10. “Wasted Time” (Hotel California). Featuring one of Henley’s finest vocals, this mournful ballad provides another great example of how high he and Frey could fly while writing together. Written, arranged, and performed with restraint and taste, the song matches an exquisitely sad melody with probing lyrics. In one stanza, Henley and Frey play the roles of Tin Pan Alley balladeers, using “autumn leaves” as a device, and in the next, they’re cynical observers of Me Decade extremes (“The shadows come to stay, so you take a little something to make them go away”). As they sometimes did, the writers change the song’s perspective partway through, this time from global to intimate—the observer becomes involved—so by the time Henley hits the title phrase for the final time, the ache in his voice is palpable. Complementing the elevated lyrics and exquisite melody is fine playing, with Felder’s emotive guitar tracing a map of romantic agony while Meisner’s bass thunderclaps punctuate phrases with appropriate solemnity. That the band finds its way out of the suffering long enough to offer a glimpse of daylight reinforces the song’s bittersweet theme—the moment you recover from one heartbreak, another could be on its way, so the courage is in trying despite the danger.
8. “Life in the Fast Lane” (Hotel California). Walsh’s contributions to the sound of the Eagles’ last two ’70s albums are mighty, and he forever transformed their live act. Yet nearly all of his songs on Eagles records are essentially solo tunes. In fact, only one number fully integrates Walsh’s compositional skills into the band’s hive mind: “Life in the Fast Lane.” Based on an unforgettable hook that Walsh originally contrived as warm-up exercise, the tune features some of the most trenchant writing in the Henley-Frey canon, so it’s a perfect synthesis of Walsh’s adventurous musicality, Henley’s incisive social observations, and Frey’s impeccable feel for radio-friendly elements. With heavy effects on Henley’s vocals, a punishing beat that’s half disco and half hard rock, and explosive sonics from Walsh, the track cuts a swath through a world of self-destructive debauchery. The funny thing is that for all of its adrenalized guitars and ruthless portraiture, the song is way too structural to qualify as an out-and-out rocker—it’s impossible to imagine the band riding this groove ad nauseam, the way Free might settle into “All Right Now” or Zeppelin might stretch out “Rock and Roll.” Like so many great Eagles songs, “Life in the Fast Lane” is misleading—a pithy vignette disguised as a barn burner.
7. “Desperado” (Desperado). Like the album with which it shares a title, this song mostly escaped public notice—until Linda Ronstadt’s cover version delivered the tune to a wider audience several months after the release of the band’s original track. Later, when the Eagles recording of “Desperado” landed on the band’s megahit compilation Their Greatest Hits: 1971–1975, millions of casual fans fell in love with the original recording. Little by little, the song rose through the band’s canon to become a signature number, so much so that it’s often the final song the Eagles perform in concert.
As noted earlier, “Desperado” and “Tequila Sunrise” both emerged from the first joint writing sessions between Frey and Henley. The latter composer began sketching the song years earlier as a study of his friend Leo, hence the rough lyric “Leo, my God, why don’t you come to your senses?” Featuring the full band accompanied by players from the London Philharmonic Orchestra (under the baton of Henley’s old buddy Jim Ed Norman), the recording of the number made Henley anxious, and he spent years griping that he could have done a better job on the vocal. Suffice to say, most singers would sell their souls to lay down what Henley considers an imperfect performance. (If you must know, his misgiving is that he sang part of the bridge as “nighttime from the day,” which he subsequently corrected to “nighttime from the day”; the adjustment is unquestionably an improvement as far as dramatic delivery goes, but it’s such a subtle distinction that few listeners would notice the fix without being guided to do so.)
