Hard imagining anyone but wealthy, space-strapped Eagles fans taking this one-disc, price-prohibitive collection over "Greatest Hits 1971-75" and "Greatest Hits Vol.2," among music's top sellers and essential 1970s collections.

Choosing "The Very Best of The Eagles" over those shortchanges vintage classics as "Sad Cafe'," "Already Gone," "After The Thrill Is Gone," and others. But the sequencing here is refreshingly out of chronological order, dropping Tim Schmitt's honest, aching vocal on "I Can't Tell You Why" above "Lyin' Eyes" chrome polished country. Sprinkling less familiar songs ("Doolin' Dalton," "James Dean") among Eagle standards shows creativity those hits sets lacked. Praising a mythical gunfighter and the "just too cool for school" film star allowed lead songwriters Glenn Frey and Don Henley to tap the musician-as-renegade image rock and country stars (Paul McCartney's "Band On The Run," Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings "Outlaws" projects) cultivated throughout the decade.

Other than that, the same California timepieces ("Life In The Fast Lane," "Hotel California," "Take It To The Limit") show up on both collections, here providing a more concentrated shot of what made this country-turned-rock band one of music's richest, most enduring supergroups: lyrics charting personal and political cynicism that defined the 1970s, set to melodies consistently straddling reflective country ("Best of My Love," "Peaceful Easy Feeling") and wailing, immaculately crafted hard rock ("Life In The Fast Lane"). If you need the room and have the money, "The Very Best of The Eagles" covers the hits nicely, but the two hits collections covers more ground for about the same price.

Shameful to see England doing a better job of packaging than our great big U.S.of A. Rather than parcel out ten songs per disc like they did here, Elektra U.K. put 17 Eagles hits on one excellent disc. (This is probably because the British need the value to encourage them to shell out for our beloved American rockers. Squeeze and Crowded House are competing for their hard-earned pounds...) The only song missing from "our" Vol. 1 is "Already Gone." I am prepared to weather this loss. All the chart hits from the relatively-less-popular Vol. 2 are here as well, except for "Seven Bridges Road". While I wish that was here, this CD compensates with early tracks "James Dean" and "Doolin-Dalton". I prefer having one rock-solid disc to two that are each missing something; that made this worth the import price for me. Sound quality is excellent, and all the versions are the same lengths as on the U.S. discs. P.S.: Michael Jackson fans, take note--if enough people choose this over "Greatest Hits '71-'75", "Thriller" may someday reclaim the all-time sales lead...

As only a casual fan of some of the Eagles music, this import collection was enough to satisfy me. Except for one glaring omission ("Already Gone", one of my personal favorites) and two duds ("Doolin Dalton" and "James Dean"), this has all of the essential Eagles songs you'd want on a hits compilation. However, now there's going to be a 2 disc "Best Of" that is coming out this fall that I will probably update my collection and replace this with. So any of you considering this collection instead might want to wait for that one instead because it has all the hits represented here plus the aforementioned "Already Gone" and some album tracks that are often played on classic rock radio like "In the City", "Victim of Love", etc.

Consolidating the accomplishments of one of the greatest bands in rock 'n' roll history onto one CD is criminal. Rhino Records does a great job with their "Complete Greatest Hits," etc., but this collection is incomplete, misrepresentative, and poorly arranged. Songs like "Doolin' Dalton" make the cut, but "In the City" (which, for some reason, was not on the second Greatest Hits collection) is again overlooked. Admittedly, the Eagles have had some strange collections ("After the Thrill is Gone" being included on the second Greatest Hits despite its 1975 release). So, because my review has been as helter-skelter as the arrangement of tunes on this CD, I will leave you with the recommendation of buying the individual albums or Greatest Hits collections.

Take my advice I recommend Eagles Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 volumes one and two is the definitive collection for the hardcore music fan out there. Because I have all these classic songs on my CD albums!