Why Randy Meisner Left the Eagles

Randy Meisner was a founding member of the Eagles. His soaring high notes helped the band earn many of their earliest hits. Nevertheless, Meisner decided to leave the band in September 1977 following a tiff with bandmates.

Many bands have suffered breakups for many different reasons, but the final straw for Meisner may not be what you’d expect.

Why Randy Meisner Left the Eagles

By 1977, the band’s “Take It to the Limit” was starting to become a hit for the group. So much so, that it became a live staple on their current tour. Meisner quickly began to have qualms with adding the song to their set list, given the high ad-libs he had to hit every night while on the road.

Meisner famously rejected attention. He was fine being a background vocalist while his other bandmates took on frontman duties. Naturally, when “Take It to the Limit” gave him a starring role each night, he started to suffer from anxiety.

“I was always kind of shy,” he once told Rolling Stone. “They wanted me to stand in the middle of the stage to sing ‘Take It to the Limit,’ but I liked to be out of the spotlight.”

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The band’s touring life got even more hectic with the release of Hotel California. As a result, Meisner’s relationship with his fellow band members began to fracture. It was at a 1977 concert in Knoxville, Tennessee, that Meisner finally decided that he had enough.

“We were being called back for another encore,” Meisner explained in the biography To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles. “‘No way,’ I said. I was too sick and generally fed up. I decided I wasn’t going back out.”

The bandmates got into a physical altercation as a result of Meisner’s refusal to go back on the stage. Though Meisner finished out the tour with the band, it was at that 1977 show that he decided he no longer wanted to be a part of the Eagles.

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“I really felt like I was a member of the group, not a part of it,” Meisner told Rolling Stone. “The whole thing started to end when we started taking separate limos.”

Meisner rejoined the band briefly for their 1998 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction performance of “Hotel California” and “Take It Easy,” but generally focused on his solo pursuits for the remainder of his career.

(Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images)