Trivia aside, “Desperado” ranks among the band’s cornerstone accomplishments for many reasons. Most importantly, it’s an immaculate piece of songcraft, three and a half minutes of folksy storytelling infused with longing. The maturity of the piece is remarkable, since Frey and Henley were in their mid-20s when they composed the song. (Dare one draw parallels to a young Paul McCartney penning “Yesterday” at a similar age?) Finally, the performance, inclusive of instrumental and vocal components, is wonderfully minimalistic. Even with the strings, the song never feels cloying, perhaps because the sandpaper in Henley’s voice and the specificity of the imagery keep easy sentiment at bay. Sure, bringing a rainbow into the conversation is a bit obvious, but the song’s best lines have that unmistakable Henley-Frey saltiness (e.g., “These things that are pleasing you can hurt you somehow.”) In their very first collaborations, Henley and Frey found the thematic mountain they wanted to climb, and they kept ascending all the way to “Hotel California” and beyond.
6. “Take It Easy” (Eagles). The gateway drug for first-generation Eagles fans, this sunny ode to irresponsibility famously began at Browne’s piano, and when he hit a wall, Frey finished the piece—hence the timeless line, “It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me.” As Browne notes in the History of the Eaglesdocumentary, Frey’s line encompasses women, redemption, and cars, the holy trinity of youthful aspiration. Make what you will of Frey gravitating toward external validation as a contrast to Browne’s quest for inner tranquility, but no matter how you perceive the seamless lyric, the guitars and the harmonies are killer. Leadon puts the keys in the ignition with that great circular guitar figure at the opening, Henley and Meisner step on the gas with their joyous rhythm lines, and Frey sings with the confidence of a man ready to conquer the world. When the four join their voices, what issues forth is a magical blend of masculinity and musicality. Given the innate thoughtfulness of Browne’s style, “Take It Easy” set a high bar the band nearly always tried to meet or surpass—if the Eagles have a brand, it’s delivering radio-friendly sounds by way of intelligent language and meticulous arrangements. Incidentally, worth tracking down is the band’s 1974 appearance on Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert, during which contributions from guest vocalists Browne and Ronstadt give “Take It Easy” even more punch than usual.
5. “One of These Nights” (One of These Nights). Savor the flavors of the sweetest ear candy the band ever created—and one of their most beloved No. 1 hits. Propelled by a funky bassline that Felder wrote and Meisner played, twangy harmony guitars, and an irresistible rhythm pattern featuring a guitar hiccup at the end of each bar, the tune starts with a seductive intro, slinks onto the dance floor with the first verse, then explodes into the sonic equivalent of delirious footwork on the first chorus. The cycle repeats exuberantly before Felder’s glitter-ball solo sets the stage for the entrance of Henley’s crystalline falsetto during the vamp, his sky-high vocals perfectly capturing the hopefulness at the heart of the sexy lyric. Sending the song way over the top are those harmonies, five voices transforming sustained “i” sounds into the sound of lonely hearts begging for someone to love. There’s a little bit of disco in the arrangement, a little bit of Philly soul in the vocals, and a little bit of Motown in the relentless backbeat. It all works so well that it doesn’t matter “One of These Nights” is thematically slight, although the narrative is, per the band’s norm, deceptive. Remember, the protagonist isn’t after an angel or a devil, but rather “a woman who’s a little of both.” Subconsciously, perhaps that ambivalent line says something about where the Eagles found themselves on their assured fourth album, with Leadon about to bolt and Meisner’s feet getting itchy. They’d reached a peak, and some folks found the air up there too thin. It’s stretching to say the band was in the midst of an identity crisis—Henley and Frey knew exactly where they wanted to go—but there’s a sense of straddling worlds here, given how “One of These Nights” smoothly melds several different musical styles.
4. “The Last Resort” (Hotel California). After taking a few swings at Big Ideas on their first four albums, the Eagles concluded their fifth LP by targeting nothing less than the centrality of Manifest Destiny to the American experiment—yet what could have been a hubristic take on hubris became the band’s most inherently literary achievement, a beguiling tangle of precisely selected words embedded within a forceful musical setting.
