(Credits: Far Out / ShowTime / Dan Tana’s)
Sun 7 December 2025 18:03, UK
Being in a band can often feel like being in a musical marriage. Even though it might be easy when everyone’s on the same page, it can be murder trying to get everyone to agree on how a song should go if they have differing opinions. While the earliest incarnation of the Eagles felt like everything would have been perfect, one album made Bernie Leadon reconsider what he had gotten himself into.
Being in a band shouldn’t ever really have a destination attached to it. The purest form of that kind of expression is a group of friends deciding to make music together and, in their own personal ways, creating something that appeals universally. There isn’t a case to suggest that the Eagles locomotive was ever on those railroad tracks.
No, this was a band purely crafted and finessed in order to achieve success. Born in the middle of the rock boom, as it became big business and demanded the attention of every kind of musician, the Eagles were a band crafted with the sole intention of becoming hitmakers.
Before the band had even come together, though, they had already been California rock and roll veterans. After becoming a mainstay of Linda Ronstadt’s group, Don Henley and Glenn Frey had the idea of putting together their outfit, blending genres like country, rock and R&B under one roof.
At the insistence of Ronstadt, the band got Leadon, who was then known for his pristine skills on both guitar and banjo. Having turned in time working with Gene Clark from The Byrds and Gram Parsons with The Flying Burrito Brothers, Leadon could play the country-infused licks that the band were looking for, lending his skills and songwriting to songs like ‘Take It Easy’.
The Eagles in their pomp. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
After being met with rapturous success on their first album, Leadon’s love for country went one step further on Desperado. Even though the band were excited about their latest concept album dedicated to the outlaws of the world, it ended up bombing in the charts, leading to them rethinking how they wanted their next record to sound.
Letting go of producer Glyn Johns, On the Border would be the band’s sharpest pivot towards rock and roll, featuring tracks that flirted with heavy guitars like ‘James Dean’ and ‘Already Gone’. Even though Frey and Henley were gelling creatively, Leadon began to see the writing on the wall that he needed to leave.
When speaking to History of the Eagles, Leadon thought that he had started to lose his desire to play the music that he was being asked to play, saying, “By On the Border, it was difficult to articulate how I thought the music should sound, and I started to wonder that maybe I should go at some point”.
It’s not like the rest of the band didn’t see the creative division happening either, with Frey noting that there was a rub when Leadon’s country licks didn’t register with the rest of the band’s rock leanings. Although the band weren’t willing to admit it, they got a shot in the arm when Leadon’s friend Don Felder came in to work on the album.
Contributing to the songs ‘Already Gone’ and ‘Good Day In Hell’, Felder gave the band more chops, creating solos that required much more precision to play correctly. By the time Felder joined the group, though, Leadon was halfway out the door.
During the recording of One Of These Nights, Leadon would try to assert his opinion in whatever way he could, including threatening to break Frey’s arm if they didn’t record his song ‘I Wish You Peace’. Henley would eventually talk about how tired he was of Leadon’s antics, saying, “Any success for Leadon was synonymous with selling out. Glenn and I always wanted the band to be a hybrid”. The Eagles would eventually part ways with Leadon for rock superstar Joe Walsh, but ever since On the Border, the country guitar player had already started to feel like a stranger in his band.
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