The “cliché” Eagles song Glenn Frey didn’t really care about
Being in a rock band is a tough gig. You might think it is all glamour and glitz, but the truth is that while there is certainly fun to be had, there is also a great deal of pressure to contend with. This often leads to many bands over-indulging in the fruits of their labour and not worrying themselves so much with the labour part. The Eagles always prided themselves on being craftsmen of songs. They may have been the perfect group for a laid-back afternoon in the hammock, but the group worked harder than most.
Although many lesser rock bands would be happy just to have one hook and hammer it home for a span of three minutes, Don Henley and Glenn Frey made sure that every single release they made had the most concise version of their sound they could, packing in pieces of ear candy every time you listened to it.
Like with every art form, peaks and troughs existed in their output. Some of them were works of art, and others, like ‘Tequila Sunrise’, didn’t really stand out to Frey when he was first laying it down. It would push the musician to contemplate kicking the track off the record’s listing.
If anything, ‘Tequila Sunrise’ should theoretically be the kind of song that Frey remembers for the rest of his life. Compared to the countless hits he made with Frey over the years, this was the first time that both of their songwriting skills came together, beginning when Frey said that they should write something to a Roy Orbison progression he had lying around.
Considering its placement in the middle of their pseudo-concept album Desperado, this plaintive ballad is actually a way for the outlaws on the album to reflect on their lives. The title track may be the melodramatic song where the wise teacher warns them about what life has in store, but this is just the moment when you see the sun coming up with a head still throbbing from last night’s hangover.
Since there was already a drink of the same name, though, Henley remembered Frey not liking the song title, telling The Very Best of the Eagles, “[He] was ambivalent about it because he thought that it was a bit too obvious or too much of a cliché because of the drink that was so popular then.”
Regardless of the generic title, there was a bit of magic sprinkled throughout the song, and it would go on to be considered one of the band’s defining anthems. It neatly fit among their catalogue while also setting up their positions as yacht rock godfathers.
Outside of being the first time that everyone was on the same page when writing, this was when the Eagles started to come into their own as performers as well. They could certainly do justice to other people’s songs like on ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’, but when Frey sings about looking at another woman from across the bar and summoning up the courage to talk to her, it feels like it could be ripped straight out of a cheesy romance movie.
Even though the song works perfectly fine as a strum-along folk tune that you could sing around a campfire, the true power behind it is hearing those soaring harmonies. Compared to the massive wall of voices on something like ‘Seven Bridges Road’, this is probably one of the first instances of subtlety the band made, only using Henley and Randy Meisner’s backing vocals to emphasise a line instead of having everyone belting their lungs out.
If you look at where their music went from here, it’s easy to paint a straight line between this song and every one of their signature ballads later. The gentle strumming of acoustic guitars seemed to predict the kind of laid-back atmosphere of a song like ‘New Kid in Town’, and the melodrama of lost love ended up showing its face on everything from ‘Wasted Time’ to ‘Lyin’ Eyes’.
‘Tequila Sunrise’ isn’t meant to be the biggest song the Eagles ever had, but it didn’t need to. This is a track to sip drinks to, to stretch in the sunshine to and to plot your dominance to. This was just a band getting ready to take on the world, and for the start of what would become one of the greatest songwriting partnerships in rock history, one could certainly do a lot worse.
