Eagles debuted in 1972, rescuing the southern sound, mixing it with an exquisite guitar touch and a touch of soft rock, as well as country and western touches. Eagles’ first album was “Take it easy”, whose first single bore the same name.
Best Of My Love
On The Border was the Eagle’s third record, and similar to their first two, they began recording in London along with producer Glyn Johns. This time, the group dropped the sessions and recorded most of the lP with Bill Szymczyk. Glyn Johns imagined Eagles as an acoustic group, and accommodated them to produce numerous hits with this sound, including “Witchy Woman” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” This tune was one of two that was extra from the Glyn Johns sessions and introduced on On The Border, and it became the Eagles first #1 hit.
Desperado
On the outside, this track talks about a cowboy who declines to fall in love, but it could also be concerning a young man who finds a guitar, joins a band, and suffers the consequences. The weight of being a rock star is a recurring theme in Eagles’ music. The overall point is how you need to suffer for your craft.
Heartache Tonight
Don Henley and Glenn Frey composed this with Bob Seger and J.D. Souther. A 19-year-old Frey was in Detroit, Seger took him under his care and got his music career ignited. Souther, who is seldom recognized an “Unofficial Eagle,” was the first person Frey joined when he moved to Los Angeles in the late-’60s. “Glenn Frey and I had been listening to Sam Cooke records at my house. So we were just walking around clapping our hands and snapping fingers and singing the verses to those songs,” Souther said. “The melody sounds very much like those Sam Cooke shuffles. There’s not much to it. I mean, it’s really just two long verses. But it felt really good.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snPgFNMCXBs
Hotel California
Written by Don Felder, Glenn Frey, and Don Henley, this tune is concerning materialism and excess. California is used as the theme for the song, but it could relate to anywhere in the USA. Don Henley in the London Daily Mail November 9, 2007 said: “Some of the wilder interpretations of that song have been amazing. It was really about the excesses of American culture and certain girls we knew. But it was also about the uneasy balance between art and commerce.”
I Can’t Tell You Why
It’s about a rocky relationship – the couple’s arguing raises nearly to the point of them splitting up one night. “It was co-written by me and Don (Henley) and Glenn (Frey). I did bring a portion of that song, unfinished, to them back then, because I was new in the band and they wanted to introduce me on a good note, no pun intended. And I had this little piece of a tune that they really liked. It was loosely based on my own experiences,” Eagles bass player Timothy B. Schmit said.
Life In The Fast Lane
This song depicts a man and woman who possessed everything but wasted it due to their lifestyles. Hotel California was the Eagles’ first album with their new guitarist Joe Walsh, who helped penned this song with Don Henley and Glenn Frey. Frey explained: “Life In The Fast Lane’ kind of expressed the stereotyped LA ‘run around in your Porsche’ 24 hour boogie mode that unfortunately is too true for a lot of people. It wasn’t really a statement about the guys in the band, or about anybody in particular – just it’s kind of disturbing to see the extremes that the bourgeois jet set will involve themselves in. For instance, disco almost turned into a lifestyle, and it’s such a non-meaningful thing on which to base one’s life.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tcXblWojdM
New Kid In Town
J.D. Souther wrote this song with Eagles members Glenn Frey and Don Henley. Souther was part of the thriving Southern California music scene, and often helped the Eagles, also co-writing their hits “Best Of My Love” and “Heartache Tonight.” Souther said: “‘New Kid’ emerged from our whole fascination with gunfire as an analogy. The point was at some point some kid would come riding into town that was much faster than you and he’d say so, and then he’d prove it. That’s the story of life. That’s the story of aging, especially coming out of your teenage and young man years and as you approach 30, you begin to see that things don’t stay the same forever. And that there’s a lot other guys like you and gals like you that want the same thing that are coming up, and they want their moment, too, and they’re going to get it. And it’s fine. It’s as it should be.”
One Of These Nights
Penned by Glenn Frey and Don Henley, this tune was inspired by the soul music Frey was listening to and started recording it on the piano. Musicians like B.B. King and Al Green were a big impact on many tunes on the LP. During a 1975 interview with Phonograph Record, Frey explained: “It’s like, puttin’ things off… Everybody I’m sure has said, ‘One of these nights I’m gonna…’ Gonna drive back to that restaurant an’ take that waitress in my arms, whatever. Find that girl, make that money, buy that house. Move to that country. Any of that stuff. Everyone’s got his ultimate dream, savin’ it for ‘someday.’ And ‘someday’ is up to you.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI2BzHWue6E
Take It Easy
Jackson Browne wrote this for his first album, but he didn’t know how to end it. At the time, he was residing in an apartment in the Echo Park section of LA, and his above neighbor was Glenn Frey, who required songs for his new band – the Eagles. Browne gave the song over to Frey, who perfected writing it and recorded it with the Eagles, who applied it as the initial song on their debut album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfeNhwnO8hw
Victim Of Love
This Eagles tune highlights lead vocals from Don Henley, lead guitar from Don Felder, and slide guitar from Joe Walsh. “It was a bitter pill to swallow. I felt like Don was taking that song from me,” Felder said. “But there was no way to argue with my vocal versus Don Henley’s vocal.” According to Don Henley, they let him do the vocals, but it didn’t fit the band’s criteria. To divert Felder’s attention, the group’s manager Irving Azoff brought him out for a snack while Henley records his vocal parts.