“The Last Resort” declares its intentions immediately, opening with an insistent piano figure before Henley begins the story: “She came from Providence, one in Rhode Island.” It’s an ingenious lyric, fusing the holy with the mundane. Right away, Henley—who spent seven months perfecting the composition—demonstrates how far his use of language had evolved from his early efforts with Felicity/Shiloh and even from the Eagles’ first album just a handful of years previous. As the narrative gets underway, band members join the arrangement gradually, Felder’s pedal-steel laments functioning like an earnest but unheard protest against the unstoppable drive of the melody. In form and function, the song is wholly unified, its relentless progression a sonic metaphor representing the siren call of more, more, more. The tenets of Henley’s longtime environmental activism find their way into the lyrics when he marvels, with horrified awe, at the practice of scarring nature’s beauty in the service of rapacious consumerism.
Sprawling over seven and a half glorious minutes, “The Last Resort” subtly evolves from country rock to orchestral pop, Walsh’s string-simulating synths intermingling with majestic harmonies and, always, that unyielding piano. All the more remarkable for lacking a chorus, the song gains audacity with each verse, and the scope of Henley’s lyric grows whenever he adds a layer of meaning and symbolism. As he asks near the crescendo: “Who will provide the grand design—what is yours and what is mine?” It’s the ultimate question of the Me Decade, and in some ways, it’s among the defining aspects of the human experience. How deeply must thoughts of tomorrow inform the decisions we make today? Just because we can, does that mean we should? What is conscience? Attacking the band’s recurring social concerns by paralleling rampant development with unchecked lust, Henley elevates the Eagles’ viewpoint from the carnal to the existential, simultaneously asking what it means to reach the unimaginable outer limits of success and what it means to reach, by way of a storied geographical border, the furthest edge of the American empire.
3. “Lyin’ Eyes” (One of These Nights). This stunner is the apex of the Henley-Frey canon, seeing as how “Hotel California” originated with Felder and “New Kid in Town” began with Souther. Writing as a duo, Henley and Frey achieved other moments that were more poetic and/or more succinct, but this 6-minute, 22-second novella perfectly suits their strengths—Frey gets to act while Henley gets to direct. Inspired by a woman whom Frey observed at Dan Tana’s, the intoxicating track explores themes of disappointment, opportunism, and prevarication by way of a focused narrative, the (Greek) chorus providing tough commentary on choices and consequences. Musically, everything clicks just as well as the lyrics. Leadon provides clean electric-twang leads, and the full-throated harmonies of the chorus—no subtle breathiness during those the key phrases—reinforces what the Eagles could do with their potent group vocals. At their worst, the band was so methodical and painstaking as to make antiseptic music. At their best—as in this spellbinding cut—they Eagles are like representational painters capturing every detail with perfect accuracy. No wonder “Lyin’ Eyes” won the Eagles their first Grammy, for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group, or Chorus.
2. “New Kid in Town” (Hotel California). The great John David Souther, Frey’s onetime musical partner and roommate, is an Eagle in all but name. He cowrote tracks on nearly every album, and he was considered for membership on more than one occasion, even sitting in for a tryout session during which—according to Souther—he found that his skills were redundant within the band’s guitar-heavy lineup. Nonetheless, Souther parachuted into Eagles concerts on occasion, and he’s right there alongside Browne and the four original Eagles in those cowboy photos on the Desperado album sleeve. Yet beyond the invaluable act of introducing Frey to country music, Souther’s most important contribution to the Eagles story was delivering an incomplete version of “New Kid in Town” to the group, then finishing the composition with Henley and Frey.
Reflecting Souther’s jazz-inflected style, the song is driven by a gentle electric-piano melody (played by Walsh), while layers of guitars—both gently strummed and violently plucked—weave through intricate vocal counterpoints and harmonies. (Witness the Grammy this tune earned: Best Arrangement for Voices.) Stretching across five minutes to encompass a satisfying trick of narrative symmetry, the song explores the fickle cruelty of fashion, a theme to which any musician can relate, so the lyric works on multiple levels without losing clarity. On the surface, it’s the simple tale of a character gaining wisdom by watching someone else benefit from a phenomenon that once benefited him. Underneath, “New Kid in Town” is about community and identity. Do we create our own self-images, or do those derive from how we’re perceived? Can we ever reconnect to the village that abandons us, or are we essentially nomadic, transferring our existence from one village to the next as circumstances push us through time?
