(Credits: Far Out / Album Sleeve / Alamy)
Wed 11 February 2026 17:30, UK
Originality is a scarce resource within the music industry.
Over the decades, almost every truly original thought has been adapted, appropriated, or used as the basis of inspiration for something entirely new. During the early part of the 1970s, it was Joni Mitchell who often occupied that role of providing inspiration to others, including the Eagles.
You could fill multiple books discussing Mitchell’s 1971 masterpiece Blue, its lyrical mastery and the long-lasting impact it had on the musical landscape of the time, but to keep it succinct: the album established the Canadian among the greatest songwriters of the era, and led a lot of imitations. One such imitation, in fact, became a far bigger hit than any of the individual tracks on that groundbreaking record, thanks largely to the commercial prowess of the Eagles.
Don Henley and Glenn Frey always drew from a particularly broad range of influences, taking everything from the psychedelic mastery of The Byrds to the songwriting genius of Linda Ronstadt and channelling it all into their soft rock commercial powerhouse. Floating around the Los Angeles scene of the early 1970s, it was only a matter of time before the group took note of Joni Mitchell’s output, and it certainly didn’t take long before her influence emerged in their work.
Having always borrowed from the realm of folk music, it was Frey who first struck upon the idea of emulating Mitchell’s work for the Eagles. As he once recalled during a 2003 interview with Cameron Crowe, “I was playing acoustic guitar one afternoon in Laurel Canyon, and I was trying to figure out a tuning that Joni Mitchell had shown me a couple of days earlier.”
Owing both to Mitchell’s distinctive skill and unique playing style, owing to a bout of polio weakening one of her hands, Frey wasn’t able to pin down that Mitchell-esque sound entirely.
The experiment did, however, provide the songwriter with an entirely new sound and an entirely new song. “I got lost and ended up with the guitar tuning for what would later turn out to be ‘The Best of My Love,’” he shared.
An amalgamation of influences indebted to Mitchell as well as an old Fred Neil tune which provided much of the melody, and “perfect” lyrics – according to Don Henley – penned by JD Souther, ‘The Best of My Love’ is perhaps the greatest encapsulation of the Eagles’ pool of influences. Upon its release in 1974, the country-tinged track topped the US singles charts, but its release also caused a considerable degree of tension behind the scenes.
Unbeknownst to the songwriters, Asylum Records heavily edited the song prior to its release, in an admittedly successful attempt to give it a broader commercial appeal. Although the song was essential in establishing the group as the commercial power they would soon typify with records like Hotel California, then, its success came with a degree of bitterness from the band.
Nevertheless, the sheer volume of chart power that it brought did a lot to quell those tensions within the band, at least for a little while. Aside from anything else, it serves as a signifier of just how all-encompassing the influence of Joni Mitchell was back in her 1970s heyday, even if she never quite achieved the same chart successes as the likes of the Eagles.