(Credits: Far Out / Showtime / The Eagles)
Sun 14 September 2025 21:00, UK
You may think the Eagles were a wholesome band. Maybe that’s the well-known, laid-back cheer of their 1972 hit ‘Take It Easy’ with its extra chill Southern California vibe talking. Or maybe it’s the calmness and tranquility exuding from their third-ever single, ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’. But the music can sometimes lie.
The Eagles rose to fame just after the ‘Summer of Love‘, given they formed in Los Angeles in 1971. America in the 1970s was all political scandal, lava lamps and shag carpets, bell bottoms and The Beatles breaking up. After the heightened liberation of the late 1960s, it was also a time of getting high. Drugs were everywhere, all the time, and were widely accessible.
Eagles aside, intense drug consumption in the industry was widely avowed. Apparently, Ozzy Osbourne’s band Black Sabbath spent $75,000 on cocaine in 1972 alone, even arranging private planes to fly in their supply. At this time, the side effects of cocaine weren’t as well-known. Actually, most assumed there weren’t any. It was a drug for the elite, to congratulate and reward them for the divine success of fame. The only downside was that it cost so much.
If you think the Eagles skipped out on this scene altogether, you’d be dead wrong. In fact, they even had a code word to address one another should they be consuming cocaine in public. Some might argue that the ‘Hotel California’ singers might only have used the stimulant to stay awake and energised during a gruelling touring schedule.
No matter the reason, the Eagles did their fair share of the happy dust. Often, one of the musicians would come out of the toilet, a backroom, or some abandoned alleyway with the white powder still on his nose. This could be disastrous, especially if they had a media commitment that day. So the friends came up with a foolproof method to keep their drug habit out of the limelight.
“You’re showing,” they’d grumble knowingly. If a member of the band, or even a friend of the band, had done a bump or a line and had not tidied things up afterwards, they’d receive a “you’re showing” from a cheery, wide-eyed confidante. It might be still pretty obvious should the immediate reaction be a swipe at the nose, but it’s way worse than a highly-strung, “There’s coke on your nose, man.”
Lead guitarist Don Felder confirmed the incredible fact. “We used to have a phrase that if somebody had just gone to the bathroom and done some cocaine and had come out and you could still see white powder around their nose, it was called, ‘You’re showing’,” he admitted.
Felder’s blasé admission continued, highlighting an incredible fact for a video that over 700 million people have watched. He continued, “During the filming of that ‘Hotel California’ video, while Joe [Walsh] and I are playing the end of the solo, I lean over to him – jokingly – and say, ‘You’re showing.’ [Laughs] It was just a way to play with him, like, ‘Oh my God … we’re being filmed and I’ve got blow on my nose!’”
Good job he was only joking.
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