Critics who attempt equating Henley-Frey with Lennon-McCartney catch a lot of flack for overstating, and rightfully so; great as the Eagles are, they’re not the Beatles. But sometimes, when the song was right, the group’s core songwriters and their regular accomplices—especially Souther—came close to achieving the sort of lyrical and musical perfection that won the Fab Four their place atop the pantheon. If “Hotel California” is the epitome of the Eagles’ rock side, “New Kid in Town” is the same for their pop side.
1. “Hotel California” (Hotel California). What else could possibly top the list? No other Eagles track conquered this much terrain on radio, and no other pull from the catalog goes toe to toe with “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Layla” or “Stairway to Heaven” whenever some classic-rock station does a countdown of the best singles in, like, ever, man. Crammed into the six and a half minutes of “Hotel California” are that enigmatic lyric, fodder for decades of wild interpretations and theories; Henley’s flawless vocal, as ominous as the narration of a film noir; the undulating reggae groove that Felder either imagined one day in a Malibu beach house or copped from an old Jethro Tull cut, if not both; and, of course, that spectacular twin-guitar coda.
Regarding the song’s origins, many have noted similarities between the melody of Tull’s 1969 track “We Used to Know” and that of “Hotel California,” citing as evidence the fact that the Eagles opened for Tull on an early-’70s tour. Nonetheless, even the author of “We Used to Know,” Tull front man Ian Anderson, says the similarities don’t remotely approach the level of plagiarism. So let’s credit Felder for his inspiration while acknowledging that osmosis is part of the creative process.
Although Henley has taken pains to shoot down outlandish readings of the song, the pliability of the narrative is part of what vaults “Hotel California” to the top of this ranking. Most great Eagles songs are literary vignettes with definable characters and something akin to linear plotting. “Hotel California” is comparatively abstract. Yes, there’s a cinematic storyline—the sleepy driver stumbling onto a weird lodging place, meeting a witchy woman, and realizing he’s passed through a gateway to hell, or something like that. However, there’s also a resonant theme about indulgence leading to damnation. It’s California as a metaphor representing drugs or hedonism or sex or showbiz, if not all of the above. It’s also California as the funhouse-mirror image of the sun-kissed place to which Frey and Henley gravitated when they were too young to realize you just can’t kill the beast known as success. The lyric is an extraordinary feat of imagination and wordplay, and the music track is an extraordinary feat, period.
Building from Felder’s groove, Frey and Henley found places to dive and swoop with the verses, and Henley conjured some of the best fills and answer licks ever to emanate from his kit. Meisner’s galloping bass rides shotgun with the swirling rhythm guitars all the way to the explosive culmination of the lyric, and then the rocket takes off. Felder’s first solo is wicked, a tangle of insinuating roundabouts and vicious thorns, each bar more impressive than the preceding, and the final union of Felder’s guitar with Walsh’s is seismic. First, the players jab at each other like, well, eagles dueling in the sky. Then they join midair to sculpt the arpeggiated patterns that have inspired a million air-guitar moments. Equal parts beauty and danger, the harmony-guitar outro is among the greatest song endings in rock history, and the simple four-note thump the band contrived for wrapping up live performances of the song adds just the right punctuation.
Given the tune’s popularity, it’s surprising to note that “Hotel California” only spent one week at No. 1 during its 19-week stay on the Billboard singles chart. (None of the band’s four other No. 1 hits lasted longer than a week in the top spot, either.) More effectively demonstrating the song’s impact was the band’s 1977 Grammy for Record of the Year, the highest prize awarded for singles, although the actual statuette wasn’t given to the group until 2016. They skipped the ’70s award ceremony, a bit obnoxiously, because they didn’t expect to win. More trivia: working titles for “Hotel California” included “Mexican Bolero” and “Mexican Reggae,” and the “steely knives” line is a winking reference to a dig that Steely Dan made about the Eagles. One more thing—anyone who thought the song was exhausted after nearly 20 years of saturation play on classic-rock radio encountered an exciting surprise when the Eagles introduced an acoustic version on Hell Freezes Over, replacing the original electrified assault with a mesmerizing Spanish-guitar interpretation. Henley later took the experiment even further by employing a horn-driven, Mariachi-flavored version in some of his live shows.
