Randy Meisner (the Eagles) was born on March 8, 1946, in Scottsbluff, Nebraska to a farming family. He got his first acoustic guitar when he was around 12 or 13 and, shortly after, formed a high school band. “We did pretty good, but we didn’t win anything,” according to Meisner.
“We couldn’t find any work because there were a million bands out here,” he said.
Meisner moved to California in 1964/65 and played with the likes of Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band and Poco, before co-founding the Eagles in 1971 alongside Don Henley, Glenn Frey and Bernie Leadon.
They went on to define the country-tinged, laid-back West Coast pop-rock sound that ruled the US radio waves in the early 1970s, before later moving in a hard rock direction, essentially because of James Gang guitarist Joe Walsh being added to the line-up when Bernie Leadon left.
Once dubbed “the sweetest man in the music business” by former bandmate Don Felder, bass player Meisner stepped out of the shadows on the mournful, lovelorn waltz-time ballad Take It to the Limit – a song later covered by the likes of Etta James, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. He was with the band when they recorded the albums “Eagles,” “Desperado,” “On the Border,” “One of These Nights” and “Hotel California.”
“Hotel California,” with its mysterious, allegorical lyrics, became the band’s best-known recordings. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977 and won a Grammy Award for record of the year in 1978.
But Mr. Meisner was uncomfortable with fame.
“I was always kind of shy,” he said in a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone, noting that his bandmates had wanted him to stand center stage to sing “Take It to the Limit,” but that he preferred to be “out of the spotlight.” Then, one night in Knoxville, he said, he caught the flu. “We did two or three encores, and Glenn Frey wanted another one,” he said, referring to his bandmate, the singer-songwriter who died in 2016.
“I told them I couldn’t do it, and we got into a spat,” Mr. Meisner told the magazine. “That was the end.”
He left the band in September 1977 but was inducted with the Eagles into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. An essay by Parke Puterbaugh, published by the Hall of Fame for the event, described the band as “wide-eyed innocents with a country-rock pedigree” who later became “purveyors of grandiose, dark-themed albums chronicling a world of excess and seduction that had begun spinning seriously out of control.”
He was excluded from their reunion tour in 1994 but did appear once again beside the band in 1998 for their New York City induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
He turned down an offer to re-join properly for a world tour in 2013, due to ill health. And his later life was clouded with mental health, addiction and domestic issues, exacerbated by his wife Lana’s death in an accidental shooting in 2016.
As a solo artist, Meisner had hits with songs like Hearts on Fire and Deep Inside My Heart and also played on records by other performers including James Taylor, Dan Fogelberg and another Eagles star, Joe Walsh.
He never quite eclipsed his achievements with the Eagles – the band that released two of the most popular albums of all-time during his tenure, Hotel California and Their Greatest Hits – but then few have.
“The purpose of the whole Eagles thing to me was that combination and the chemistry that made all the harmonies just sound perfect,” Meisner once said in an interview.
“The funny thing is after we made those albums I never listened to them and it is only when someone comes over or I am at somebody’s house and it gets played in the background that is when I’ll tell myself, ‘damn, these records are good.'”
Randy Meisner, passed away on July 26, 2023 in Los Angeles at age 77, due to complications from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease (COPD).
“Randy was an integral part of the Eagles and instrumental in the early success of the band. His vocal range was astonishing, as is evident on his signature ballad, ‘Take It to the Limit,’” said the Eagles.
Peter Tork (The Monkees) was born Peter Halsten Thorkelson on February 13, 1942 in Washington DC. His father John taught economics at the University of Connecticut. He began studying piano at the age of nine, showing an aptitude for music by learning to play several different instruments, including the banjo, French horn and both acoustic bass and guitars. Tork attended Windham High School in Willimantic, Connecticut, and was a member of the first graduating class at E. O. Smith High School in Storrs, Connecticut. He attended Carleton College in Minnesota but, after flunking out, moved to New York City, where he became part of the folk music scene in Greenwich Village and with his guitar and five-string banjo he began playing small folk clubs. He billed himself as Tork, a nickname handed down by his father, and reportedly played with members of the soon-to-be formed band Lovin’ Spoonful (Summer in the City). While there, he befriended other up-and-coming musicians such as Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills Nash and Young).When Tork “failed to break open the folk circuit,” as he later phrased it, he moved to Long Beach, California in mid-1965. Later that summer, he fielded two calls from his friend Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), who had auditioned with more than 400 others for the Monkees. Stills urged Tork to try out. “They told Steve, ‘Your hair and teeth aren’t photogenic, but do you know anyone who looks like you that can sing?’ And Steve told them about me,” Tork told the Washington Post in 1983.
September 5, 2017 – Holger Czukay was born on March 24, 1938 in the Free City of Danzig (since 1945 Gdańsk, Poland), from which his family was expelled after World War II. Due to the turmoil of the war, Czukay’s primary education was limited. One pivotal early experience, however, was working, when still a teenager, at a radio repair-shop, where he became fond of the aural qualities of radio broadcasts (anticipating his use of shortwave radio broadcasts as musical elements) and became familiar with the rudiments of electrical repair and engineering.
