''This could be heaven or this could be hell...''

So sings Don Henley on their biggest hit, ''Hotel California'', and it is true that the Eagles story was one that blurred the ultimate Hollywood highs and subterranean LA lows beyond recognition.

The band that embodied the American dream with globe-straddling success, impossibly luxurious lives, almost supernatural talent also descended into nightmare with bloodletting betrayal, hate-filled hubris, the skeletons of perceived enemies, brutally discarded lovers and former band mates left unburied on the road behind them. The story of the Eagles is a truly gothic American fable: one of ultimate power and rivers of money; of sex and drugs at a time when both were the lingua-franca of sophisticated So-Cal living; of a band who sang of peaceful easy feelings in public while threatening to kill each other in private.

Now, for the first time, esteemed music biographer Mick Wall will provide the definitiv