For most Eagles concerts, however, nothing but the original arrangement will suffice, because, y’know, you can check out any time you like . . .
Sprawling over seven and a half glorious minutes, “The Last Resort” subtly evolves from country rock to orchestral pop, Walsh’s string-simulating synths intermingling with majestic harmonies and, always, that unyielding piano. All the more remarkable for lacking a chorus, the song gains audacity with each verse, and the scope of Henley’s lyric grows whenever he adds a layer of meaning and symbolism. As he asks near the crescendo: “Who will provide the grand design—what is yours and what is mine?” It’s the ultimate question of the Me Decade, and in some ways, it’s among the defining aspects of the human experience. How deeply must thoughts of tomorrow inform the decisions we make today? Just because we can, does that mean we should? What is conscience? Attacking the band’s recurring social concerns by paralleling rampant development with unchecked lust, Henley elevates the Eagles’ viewpoint from the carnal to the existential, simultaneously asking what it means to reach the unimaginable outer limits of success and what it means to reach, by way of a storied geographical border, the furthest edge of the American empire.
3. “Lyin’ Eyes” (One of These Nights). This stunner is the apex of the Henley-Frey canon, seeing as how “Hotel California” originated with Felder and “New Kid in Town” began with Souther. Writing as a duo, Henley and Frey achieved other moments that were more poetic and/or more succinct, but this 6-minute, 22-second novella perfectly suits their strengths—Frey gets to act while Henley gets to direct. Inspired by a woman whom Frey observed at Dan Tana’s, the intoxicating track explores themes of disappointment, opportunism, and prevarication by way of a focused narrative, the (Greek) chorus providing tough commentary on choices and consequences. Musically, everything clicks just as well as the lyrics. Leadon provides clean electric-twang leads, and the full-throated harmonies of the chorus—no subtle breathiness during those the key phrases—reinforces what the Eagles could do with their potent group vocals. At their worst, the band was so methodical and painstaking as to make antiseptic music. At their best—as in this spellbinding cut—they Eagles are like representational painters capturing every detail with perfect accuracy. No wonder “Lyin’ Eyes” won the Eagles their first Grammy, for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group, or Chorus.
2. “New Kid in Town” (Hotel California). The great John David Souther, Frey’s onetime musical partner and roommate, is an Eagle in all but name. He cowrote tracks on nearly every album, and he was considered for membership on more than one occasion, even sitting in for a tryout session during which—according to Souther—he found that his skills were redundant within the band’s guitar-heavy lineup. Nonetheless, Souther parachuted into Eagles concerts on occasion, and he’s right there alongside Browne and the four original Eagles in those cowboy photos on the Desperado album sleeve. Yet beyond the invaluable act of introducing Frey to country music, Souther’s most important contribution to the Eagles story was delivering an incomplete version of “New Kid in Town” to the group, then finishing the composition with Henley and Frey.
Reflecting Souther’s jazz-inflected style, the song is driven by a gentle electric-piano melody (played by Walsh), while layers of guitars—both gently strummed and violently plucked—weave through intricate vocal counterpoints and harmonies. (Witness the Grammy this tune earned: Best Arrangement for Voices.) Stretching across five minutes to encompass a satisfying trick of narrative symmetry, the song explores the fickle cruelty of fashion, a theme to which any musician can relate, so the lyric works on multiple levels without losing clarity. On the surface, it’s the simple tale of a character gaining wisdom by watching someone else benefit from a phenomenon that once benefited him. Underneath, “New Kid in Town” is about community and identity. Do we create our own self-images, or do those derive from how we’re perceived? Can we ever reconnect to the village that abandons us, or are we essentially nomadic, transferring our existence from one village to the next as circumstances push us through time?
Critics who attempt equating Henley-Frey with Lennon-McCartney catch a lot of flack for overstating, and rightfully so; great as the Eagles are, they’re not the Beatles. But sometimes, when the song was right, the group’s core songwriters and their regular accomplices—especially Souther—came close to achieving the sort of lyrical and musical perfection that won the Fab Four their place atop the pantheon. If “Hotel California” is the epitome of the Eagles’ rock side, “New Kid in Town” is the same for their pop side.
