“A quantum leap”: the Eagles pick their favourite Eagles songs
Classic rockers the Eagles are perhaps most well-known for their 1977 hit ‘Hotel California’, a song that continues to fill practice rooms and guitar shops across the world. Pairing a now-iconic riff with tales of eerie indulgence and excess, descriptions of pink champagne on ice and heaven and hell, the song shot to the top of the charts, becoming Eagles’ signature song. It retains this legacy decades on, but it’s not the only hit in their catalogue.
The rockers had a string of other hits in the 1970s, including the slightly softer ‘One of These Nights’ and their debut, ‘Take It Easy’, each earning a place in rock history. But more seasoned Eagles fans might pick out a slightly more obscure track as their favourite. An album track from the iconic Hotel California, perhaps, or one of their earlier offerings.
Picking out your favourite track as an Eagles fan is hard enough, but it’s an even more difficult task for the members of the band themselves. With seven studio records to their name, there’s a wide range of songs to choose from, each connected to memories of writing and recording, experiences of gigging, and behind-the-scenes escapades.
Although it’s a difficult task, a number of the Eagles have selected their favourite songs from their own discography. Some of them elected to shout out the hits to reaffirm their status as such, including ‘One of These Nights’ and ‘Desperado’, while others opted for more unexpected choices for deeper thematic explorations and album-only tracks. And none of them picked out ‘Hotel California’.
The Eagles’ favourite Eagles songs
Don Henley’s favourite Eagles songs
Drummer and singer Don Henley has picked out several Eagles pieces as his favourites over the years, including ‘The Last Resort’ from the band’s 1976 album Hotel California. Although the title track emerged as the most successful song from the record and the most successful song in Eagles’ entire catalogue, Henley was more taken by the themes of the concluding track.
Swapping their rock instrumentation for soft keys and gently swaying percussion, ‘The Last Resort’ considered power and environmentalism. It was this aspect of the song that endeared it to Henley. “I care more about the environment than about writing songs about drugs or love affairs or excesses of any kind,” he once explained during a conversation with Rolling Stone.
Henley has also previously picked out a slightly later offering, ‘Those Shoes’, as one of his favourite Eagles tracks. The song was a more classic rocker and appeared on their 1979 record, The Long Run, pairing strange effects with a tale of “desperation in the singles bars.”
Glenn Frey’s favourite Eagles song
In the mid-1970s, just ahead of the release of their iconic record Hotel California, Eagles released a slightly softer album called One of These Nights. The record didn’t produce anything quite as well-known as ‘Hotel California’, but it did produce frontman Glenn Frey’s favourite from their discography, the title track.
In Life in the Fast Lane, Frey suggested that the band had made a “quantum leap” with ‘One of These Nights’ and described it as a “breakthrough song”. The track featured a myriad of influences, pulling bending twangs in with elements of country and blues, while Henley addressed a “pretty mama” in his lyrics, singing of demons and desires.
“It is my favourite Eagles record,” Frey affirmed. “If I had to pick one, it wouldn’t be ‘Hotel California’; it would be ‘One of These Nights’.”
Vince Gill’s favourite Eagles songs
Vince Gill was a later addition to the Eagles, joining the band in the late 2010s after Frey passed away. Although he wasn’t part of the band while they were penning and producing some of their biggest hits, that didn’t stop him from citing them as his favourites during a conversation with Rolling Stone.
The multi-instrumentalist picked out a selection of songs from across the Eagles’ catalogue, starting with their 1973 hit ‘Desperado’, which he recalled was the first piece that Frey and Henley penned together. Gill isn’t the only one who loved the track. Over half a century after it was first released, ‘Desperado’ still remains one of the signature songs in Eagles’ catalogue.
Gill’s other picks included ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’, another of the band’s biggest hits from the early 1970s, as well as ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’ from The Long Run. He rounded his picks out with ‘Ol’ 55’, which he described as “a sentimental favourite.”
