(Credits: Far Out / Don Henley)
Thu 26 February 2026 19:55, UK
Eagles were always in danger of taking themselves too seriously when Don Henley was at the helm.
There are many times where they sounded like they didn’t have a care in the world on record, but you’d be surprised how much time and effort it takes to make a song sound so effortless whenever it comes out of the speakers. Henley wasn’t going to rest until he felt like the band had given it all they had, but he felt that there were a few times when the band crawled up their own ass and didn’t come back.
That being said, the band often knew when to correct some of their mistakes. Bernie Leadon definitely brought a more country-leaning sound to all of their songs, but aside from being one of the greatest players in the band, letting him go for Joe Walsh was the greatest blessing they could have asked for. Walsh wasn’t a serious player by any stretch, and hearing him cracking jokes on every other tune was a great way to break up the monotony of a bunch of guys standing onstage looking bored, singing a song.
But there was a method behind everyone not moving around all that much. Henley did have a bit more of an excuse since he was behind the drum kit for most of the show, but when everyone isn’t moving around that much, that gives the audience much more time to focus on the songs before anything else. That meant their songs had to really knock people out as soon as they came on, but after breaking through on ‘Take It Easy’ and ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’, Henley and Glenn Frey had a much better idea than a typical California rock record.
They had recently been given a book on the greatest gunslingers in American history, and since they were living a much more muted version of the outlaw lifestyle, it wasn’t the worst idea to make songs that sounded like cowboy songs. They weren’t that far away from country anyway, but even when they came out with Desperado, it took a long time for people to really grasp what they were trying to do throughout the record.
Which is strange because listening to it, it’s just a standard Eagles album. Sure, it doesn’t have the same kind of care-free attitude as some of their debut, but there’s still that attention to detail and massive hooks on tunes like ‘Tequila Sunrise’. But since the album bombed right out of the gate, Henley would later say that the band were taking themselves way too seriously when making the record.
There was nothing wrong with tidying up a few songs, but Henley felt that they went a bit too far to make their grand sweeping statement, saying, “We did the counterintuitive thing – a concept album – or, as Glenn saw it, a ‘serious’ album; art that came dangerously close to artifice. On the other hand, here in the clarity of 20/20 hindsight, the Desperado album yielded two of our most beloved staples: ‘Tequila Sunrise,’ which was Glenn’s baby, and, of course, the title song, although that song didn’t get much attention until Linda Ronstadt recorded it.”
Seeing the band going from a bunch of rock and roll country artists to glorified cowboys was going to be hard for a lot of people to internalise, but Hotel California is a much more fully realised version of what they were trying to do. Their sense of social commentary was a lot punchier at this point, and when they tried something more ambitious like ‘The Last Resort’, Henley was able to land that point a lot better than he would have if he were just starting to make a story-driven song.
And given that Henley ran with that kind of social commentary on his solo hits like ‘Dirty Laundry’, it’s safe to say that Desperado was the kick-off point for them starting to open up about the real issues they saw all around them. It might have had a bit too much artsiness around it, but all songwriters need to make those few mistakes before they learn to fly even higher.