The artist Glenn Frey thought gave the Eagles “a shot in the arm”
Not every artist is meant to knock it out of the park every time they walk into the studio. There is always room for things to go slightly off when working on a song, and when the magic isn’t coming on a particular day, it can become like pulling teeth trying to get the audience to appreciate the mess you made. Although the Eagles still had a decent track record going into recording Desperado, Glenn Frey credited Linda Ronstadt for giving the band a second life after their album flopped.
But when you look at where the California rockers were, it’s not like they were struggling to be heard by any stretch. Every one of the singles from their last album has now become a fixture of soft rock radio, but when someone lures their audience in with ‘Take It Easy’, writing the next album about a strange conceptual idea of rockstars as outlaws wasn’t going to work.
That’s not to say that Desperado is even that bad a record. There are many songs that should be heralded as some of their absolute best, like ‘Tequila Sunrise’ and the title track, but since the public only heard it as a limp-wristed cowboy record, they normally stayed as far away as they could.
The right people were listening, though, and Ronstadt was already thinking enough of ‘Desperado’ to cover it on her next album. After all, she had already helped put the group together in the first place, so taking one of their songs and putting her own rendition on it would make perfect sense, considering how Frey and Henley worked with her on her breakout release Heart Like a Wheel.
Despite quitting her backing band to assemble the group, Frey and Don Henley were still on good terms with Ronstadt and even sat in with her on television appearances to play the tune. The single the Eagles released may have sunk without a trace, but once they heard what Ronstadt did with the tune, they knew that it had a second lease on life.
When inducting Ronstadt into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Frey credited her with giving their anthem and the band as a whole more credibility, saying, “While touring with her, Don and I told her that we wanted to start our own band. She more than anyone else helped us put together the Eagles and later she gave out careers a big shot in the arm by recording out song ‘Desperado’.”
And for all of the gold laced inside Henley’s throat, Ronstadt matches him note-for-note on her version of the tune. Despite Henley’s wise-sage voice, hearing her inhabit the song sounds more like a concerned wife or mother watching her loved one fighting for their whole life and wondering if they will ever come to their senses and settle down.
Even after they recorded it, Henley admitted that Ronstadt did the song justice and then some, thinking that it was a very poignant cover that she laid down. The public may have agreed back then, but as it stands now, the rock scene has come to the conclusion that no one sings a tune quite like its writer.
