2023’s Music Losses “Top” Ten: Randy Meisner (#3)

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After watching the weather forecast I’ve decided I’ll postpone my “winter getaway” until the end of February, when they’re expecting a return to winter around here. If that doesn’t happen then I’ll make it a spring getaway! But for now, it’s winter, and it’s time for another memory of a music great we lost in 2023. #3: Randy Meisner Two of my favorite bands ever are Poco and the Eagles. Randy Meisner was a member of both. So you can imagine how badly I took this one. I only saw Meisner as a member of Poco, when the original Poco reunited (thanks to Richard Marx) in the late 80s. It was splendid. However, his original tenure in Poco was very short-lived, and not exactly as harmonious as their music. He was fired or quit (depending on who you talk to) before the first Poco album was released in 1968. If you look at the cover of the album (Pickin’ Up the Pieces), you’ll see a painting of four members of Poco and a dog. Well, the dog is where Randy Meisner’s face had been. No, that wasn’t pleasant. After that he went on the road with the likes of Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band and Linda Ronstadt’s band. While backing Ronstadt he met Glenn Frey and Don Henley, and the Eagles were born. Meisner was the “high voice” in the Eagles. He also has the distinction of having the highest-charting Eagles song not sung by Frey or Henley: 1975’s “Take It to the Limit.” Of course, life in the Eagles wasn’t any better than life in Poco, except it lasted longer (and he was never airbrushed out of a group photo in favor of a mutt ). After a show in Knoxville, Tennessee Meisner and Frey came to blows. Randy left the band shortly thereafter. Oddly enough, the Eagles went to Poco for Meisner’s replacement: Timothy B. Schmit, who’d become the “high voice” and bassist for Poco. Although he didn’t have much of a solo career, Meisner did do one of the best solo Eagles albums: 1980’s One More Song. By then he’d patched up his differences with Frey, to the point where Glenn (and Don) sang backup on the album’s title song. As Meisner dealt with health problems, including COPD (the eventual cause of his death), his former bandmates, without any fanfare, helped pay for his medical expenses. Meisner’s death on July 26, 2023 received comparatively little notice for a man who’d been such an important part of one of America’s best-loved and most enduring bands. Randy Meisner Born Randall Herman Meisner March 8, 1946 - July 26, 2023 (age 77) HALL OF FAME: Rock and Roll (with the Eagles), 1998 Here’s Randy’s “swan song” with the Eagles, “Try and Love Again”: