The one Eagles album that their label hated: “We live outside the laws”
It’s fair to say, without ever being considered one of the greatest bands of their generation, and certainly not the most beloved, Eagles became one of the most successful groups of all time. Aside from the copious drugs, they were, for all intents and purposes, a label’s dream. They were soft rock icons and they delivered bank.
The Eagles never envisioned themselves as a one-trick pony. Although Don Henley and Glenn Frey cut their teeth playing traditional rock and roll as part of Linda Ronstadt’s band, they always focused on putting a band together with music that the whole world could enjoy. Once they tasted success for the first time with their debut album, the band had the idea for something more conceptual for the follow-up.
After their cohort Jackson Browne was given a book on old gunslingers, Frey had the idea of making an album all about the rebels of society. From his perspective, it wasn’t that hard of a stretch to match the old days of cowboys with the rockstar lifestyle, saying in History of The Eagles, “We live outside the laws of normality and like wanted posters, you usually heard about these guys before you ever saw them”.
Drafting this concept, every song on Desperado reflected that outlaw spirit, from Frey’s ‘Out of Control’ to Randy Meisner chipping in an origin story about this band of misfits on ‘Certain Kind of Fool’. The band also had high hopes for the production, cheering producer Glyn Johns on in the studio once they had the finished product.
Although some tunes would become legendary in The Eagles’ canon, the reception was not as friendly for their label, who absolutely hated the finished product. As Frey recalls, one of the heads of Asylum Records let out his opinion a little too much, recalling, “The album finished, and he went, ‘Yeah that’s nice’, and then he turns around and goes ‘God, they made a fucking cowboy record’”.
While the concept might have worked in the band members’ minds, the reception wasn’t much better either, with the title track not taking off until Ronstadt made a cover of it a few months after the album came out. Despite the album having some great songs, it sounded like the band were trying to run before they could walk, making a grand concept album without being able to flesh out everything by the end of it.
The album also held a more immediate change on the band, bringing its two most accomplished singers together as one voice. “Glenn came over to write one day, and I showed him this unfinished tune that I had been holding for so many years, ” Henley recalled. “I said, ‘When I play it and sing it, I think of Ray Charles – Ray Charles and Stephen Foster. It’s really a Southern gothic thing, but we can easily make it more Western.’ Glenn leapt right on it – filled in the blanks and brought structure. And that was the beginning of our songwriting partnership – that’s when we became a team.”
Even though Desperado had “sophomore slump” written all over it, The Eagles weren’t looking to slow down for a second. Dropping Glyn Johns for their next record, On the Border was a return to rock and roll with newcomer Don Felder behind the fretboard, bringing some serious chops to the band that they needed to endear them to their rock and roll fans.
As Henley and Frey continued to work together on new material, their second stab at a concept album with Hotel California was their true high point, telling the true story of what goes on behind closed doors in Hollywood and how any aspiring kid might have to sell their soul to any shark looking to make some money.
Out of all the early Eagles albums, though, Desperado still holds up because of its aesthetic, with the cover even evoking the rough and tumble gunslingers that every band member wanted to be when they grew up. The album might have a few rough edges in spots, but within those grooves was a band that was young, hungry and willing to say whatever they wanted.
