(Credits: Far Out / Steve Alexander)
Fri 6 February 2026 19:45, UK
The entire process of working with Eagles usually meant getting the right song past Glenn Frey and Don Henley.
Every band might like to pretend that they are a democracy every single time they go into the studio, but Henley and Frey were always the co-captains of the group when it came to what ended up on the record. They could have easily kept on working on tunes like ‘Desperado’ and ‘Hotel California’ for the rest of their lives, but Frey had to admit when he had had enough of a few of his bandmates.
If we’re talking about the tension between the California rockers, though, it comes down to Don Felder and Frey having their creative differences. You can’t really blame Felder for wanting more of a say in what he was playing every single time they made a new record, but it wasn’t like Frey was going to roll over and tolerate one of his vocals if he could get Henley to sing ‘Victim of Love’ perfectly.
That might have been what blew up the band in 1980, but the cracks were already forming when they first started. Bernie Leadon was a great force when they started and could virtually play any country lick that the band threw at him, but when they started to turn into more of a rock and roll outfit, there was no point in him trying to play the same kind of music that they were. He could have been a bit more classy than pouring a can of beer over Frey’s head, but everyone needs to let their frustration out somehow.
But if the rest of the members were fighting, Randy Meisner was always going to have a harder job as the quiet member of the group. He wasn’t into confrontation in the same way that the rest of the band was, and even if he muscled through Hotel California and even got a great song on ‘Try and Love Again’, he felt that the last straw was when he was being asked to sing the high notes in ‘Take it to the Limit’ over and over again.
He may not have been the band’s lead singer by any stretch, but having to reach for those high notes was no easy feat, and he wasn’t going to burn his voice out every single night if he could help it. Then again, that was one of the band’s biggest hits, and for Frey, he felt that there was no way for the band to work with Meisner not pulling his weight the way he should have when they hit the road.
And it’s not like you can’t see what Frey had a problem with, saying, “Randy said, ‘Tell them I don’t want to do ‘Take it To the Limit’. Take it out of the set.’ I said, ‘Randy there are so many people waiting to hear you sing that song. You can’t just say ‘Fuck ‘em, I don’t feel like it.’ Do you think I want to be up there singing ‘Take it Easy’ or ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’? I’m tired of those songs.’ We just got fed up with that. And then we’re saying, ‘Just don’t sing it then. Why don’t you just quit? You say you’re happy. Quit.’”
The writing was already on the wall by the time the tour ran down, but anyone backstage at Meisner’s last gig got a sneak peek of what Frey later did with Felder in the dressing room. They were all ready to do the encore, but after Meisner said he didn’t want to sing his signature tune, Frey nearly got into fisticuffs with the bassist and even had the security guards intervene before Henley eventually broke everything up.
Then again, if Frey could lower the key of ‘Take it to the Limit’ and sing it perfectly in the band’s later years, it might have been a little more than that one song that got Meisner to walk out. The band that he joined had become a machine, and he wasn’t going to sit and watch himself slowly fall out of love with music with every single show.
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