Former Eagles Member Randy Meisner Allegedly Threatened Murder-Suicide
Former Eagles bassist Randy Meisner, who departed the group in 1977, has been placed under court-ordered 24-hour supervision after allegedly threatening murder-suicide with an AK-47 and pills last January. An L.A. County Superior Court judge appointed a conservator to administer the musician’s prescriptions and oversee his well-being on Wednesday until a follow-up hearing in September, according to New York Daily News.
The 68-year-old spoke in court only to give his age, the paper reports. His friend, James Newton, had filed the documents necessary for possible conservatorship in April. Newton’s lawyer, Troy Martin, claimed that Meisner had been diagnosed as bipolar and suffers from “suicidal ideations.”
Martin told the court that the bassist “threatened to gun everyone down with an AK-47” in medical records from an Encino, California hospital. The musician did not have a firearm with him when he made the threat, according to the paper. Meisner also allegedly threatened to take all of his prescriptions and kill himself on a separate occasion. The musician had been hospitalized several times, the lawyer said, for alcoholism and was also given a prescription to treat a “mood disorder.”
Meisner’s lawyer argued that the claims were “widely overblown.” Both lawyers agreed to try mediation before the follow-up hearing.
Lana Rae Meisner – the musician’s wife, whom Newton and the lawyer claimed had been in denial of the musician’s mental condition for more than two decades – stormed out when the judge appointed the conservator. Newton’s lawyer also referenced an allegedly paranoid voicemail Lana Rae had made – ostensibly to Newton – in which she claimed her neighbors were wearing “clown suits” and would report her for using cocaine; they had preserved the voicemail as evidence.
Newton’s lawyer requested a sheriff’s escort as he left the courthouse, claiming Lana Rae “attacked” him verbally after the ruling.
Meisner, who played in Poco before the Eagles, is best known for co-writing and singing the Eagles’ 1975 hit “Take It to the Limit.” He quit the group in 1977, claiming “exhaustion”; his replacement was Timothy B. Schmit also formerly of Poco.
Meisner has sporadically issued solo LPs beginning in the late Seventies. He performed on Poco’s 1989 reunion record Legacy and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of the band in 1998.