Randy Meisner 1946-2023

The first time I noticed Randy Meisner’s name was when Rick Nelson released his first album with the Stone Canyon Band, recorded live at the Troubadour in LA in 1969 and released the following year. Meisner was the band’s bass guitarist and sang harmonies. Nelson was trying to update himself, shedding the “y” at the end of his first name and embracing the arrival of country rock in an attempt to put some distance between the teen idol of “Poor Little Fool” and his adult self. The Troubadour album included signposts for his desired new direction in the shape of his versions of three Bob Dylan songs, including a particularly creditable version of “I Shall Be Released”. It also had a lovely version of Eric Anderson’s “Violets of Dawn”, a song completely redolent of its era, with Meisner contributing fluid bass lines and high harmonies.

When Nelson was putting the band together, Meisner — who had just left Poco after a brief stay — brought in the lead guitarist, Allen Kemp, and the drummer, Pat Shanahan, from another of his earlier bands, the Poor. The veteran steel guitarist Tom Brumley, a former member of Buck Owens’ Buckaroos, completed the line-up. Meisner was no longer there by the time their second studio album, Rudy the Fifth, was released in late 1971, containing a song he’d co-written with Kemp. He’d become a founder member of the Eagles, with whom he stayed until 1978, not always happily. He died last week, aged 77, and the final years were not easy ones, as Adam Sweeting recounts in an obituary of him in the Guardian. If you’d asked Randy Meisner to identify his finest hour, I don’t imagine “Violets of Dawn” would have crossed his mind. But it still sounds sweet.