The “bogus” Eagles album Don Henley never believed in but became a huge hit: “Trying to make an analogy”
Eagles are about as successful a band can be without ever being considered one of the greatest. They achieved such a feat with a run of incredible releases with huge sales attached to them. Not every massive album can always knock it out of the park.
For as much ambition that bands put into making an album every time they walk into the studio, there is just as much of a chance that they can walk out with trash as they are to create a masterpiece out of nothing.
Although the Eagles already had a handful of classics under their belt, Don Henley thought that one of their earliest conceptual works never quite came together.
That disconnect highlights the difficulty of marrying concept with authenticity. While the idea of framing themselves as modern-day outlaws had a certain romantic appeal, it required a level of conviction that the band themselves weren’t entirely sure they possessed at the time.
In hindsight, that lack of belief may have been the very thing that held the album back from achieving its full potential. Even so, it also represents a crucial turning point, forcing the Eagles to reassess their identity and ultimately leading them towards the sharper, more self-aware storytelling that would define their later work.
Eagles have gathered dup acclaim in rips and drabs when looking at the column inches provided by music journalists singing their praises. The group have always operated as one of the more successful groups of the era, but have never really been given the grace of being considered one of the best bands ever. They managed to do this by selling huge quantities of records while making them feel particularly geared towards making that sale.
That’s not to say those albums aren’t of good quality. When looking through the band’s back catalogue, they always had a certain standard for making their songs come alive in the studio. Since the group was made up of seasoned veterans from the California rock scene, many performances came together without much strife, including the phenomenal harmony parts that became their signature sound.
When the band hit the ground running with songs like ‘Take It Easy’, Glenn Frey thought it was time for them to move on into more cerebral territory. Inspired by a book on gunslingers that he acquired from Jackson Browne, Desperado was intended to be a rock star’s take on the tales of the Wild West, where the musicians were treated like modern outlaws. It was a conceptual piece designed to take the band out of their soft rock safe space and move them into a more creatively credible position.
Although the album would be home to a handful of future Eagles classics like ‘Tequila Sunrise’ and ‘Desperado’, it would eventually bomb on the charts, leading to them starting from scratch again when putting together On the Border. While most of the band would stand by the songs on the record as well-recorded, Henley thought the conceptual piece needed a massive overhaul.
When talking about the tracks later, Henley thought the story behind the album didn’t sit well with him years later, recalling, “I admit that the whole cowboy-outlaw-rocker myth was a bit bogus. I don’t think we really believed it, we were just trying to make an analogy. Suddenly, we were getting famous and making all this money, and it just turned our little heads around.” The band had tried to hard to become something they weren’t, both literally and figuratively.
As the band started to gain further success with the addition of Don Felder on guitar and the replacement of Bernie Leadon with Joe Walsh, they started to have a different concept in mind for the album Hotel California. Instead of the outlaw/musician myth, Henley envisioned an album-length statement that would serve as a running commentary on what the California myth can do to a person, from the disillusionment of fame to the need to chase thrills on songs like ‘Life in the Fast Lane’.
Even though Hotel California would be the grander musical statement, time has been far kinder to the music on Desperado. Outside of Linda Ronstadt’s immaculate cover of the title track, many of the songs would go on to play a pivotal role in the country rock movement, sharing a place next to artists like Gram Parsons for pioneering the sounds of heartwrenching cowboy ballads with a rock and roll flair.
Still, Henley may have seen Desperado as the band trying to get way too ambitious too quickly. They all had the potential of turning in an album for the ages, but Desperado was the sound of them working out the bugs before reaching for their all-time classics.
