to them. Robert Plant could say, "When I was in Led Zeppelin...", but no former Eagle says, "When I was in Eagles...": it just doesn't happen. They always say, "When I was in the Eagles...". Trust me, I know your heart's in the right place with this, but sooner or later another editor will come along and erase all instances of "the" again because they think it is grammatically incorrect to have it, since they are simply called "Eagles". And we'll go back to square one again ;> Doc talk 21:56, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
It's fine grammatically to use "the". My point was there's nothing grammatically incorrect with "Eagles". Either way is perfectly valid; "the Eagles" just happens to be the commonly-used name. My point was that while it's fine to use "the Eagles" throughout the article, there should at least be one mention that "Eagles" is the actual name. "The Eagles" seems to do it indirectly. I'm fine with the way it is now; I just think it could be done better. Joefromrandb (talk) 02:19, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes, there is nothing "grammatically incorrect" with "Eagles" as the name of the band ~ either "Eagles" or "The Eagles" is okay. What this issue is about is when the name is used in sentences. As I have explained above, it is usually grammatically correct - at least in English - to have "the" before "Eagles" and other plural nouns. I do not know whether the definite article is usually required in other languages which use them in such instances. Afterwriting (talk) 15:38, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Update - A new documentary is titled "History of the Eagles".[4] They even left the "the" in the title! I haven't seen it yet, but I can't wait to. It will probably get its own article in due time. Doc talk 07:05, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

"The Eagles" is the common name of this group, as used in *real life*, spoken language, try it out by yourself, hence should be the title of this article-- discogs.com (I presume this is where this "super-specialists"-problem comes from) has a different approach to artist names, that is "type it exactly as it is on the release", okay and useful for that site, as it collects *text* from music releases. The same applies to "The Carpenters", who have a logo that has no "The".(E-Kartoffel (talk) 11:01, 4 July 2013 (UTC)).

High price for tickets

I am sure that I heard on the Radio Four programme You and Yours on May 4 2011 that this band once charged a high price for one of their concerts, and then tickets to sold out very quickly. Is this information in the article, or did I miss it? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:26, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. "Once" meaning recently? And if the prices were "high" and they still sold out, it doesn't appear noteworthy unless it set some sort of a record in ticket sales (highest priced, fastest to sell, etc.) Cheers :> Doc talk 02:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Length of introduction

Does anyone else think the intro is too long? It should at least have some paragraphs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.104.68.234 (talk) 21:51, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Comment The lead is meant to summarize the page. Big page - Big lead. There ARE sentence breaks - to make paragraphs you'd have to combine things. Reads fine to me. Ckruschke (talk) 17:20, 1 February 2012 (UTC)Ckruschke

James Gang in Associated Acts

Does anyone else think that James Gang should be listed in the Associated Acts section? I feel it is a key band to have in the list since it brought Joe Walsh, a key member of The Eagles, to fame. The Eagles are listed as an associated act on James Gangs' page. Can one group be associated to another but not vise versa? I do see here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_musical_artist#associated_acts "Groups with only one member in common" is listed as reasons NOT to include an associated act. Going by these guidelines, The Eagles should be removed from James Gangs' page.

Unless I am missing something, one or more of these three things must happen.

  1. The Eagles should be removed from James Gang's associated acts.
  2. James Gang should be added to the Eagles' associated acts.
  3. The 'Template:Infobox musical artist' guidelines should be changed to allow "Groups with only one member in common".

FoxMulder900 (talk) 23:42, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Rewrite Requested

The article needs a lot more references, and a lot more copyediting. I'm going to expand bit by bit with Felder's book, but would appreciate any help out there. Too big a band to have such a sparse bio. Doc talk 07:49, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Requested move 2: → Eagles

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page not moved. Arbitrarily0 (talk) 02:46, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Eagles (band) → Eagles – Yeah, I'm afraid it's time for that peaceful, easy feeling again. Currently Eagles is a redirect to the bird. But if you google Eagles -wikipedia, nothing comes up about the bird. The results are either about the band, or about the Philadelphia Eagles, a football team. The team doesn't need the lemma since it is already satisfactorily disambiguated. The current format, with a disambiguator after the name in parenthesis, should be used only when "natural disambiguation is not possible," per WP:NATURAL. Kauffner (talk) 09:48, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Survey

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Eagles - The Very Best Of

In 2001, the compilation album from 1994, The Very Best of the Eagles, was reissued.[5] Two years later, The Very Best Of (or Eagles - The Very Best Of) was released, and this has led to a decade of confusion not only here on WP but all over the internet. Is it The Very Best Of Eagles? Or The Very Best of the Eagles? Neither, actually. According to allmusic[6] and Discogs[7] the album title is "The Very Best Of" from the artist "Eagles", and Amazon sells it as such[8] (probably something known to the band's corporation). The thousands of WP hits for "The Very Best of the Eagles (2003)"[9] are incorrect, and this will take some time to fix. I plan to insert the references for the correct album title wherever possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this is a basic factual correction spread out over too many articles for me to deal with alone. Cheers... Doc talk 04:22, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Could be worse. Could be Peter Gabriel or Seal or Weezer or any number of other acts that went through a period where they didn't bother to title a whole bunch of their albums. --Jayron32 05:40, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Heh - "true dat"! When this album came out, there was quite a ruckus as to how to properly label it, as well as this one. It's not too high on my priority list, but I'll chip away at it. At least we know there are two different album titles in this case. :> Doc talk 05:52, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Guitarist Classification

