{"id":668443,"date":"2026-05-14T07:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/668443\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T07:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:30:14","slug":"when-black-sabbath-and-the-eagles-shared-a-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/668443\/","title":{"rendered":"When Black Sabbath and the Eagles shared a studio"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the mid-1970s, Black Sabbath found themselves in unfamiliar territory. Punk was on the rise, rock was changing fast, and the band\u2019s slow, ominous heaviness suddenly felt out of step with the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really a no-win situation for us,\u201d guitarist Tony Iommi once told Guitar World<\/a> about the band\u2019s 1976 album Technical Ecstasy<\/a>. \u201cIf we had stayed the same, people would have said we were still doing the same old stuff. So we tried to get a little more technical, and it just didn\u2019t work out very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Searching for a new direction, the band headed to Criteria Studios, the Miami facility where acts like the Allman Brothers Band and Grand Funk Railroad had recorded major albums.<\/p>\n

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\"Tony\n<\/p>\n

Iommi onstage at London\u2019s Hammersmith Odeon, January 1976. (Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

But Sabbath weren\u2019t the only major act working there.<\/p>\n

In a neighboring studio, Eagles were deep into sessions for their soon-to-be blockbuster Hotel California, joined by newly recruited guitarist Joe Walsh<\/a>. The band had already been recording there for months \u2014 and, according to Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, they\u2019d left more behind than just tape reels.<\/p>\n

Butler told Mojo the group had left the mixing board’s faders \u201cso clogged with cocaine they wouldn\u2019t move.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore we could start recording we had to scrape all the cocaine out of the mixing board,\u201d he told Uncut<\/a>. \u201cI think they\u2019d left about a pound of cocaine in the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

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While Sabbath dealt with the aftermath of their neighbors\u2019 indulgence, the Eagles had complaints of their own \u2014 namely, Sabbath\u2019s volume.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were too loud for them,\u201d Iommi told Uncut. \u201cIt kept coming through the wall into their sessions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"(L-R)\n<\/p>\n

Don Felder and Joe Walsh perform with the Eagles at Ahoy, in Rotterdam, May 11, 1977. Hotel California was Walsh\u2019s first album as a member of the group. (Image credit: Gijsbert Hanekroot\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

According to accounts from the time, the bleed from Sabbath\u2019s thunderous rehearsals was so strong that the Eagles had to redo takes of \u201cThe Last Resort\u201d because the metal band could be heard through the studio walls.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe were too loud for them. It kept coming through the wall into their sessions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony Iommi<\/p>\n

The two groups would leave Miami with very different results. Hotel California became one of the biggest albums of the decade, topping the Billboard 200 and cementing the Eagles\u2019 mainstream dominance.<\/p>\n

Sabbath\u2019s Technical Ecstasy fared more modestly and remains one of the band\u2019s more divisive releases \u2014 an experimental attempt to evolve at a moment when the ground was shifting beneath them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became very experimental for us,\u201d Iommi later said, recalling long nights alone in the studio \u201cfarting about\u201d and plugging into unexpected gear like a Vox AC30, a combo<\/a> best associated with Queen and Rory Gallagher<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, the album stands as a curious artifact of a strange moment in rock history \u2014 when the pioneers of heavy metal and the kings of California soft rock were working side by side in Miami, separated only by a studio wall\u2026 and, apparently, a mixing desk full of cocaine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the mid-1970s, Black Sabbath found themselves in unfamiliar territory. Punk was on the rise, rock was changing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-668443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}