1. “Hotel California” (Hotel California). What else could possibly top the list? No other Eagles track conquered this much terrain on radio, and no other pull from the catalog goes toe to toe with “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Layla” or “Stairway to Heaven” whenever some classic-rock station does a countdown of the best singles in, like, ever, man. Crammed into the six and a half minutes of “Hotel California” are that enigmatic lyric, fodder for decades of wild interpretations and theories; Henley’s flawless vocal, as ominous as the narration of a film noir; the undulating reggae groove that Felder either imagined one day in a Malibu beach house or copped from an old Jethro Tull cut, if not both; and, of course, that spectacular twin-guitar coda.
Regarding the song’s origins, many have noted similarities between the melody of Tull’s 1969 track “We Used to Know” and that of “Hotel California,” citing as evidence the fact that the Eagles opened for Tull on an early-’70s tour. Nonetheless, even the author of “We Used to Know,” Tull front man Ian Anderson, says the similarities don’t remotely approach the level of plagiarism. So let’s credit Felder for his inspiration while acknowledging that osmosis is part of the creative process.
Although Henley has taken pains to shoot down outlandish readings of the song, the pliability of the narrative is part of what vaults “Hotel California” to the top of this ranking. Most great Eagles songs are literary vignettes with definable characters and something akin to linear plotting. “Hotel California” is comparatively abstract. Yes, there’s a cinematic storyline—the sleepy driver stumbling onto a weird lodging place, meeting a witchy woman, and realizing he’s passed through a gateway to hell, or something like that. However, there’s also a resonant theme about indulgence leading to damnation. It’s California as a metaphor representing drugs or hedonism or sex or showbiz, if not all of the above. It’s also California as the funhouse-mirror image of the sun-kissed place to which Frey and Henley gravitated when they were too young to realize you just can’t kill the beast known as success. The lyric is an extraordinary feat of imagination and wordplay, and the music track is an extraordinary feat, period.
Building from Felder’s groove, Frey and Henley found places to dive and swoop with the verses, and Henley conjured some of the best fills and answer licks ever to emanate from his kit. Meisner’s galloping bass rides shotgun with the swirling rhythm guitars all the way to the explosive culmination of the lyric, and then the rocket takes off. Felder’s first solo is wicked, a tangle of insinuating roundabouts and vicious thorns, each bar more impressive than the preceding, and the final union of Felder’s guitar with Walsh’s is seismic. First, the players jab at each other like, well, eagles dueling in the sky. Then they join midair to sculpt the arpeggiated patterns that have inspired a million air-guitar moments. Equal parts beauty and danger, the harmony-guitar outro is among the greatest song endings in rock history, and the simple four-note thump the band contrived for wrapping up live performances of the song adds just the right punctuation.
Given the tune’s popularity, it’s surprising to note that “Hotel California” only spent one week at No. 1 during its 19-week stay on the Billboard singles chart. (None of the band’s four other No. 1 hits lasted longer than a week in the top spot, either.) More effectively demonstrating the song’s impact was the band’s 1977 Grammy for Record of the Year, the highest prize awarded for singles, although the actual statuette wasn’t given to the group until 2016. They skipped the ’70s award ceremony, a bit obnoxiously, because they didn’t expect to win. More trivia: working titles for “Hotel California” included “Mexican Bolero” and “Mexican Reggae,” and the “steely knives” line is a winking reference to a dig that Steely Dan made about the Eagles. One more thing—anyone who thought the song was exhausted after nearly 20 years of saturation play on classic-rock radio encountered an exciting surprise when the Eagles introduced an acoustic version on Hell Freezes Over, replacing the original electrified assault with a mesmerizing Spanish-guitar interpretation. Henley later took the experiment even further by employing a horn-driven, Mariachi-flavored version in some of his live shows.
For most Eagles concerts, however, nothing but the original arrangement will suffice, because, y’know, you can check out any time you like . . .