I may have opened up a can of worms with my last two edits to the article. With bands like AC/DC we have a clear lead and rhythm guitarist. But with this band we have Frey and Walsh, who each play lead on several songs. Since the other band members never played lead guitar, just listing the singular "guitar" (signifying just the rhythm part) seems to make sense, using "guitars" for the guitarists who played both parts. Or, we could expand each of the four to read "lead and rhythm guitars". What say you watchers on my little scheme? Doc talk 05:18, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

What do all of the album credits say? Go with the reliable sources. If the album credits say "guitar" or "lead guitar" or whatever, use that as a guide. Of course, it isn't wrong to just call them all guitarists, and not bother with finely tuning it more than that. --Jayron32 05:53, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

The only vinyl in front of me, Eagles Live, gives no credits whatsoever for the band. Weird. Over the course of their career you may see delineated guitar parts credited: but there's really no question that Frey, Felder, Leadon and Walsh all played both lead and rhythm. So: "Guitars" or "lead guitar, rhythm guitar"? I don't care that much. But listing Felder, Walsh and Leadon solely as "lead guitar" for their entire capacity in the band seems inaccurate. Doc talk 06:07, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Apparently the liner notes of the first album list Frey, Leadon & Meisner as playing simply "guitar", with no lead credit. No specific credits for the second album. On the third album we have: "Glenn Frey: Vocals, Guitars, Piano - Don Henley: Vocals, Drums - Bernie Leadon: Vocals, Guitars, Banjo, Steel Guitar - Randy Meisner: Vocals, Bass - Late Arrival: Don Felder: Electric Guitar." Now, this is all taken from a FANSITE and I can't guarantee its accuracy, but we can already see the "guitars" credit happening. Doc talk 06:35, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Singluar or plural articles

Shouldn't it be "The Eagles is a band"? Afterall, we are talking about one band, the singularity would require use of is rather than the plural form are. Up above, one of the band members even refers to the band in the singular, saying "the Eagles is a family". Several other instances throughout the article refer to this one band in the plurality, which should be corrected. 50.82.40.97 (talk) 01:45, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I suspect it's a MOS-type thing. Looking at other articles (e.g. the FA Beatles article), we see "The Beatles were..." instead of "was". Etc. for other articles with plural names. Doc talk 01:55, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
In British English, bands normally take plural verbs, regardless of whether their names eppear to be plural. Hence, from the respective articles, "The Beatles were an English rock band", "Queen are a British rock band", "Led Zeppelin were an English rock band", etc. My understanding is that in American English bands may take a singular verb, e.g. "Kiss (often stylized as KISS) is an American rock band", but I am unsure what ought to happen in American English in the case when the name has a strong plural sense, as in the Eagles. 86.179.1.82 (talk) 23:40, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
There is an exception in American English when the name is clearly a plural, as in this case.--SabreBD (talk) 23:45, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
When you have used "verb(s)" in these comments you actually meant "noun(s)". Afterwriting (talk) 06:14, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
The best way to explain it is that American rules generally follow grammatical plural while British rules tend to follow logical plural, and treat collective nouns as plural. That means that, in American English, where the name of the entity is a plural noun (New York Yankees are a baseball team, The Eagles are a band, etc.), they take plural verb conjugations, whereas if the noun is singular (The Miami Heat is a basketball team, Strawberry Alarm Clock is a band). That is, the sense of the word itself determines which verb it takes, and how it is treated in terms of singular or plural, in American English, where as in British English, it's the nature of the thing which is signified by the word, and not the actual form of the noun, instead. There are exceptions which are idiomatic, and so defy any rules (for example, the company "General Motors" tends to take a singular verb conjugation in AE, even if it violates the rules). This is how it works. So "The Eagles are..." is how American English treats this band's name... --Jayron32 00:06, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
As the word "Eagles" is a plural noun and refers to a group of people then, when the band's name is used in a sentence, it is more grammatically correct to use "are", "were" and "they" etc. rather than "is", "was" and "it" etc. When just referring to "the band" without their name then the grammar principles are different. In usual American English it is considered correct to say things such as "the band was formed in 1970" and "the band is known for its soft rock sound". In traditional British English, however, it would be considered more correct to say "the band were formed in 1970" and "the band are known for their soft rock sound". Afterwriting (talk) 06:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
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