(Credits: Alamy)
Thu 11 September 2025 17:00, UK
The Eagles were always going to be a tough act to satisfy once they started gaining traction.
Don Henley always wanted to have a band that could rival the best in the business, but there was no way that everyone was going to be on the same page all the time. And while everything started escalating really fast before their inevitable implosion onstage, he felt that looking at their albums was a good indication of where things were headed.
Granted, nothing is easy in rock and roll, and half of the Eagles’ story has to do with them trying to make the most of the situations they find themselves in. Desperado was a great conceptual piece, but didn’t have the kind of hooks everyone liked. One of These Nights caught them in a strange state of transition, and even if Hotel California marked their magnum opus, there were a few backstabbing moments behind the scenes that weren’t going to be easy to forget.
So, in many respects, The Long Run should rightfully be looked at as the one album where everything went wrong, right? Well, not exactly. Make no mistake, every member of the group remembered how gruelling those sessions were and how strung out they could get on cocaine when making the record, but aside from a few lacklustre songs, it only feels like a small notch below their other classics.
No, the tension was already building long before that, and a lot of it tended to revolve around their creative direction. It’s hard enough to get Henley and Glenn Frey to agree, but when you have to split the ideas among four and eventually five people, it’s impossible to please everyone. There are bound to be moments where they have to cut corners, and even when their debut came out, Henley knew he was dealing with problems that weren’t going to be fixed easily.
Although the band’s debut is home to their breeziest cuts like ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’, Henley said that he saw the first signs of what would bring down the band, saying, “I knew that it wasn’t all going to be smooth sailing, that the various members had certain strengths and weaknesses and that they weren’t always objective about what those strengths and weaknesses were. There was some difference of opinion on the musical direction we would be going in. Variety and contrast are good things if they can be harnessed into a coherent whole. I could see that there were going to be real problems with ‘division of labour’. Too many chiefs.”
And looking at how their career unfolded, it’s not like Henley was off the mark in any way. The band could certainly play the best music they could whenever they wanted, but when people like Don Felder started motioning that he wanted to sing or Bernie Leadon insisted on having certain lacklustre songs on the record, it wasn’t going to be easy for Henley and Frey to outright deny them the chance to stretch their muscles.
Then again, Henley never seemed to be the kind of person to throw people under the bus for the hell of it. He only wanted to have the Eagles make the best music that they could, and if a subpar song was brought to the table, it’s not like everyone was going to willingly roll over and take it, no matter what. There were standards that needed to be met, and democratic songwriting doesn’t always lead to the best albums.
And for as much as the band liked to fight amongst themselves, it’s no surprise that all the hard work seemed to go into making their songs sound laid-back and breezy. The only reason they sound that way is because of how much grind it took for all of them to get to that point.
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