Friday Night cocktails: The tequila sunrise

We at LSS have always been strong admirers of the popular musical singing group The Eagles. It has hard for non-musicians to write of music without sounding cliched and puerile. Yet for us songs like Doolin Dalton and Take it Easy, and Desperado capture something of the life lived in the vast plains and mountains of the western states. The Last Resort and Hotel California sing of the opulent , and sometimes corrupt atmosphere of the long coastal belt running from San Diego up to San Francisco. Nowhere was this more true than in the golden sixties and seventies, when California was the technological and cultural hope of the world. That was the world Frey and Henley knew.

The lush relaxed sounds of Tequila Sunrise at first suggest nothing more than a pleasant sundowner, looking out between the palm trees as the sun sinks into the Pacific. Perhaps you have a nice job in banking, financing the burgeoning new tech and entertainment industries. Maybe you build swimming pools, and now you’re sitting by your own one. Or perhaps you are connected with the arts, and your world is more like that described in the paintings of David Hockney, or the film Boogie Nights, with its intriguing insights into the film industry. Life’s pretty good, huh?

Well, maybe. We can’t reproduce the lyrics here for copyright reasons. But listen carefully and you suddenly find a couple whose relationship is breaking down in a tangle of incomprehension, adultery, and booze. Why do things go wrong, in the middle of all this plenty? It’s a good question. Frey and Henley asked many more. They proved that to be a poet you don’t need battlefields and mouldy old abbeys. The stuff to write about is right there in the malls, freeways and condos of what still in our opinion, is one of the most interesting places to visit in the world. So, my fine readers, let’s mix this one to the memory of Glen Frey (1948-2016). Thanks.

What you will need: Cocktail shaker. 6 medium ice cubes. 1.5 measures tequila. 3 measures fresh orange juice-and we don’t mean out of a container, we mean real oranges. Half measure grenadine.

How to do it: Add the ice to your cocktail shaker, then pour the juice, grenadine and tequila. Shake vigorously for 20 seconds. Pour into a cocktail glass and decorate with a slice from one of the oranges.

#theeagles #california #boogienights #davidhockney