Bernie Leadon threatened violence if the Eagles didn’t record his song: “I’m going to break your fuckin’ arm”
Having great colleagues is a blessing that not everyone can claim, but when you get along with the people you work alongside on a day-to-day basis, your professional life will naturally be a lot easier. At the same time, loving your profession also makes things run smoothly, and when the rest of the team also consider themselves to be in their dream job, then again, it will invariably come as a positive. You might think that being in a band that enjoyed the success that Eagles achieved might create a blissful working environment, but the soft rock legends were far from on good terms with one another at times.
Having worked relentlessly throughout the early part of the 1970s, releasing one album every year from 1972 to 1976 and embarking on lengthy worldwide tours, the exhaustion of having to play nice with one another every day while working gruelling hours can suddenly start to take its toll. By the time the band came to record their fourth album, One of These Nights, in 1975, a few members were growing sick of each other, and this animosity would reach a head when it came to recording one song in particular.
As one of the band’s founding members, Bernie Leadon played a crucial role in the group as their lead guitarist from their formation, but there was only so much inter-band politics that he could take when they had reached this point in their career. Fellow co-founders and leaders Glenn Frey and Don Henley were beginning to exert a greater sense of creative control within the band hierarchy, and given that this meant that Leadon was being given less opportunity to contribute his own work, he was becoming increasingly frustrated with his position in the group.
He would help to write ‘Hollywood Waltz’ with Henley and Frey for the album and also contributed the instrumental track ‘Journey of the Sorcerer’ to the tracklist, but it was the closing song on the album that Leadon wrote that caused the most contention within the group. ‘I Wish You Peace’, which sees a gentle folk song backed by delicate keys and a string section, was different from the rock music that the band had been moving in the direction of, and Henley made it very clear how little he liked the song or wanted it on the record.
Leadon, who wrote the track with his then-girlfriend Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, was desperate to have the song recorded and included on the album – complete with a writing credit for Davis. When Henley refused, Leadon saw red, remembering his outburst directed at the drummer as a tipping point for him in the band. “I basically let it be known that if we didn’t record that song, I was going to break his arm… It’s absurd, right? The song is ‘I Wish You Peace,’ but I’m going break your fuckin’ arm if you don’t record it.”
It was eventually included as the closing track on One of Those Nights, a decision which Henley still wasn’t pleased about afterwards. “Nobody else wanted it,” he told a reporter at the time. “We didn’t feel it was up to the band’s standards, but we put it on anyway as a gesture to keep the band together.”
Ultimately, the inclusion of the song wasn’t enough to succeed in keeping the band together, or at least keep Leadon in the band. After another heated exchange between him and Frey during the tour for the album, a discussion about the band’s direction saw the red mist descend once again, and despite Frey trying his best to keep the situation calm, Leadon’s response was to pour a pint over the singer’s head and tell him: “You need to chill out, man.” Ties were severed but at least no arms were broken.