February 4, 2017 – Steve Lang, (April Wine) was born Stephen Keith Lang in Montreal, Quebec on March 24, 1949. The band that gave him fame as a musician, was formed in late 1969 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The original members, the three brothers Henman with friend vocalist/guitarist Myles Goodwyn soon moved the band to Montreal to gain more exposure. They scored their first hit with “Fast Train” followed by a self-titled debut album. 
January 16, 2017 – Steve Wright (Greg Kihn Band) was born in El Cerrito California in 1950.
2015 – Lemmy Kilmister was born Ian Fraser Kilmister on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1945 in the Burslem area of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. When Lemmy was three months old, his father, an ex-Royal Air Force chaplain, separated from his mother. His mother and grandmother moved to Newcastle-under-Lyme, then to Madeley. When Lemmy was 10, his mother married former footballer George Willis, who already had two older children from a previous marriage, Patricia and Tony, with whom Lemmy did not get along.
March 15, 2015 – Mike Porcaro (Toto) was born in Los Angeles on May 29, 1955 and was the middle brother of Jeff Porcaro and Steve Porcaro. Their father was jazz drummer-percussionist Joe Porcaro.
February 7, 2015- Joe B Mauldin (Buddy Holly and the Crickets) was born on July 8th 1940 as Joseph Benson Mauldin, Jr. in Lubbock, Texas. Mauldin began studying stand-up bass in 1954 after borrowing one from his school.
January 29, 2015 – Danny McCulloch (the New Animals) was born July 18, 1945 in Shepherd’s Bush, West London. Not even in his mid teens, he started out with local band The Avro Boys, who became Tony Craven & The Casuals. In 1960, the band linked up with new singer Frankie Reid and Danny remained with the group until October 1962.
November 6, 2014 – Rick Rosas (“Rick the Bass Player”) was born in West Los Angeles, Ca. on September 10th 1949. He came up through the ranks of remarkable players as a studio musician and went on to be one of the most sought after session musicians.
April 29, 2014 – Paul Goddard (ARS) was born on June 3rd 1945.
February 11, 2013 – Rick Huxley (Dave Clark Five) was born on August 5th 1940 in Dartford, Kent, England. He joined the Dave Clark Five in 1958 and played on all of the band’s hits including “Glad All Over” and “Bits and Pieces”.
January 16, 2013 – Nic Potter was born on 18 October 1951 in Swindon, England.
August 25, 2011 – Laurie McAllister was born Laurie Hoyt on June 26, 1957 in Eugene Oregon.
February 19, 2009- Kelly Groucutt (ELO) was born September 8, 1945 in Coseley, West Midlands, England.
November 5, 2008 – Byron Lee was born on June 27, 1935. He was a Jamaican musician and record producer, best known for his work as leader of Byron Lee and the Dragonaires.
November 19, 2003 – Greg Ridley was born October 23, 1947 played bass with Spooky Tooth and Humble Pie. Born in Carlisle in 1947, Greg Ridley joined his first group in the early Sixties. He was Dino in a short-lived outfit called Dino and the Danubes before teaming up 
June 27, 2002 – John Entwistle (The Who) was born on 9 October 1944 in Chiswick, a suburb of London, England. During his life he became famous as an English musician, songwriter, singer, film and music producer, who was best known as the original bass guitarist for the English rock band The Who. He was the only member of the band to have formal musical training. His aggressive lead sound influenced many rock bass players as he made himself immortal with the bass solo on their smash hit “My Generation”. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Who in 1990.
March 26, 2002 – Joe Schermie (Three Dog Night) was born Joseph Edward Schermetzler on February 12th 1946 in Menasha near Madison, Wisconsin.
August 1994 – Kristen Pfaff (Hole) One of the mourners at Kurt’s Seattle memorial was Kristen Pfaff, a member of Courtney Love’s band, Hole, and a former girlfriend of fellow member Eric Erlandson. Two months after Kurt’s death, in 1994, Pfaff died of a heroin overdose in the bath tub at her Seattle apartment, just like Jim Morrison. She was also 27, the third member of the Seattle music community to die at that age within a year.
March 17, 1990 – Ric Grech (Blind Faith) was born Richard Roman Grechko in Bordeaux, France’s famous wine area on November 1st 1946. He was educated at Corpus Christi RC School, Leicester, after attending Sacred Heart Primary School, where he played violin in the school orchestra.
February 4, 1989 – Trevor George Lucas (Fairport Convention) was born in Bungaree, Victoria, Australia on December 25, 1943. He learned to play guitar in order to help with his dyslexia. In his youth, Lucas studied to become a carpenter and performed nights at local clubs in Melbourne from 1961 or 1962.
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