Bob Dylan names his three favourite songs by the Eagles: “One of the best songs ever”
Initially drawn to rock and roll of the 1950s during his youth, Bob Dylan underwent an adolescent musical transformation as he embraced a denser and more expressive lyrical style.
Inspired by the US folk stylings popularised by Woody Guthrie, Dylan’s early compositions were derivative yet sociopolitically pertinent. Dylan’s journey to progressive folk-rock and avant-garde verse in the mid-1960s would ultimately round out his legacy as a uniquely gifted songwriter.
With that, Dylan’s embrace of electric folk-rock has inspired countless artists, directly and indirectly, over the years. Perhaps one the most notable artists to appear on Dylan’s folk rock bloodline in the 1970s was the Los Angeles group, Eagles. Don Henley, Glenn Frey and Bernie Leadon, the band’s three principal songwriters, rose to prominence in the early 1970s with a popular brand of country and folk-infused rock music. With chart-busting hits like ‘Take It Easy’ and ‘One of These Nights’, Eagles became one of the most beloved and successful musical acts on a global scale by 1975.
Dylan, though, has very seldom gushed over his fellow musicians since his early infatuation with Guthrie. As a consummate songwriter, he understandably values artistic integrity, and this entails efforts to avoid blowing too much wind into anyone’s sail, including his own. Instead, Dylan prefers to let the music do the talking. However, the Nobel Prize winner has made several notable exceptions, one of which was for the Eagles.
In 2021, Dylan sat down for a rare interview with Douglas Brinkley of The New York Times to discuss his latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. The record boasted some of Dylan’s finest work since the 1990s; one particular highlight, ‘I Contain Multitudes’, Dylan described as “the kind of thing where you pile up stream-of-consciousness verses and then leave it alone and come pull things out.”
“In that particular song, the last few verses came first,” he continued. “So that’s where the song was going all along. Obviously, the catalyst for the song is the title line. It’s one of those where you write it on instinct—kind of in a trance state. Most of my recent songs are like that. The lyrics are the real thing, tangible; they’re not metaphors. The songs seem to know themselves, and they know that I can sing them vocally and rhythmically. They kind of write themselves and count on me to sing them.”
The preceding single, ‘Murder Most Foul’, heard Dylan reflect on a century of pop culture, noting many musicians and icons of the 20th century, including Don Henley and Glenn Frey of the Eagles. In the interview, Brinkley asked Dylan to name his favourite Eagles songs and got three solid selections.
“‘New Kid in Town,’ ‘Life in the Fast Lane,’ ‘Pretty Maids All in a Row’,” Dylan says without hesitation. “That could be one of the best songs ever,” he notes of the last selection.
Written by Joe Walsh, who Dylan neglected to name in his song, ‘Pretty Maids All in a Row’, was released on Eagles’ classic 1976 album Hotel California. Walsh, reflecting on his work, discussed the song during a 1981 interview with the BBC. “To make the Eagles really valid as a band, it was important that we co-write things and share things,” he explained. “‘Pretty Maids’ is kind of a melancholy reflection on my life so far, and I think we tried to represent it as a statement that would be valid for people from our generation on life so far”.
“Heroes, they come and go,” he added. “Henley and Frey really thought that it was a good song and meaningful and helped me a lot in putting it together. I think the best thing to say is that it’s a kind of melancholy observation on life that we hoped would be a valid statement for people from our generation.”
‘New Kid In Town’ is another Eagles classic. Written by JD Souther, the track looks deeply at the passing of time in an unusually existential foray for the Eagles. Souther explained: “‘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.”
In comparison, ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ is about as close to a stereotypical Eagles song as you can hope to imagine. A fast car analogy inspired by a cocaine dealer’s comments and packaged within an easy rock anthem. Glenn Frey said of the track: “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.”
All three represent the best of Eagles, and Bob Dylan knew it.
Bob Dylan’s favourite Eagles songs:
- ‘New Kid in Town’
- ‘Life in the Fast Lane’
- ‘Pretty Maids All in a Row’
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