Customer Reviews

Fly Like an Eagle (HQ-180 gram / Remastered) [Vinyl]

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

We all know that this is a classic album, but how does the 5.1 mix hold up? Well, to start off with, my biggest gripe is that 'Space Intro', the original opening track, is NOT EVEN ON THIS CD! You hear a few seconds of it, then the title track starts. On top of that, the title track is the short version! When I pay ($) for a newly remastered album, I want the orignal album - Is that too much to ask?!?!

As far as the mix, the sound quality is very good and the mix is clean and spatious, but the rear channels have an incredible amount of hiss as times, the only time I've ever heard this on a DTS disc.

In summary, if you like the album, you'll like this, but let the buyer beware. Recommended with some strong reservations...

I should've paid more attention to the other comments concerning the deletion of the song, "Intro" before the song Fly Like An Eagle.

Do the people who made this DTS Surrond CD fall asleep when the disc was being mastered? To leave out the song "Intro" shows they don't care about the product and probably never listened to the complete version which has the song "Intro."

Anyone who purchased the disc should get their money back or if they ever redo the disc please include "Intro" and send us a free copy!

The album is obvious a classic this review is for the DVD-Audio that sellers are listing item as. I purchased two they were both DTS-CD don't get me wrong it still sounds good but if you want a DVD-Audio disc ask before you purchase. On DTS-CD "Space Intro" was left out what were they thinking?

And I can say that too because I was 2 years old when this album came out and my uncles had it and I can say I still like this album from the get go. The Space Intro puts you back into the nastalgics all over again which is not offered on his 1974-78 greatest hits compilations, so you're better off just getting the original album anyways. Fly Like An Eagle, even though they the death out of this number on the radio, I still seem to like it. Love the India-type music on Wild Mountain Honey, Serenade is a good little ditty to groove to. Merury Blues which was covered by many is pretty good here to but of course the anthem that should be for FM radio stations accross America Rock 'n Me, hard to believe I used to have this on 45. Anyways the album sounds pretty good and almost like a psychedellic album, but close enough spacey, good album to get if you like Steve Miller. I would also recommend Book Of Dreams, and his Anthology which covers his 60's solo effort, which also has a couple songs on which Boz Scaggs played with him on, I would though stay away from his 1974-78 greatest hits compilation, it's so incomplete and the songs are diced up on that album. Go out get this gem, it's worth it.

This is the only steve miller band CD that I own
but I hope to get more.

I got this CD about three years ago but I still
listen to it like I just got it yesterday, the space-intro
in the beging is very cool. Some of my favorites are
Fly like an eagle, Take the money and run and the window.

If you buy this CD you won't be disapointed.

THE BAND: Steve Miller (vocals, all guitars), Lonnie Turner (bass), Gary Mallaber (drums & percussion).

THE DISC: (1976) 12 tracks clocking in at just over 38 minutes. Included with the disc is a 2-page foldout containing song titles/credits, musicians, crew, and guest appearances. Label - Capitol.

COMMENTS: Miller was never better than right here. He brings together rock, pop, folk, space synthesizers, ballads and the blues. 3 huge hits still receive airplay 3 decades later... "Rock'n Me", "Take The Money & Run", and "Fly Like An Eagle". 9 of the 12 songs are penned by Miller. The other 3 covers include the slow spacey flower-power "Wild Mountain Honey" (Steve McCarty), the grooving "Mercury Blues" (K.C. Douglas), and Sam Cook's light hearted acoustic "You Send Me". "Sweet Marie" is a bluesy acoustic guitar and harmonica (played by James Cotton) medley that has a ton of feel to it. The real gem is the album closer... one of the best songs in his catalog as far as I'm concerned... "The Window". "Fly Like An Eagle" is as definitive as "classic" rock gets... look for the "30th Anniversary Edition" to be released July 2006. Steve Miller is an underrated legend on guitar - and "Fly Like An Eagle" is his best studio album (4.5 stars).

Fly like an Eagle is one of the Steve Miller Band's greatest albums. Over half the songs on the album became hits singles. Fly Like an Eagle,Take the Money and Run, Rockn Me,etc are all popular staples on classic rock radio, and when an album has this many great singles it's worth owning. So forget greatest hits 1974-1978 and pick up Fly like an Eagle instead!

This album represented an optimistic feel to my mid high school years of competing with my peers and struggling for acceptance in such a judgmental society of jocks, burn-outs, Jesus freaks, and misfits. The latter, which I associated as of myself.

High school is where you start to realize that if you didn't fit in, you could be quickly singled out as the guy to pick on, talked negatively about, or just get ignored by the people who heard unsupported slander about you. Well, that's where, when school was over, and you just got your new (piece of junk) car, you went out cruising with your real friends. The other rejects which you felt comfortable with, and belonged with after school.

I guess what I'm saying here, is that high school was intimidating and made you feel that life was not treating you very well. The jocks were nourishing their egos by making non-jocks feel inferior to them, the burn-outs were always looking for someone to kick their a$$ just for fun, and the Jesus freaks were able to disassociate themselves from all the other non-Jesus freaks as if social acceptance was not a concern at all. So, us misfits were just targets to make feel uncomfortable at school.

This album of Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle" was the album that offered an optimistic feel about being alive. I was able to forget about the negative impact on what I had to go through at high school, and actually had found a new ambition to make the world my oyster. After high school, my life changed practically 180 degrees as I attended Dale Carnegie School and then joined the Air Force.

During my first tour at Hickam AFB, in Hawaii, I started to appreciate my new life. As I always loved music, it was when I bought the vinyl album of Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle" (because I wore out my initial cassette tape), I was re-inspired about my new optimistic feel about my new life. I recorded this album plus a few other Steve Miller Band songs from their other albums, on to cassette tape, I would play this tape through my Sony Walkman, while walking along Waikiki Beach on a casual golden dusk of a Tuesday evening or so. When I bought a car (a black 1970 Mercury Cougar), I would crank up the cassette while my friends and I would party at Hickam Harbor with the beers and the other guys and the girls. We all shared similar stories. None of us were high school jocks or burn-outs. We all found a positive calling in going into the military. And many of us shared the same love for this album of "Fly like an Eagle" we all agreed that at least eight of the twelve tracks were staples of a simple, feel-good country space pop, soundtrack to all our questionable futures that improved when this great album was played in our bedrooms at home.

I always think about the positive lifestyle that I enjoyed in the Air Force, sharing this album with my Airman friends on thge beach at Hickam Harbor in the Air Force in 1981 and 1982. Screw those jocks! As I'm learning on Facebook from friends who are still living in Michigan going nowhere in their lives, those high-browed jocks are even greater losers in the challenge of a good, respectable life. My life is good. I laugh at those jocks for what they've become now.

Texas bred rocker Steve Miller released his tenth album entitled Fly Like an Eagle in May of 1976.
This was Steve's first new album of all new material since the 1973 album The Joker put him on the map thanks to that album's title cut becoming a hit.
However, after almost eight years of being on the road and making seven great albums (classics like Brave New World, Sailor and Chilren of the Future for example), Steve burned himself out and he retired and bought a farm in Medford, Oregon and didn't record for almost two years. Then in spring of 1975, whilst writing songs and demoing, Steve got a call from Pink Floyd (one of rock's greatest bands and at the time previewing their upcoming followup to Dark Side of the Moon called Wish You Were Here on its 1975 tour (album was released in September, 1975)) and the band asked him to open up for them at Knebworth Park in England to 125,000 people. As it turned out, Steve upstaged Pink Floyd (whose set was marred by technical problems that day) and premiered the song "Rock 'n Me" which he wrote specifically as a showstopper for the show and had Doug Clifford of Creedenceon drums, Les Dudek on guitar and Lonnie Turner on bass to help Steve for the show.
With the momentum going from his concert with Pink Floyd, he went in the recording studio with bass player Lonnie Turner and drummer Gary Mallaber and recorded 20 plus tracks in 12 days. That could have made a double album but Steve played it safe and put out Fly Like an Eagle and then Book of Dreams (see review) a year later.
Would this album be a classic or redundant, read on and find out (as I did when I got the album in June, 1991 on cassette (with original vinyl track listing restored by 1991) and later CD).
We begin the album with winds ala echo-plex and the synthesizer laced "Space Intro" which was a great intro. Then the echo-plexed winds segue into the album's title cut which was a Top 5 hit in early 1977. The song developed from when it was called "In the Ghetto" in the early 1970s. The song has a great riff, great vocals and superb synthesizer effects which go throughout the track and the synthesizer echoed ending was superb and the beeps at the end were from the master tape. Next is "Wild Mountain Honey" which is a nice relaxing number which doesn't change key during the song but doesn't bore one. Next is the rocker "Serenade" which is a great rocker and had Steve singing all of the harmonies and just rocks. We then have the country-ish "Dance Dance Dance" which is country to the core and features some great acoustic work from Steve and dobro from John McFee. This track was inexplicably excised from the mid-1980s reissued LP or cassette for some reason but appeared on the original album, cassette (and the 1991 cassette reissue), 8-track and CD (remastered CD version as well). Next is a rockified version of "Mercury Blues" which is a great rocking version of the blues standard about the car and Steve made the track his own.
The album's second half starts with the rocking first single "Take The Money And Run" which was a Top 10 hit in the Summer of 1976. The song was a story of a man and woman trying to rob some cash and the song was chosen as a single after kids at an elementary school liked what they heard. The #1 hit "Rock 'n Me" follows and is a great rocker (see early in review for song's creation). Next is the remake of the late Sam Cooke's ballad "You Send Me". This remake is superb with excellent electric guitar playing and harmonies all from Steve. This track, like "Dance Dance Dance", was not on the mid-1980s reissued LP or cassette version for some reason but appeared on the original album, cassette (and the 1991 cassette reissue), 8-track and CD (and remastered CD) versions. The second of two instrumentals "Blue Odyssey" is next and is called a poor man's Space Intro but with great synthesizer work and the synthesizer used was ironically an ARP Odyssey synthesizer, hence the name. Then the echoplexed induced wind segues into the bluesy "Sweet Maree" which featured the legendary James Cotton on harmonica and staccato acoustic guitar with limited lyrics from Miller and is a showcase for Cotton's harmonica and Miller's bluesy electric guitar soloing. The album ends with the spacey ballad "The Window" which has a great synthesizer riff, excellent vocals and ends like the album began with a collage of echoplexed synthesizer and wind effects.
Fly Like an Eagle went all the way to #3 on the Billboard chart and sold 4.5 million copies, went Platinum right when released.
RECOMMENDED!

The breakthrough to the rock world "besides the SMB diehards" still holds up after 30 years. Part 1 of 2 releases. He recorded Fly and Book of Dreams at the same time.