“Tanqueray ‘n’ tonic”: the 1974 Eagles song they had to get drunk to complete
If your favourite songs come from the 1960s, ’70s or ’80s, then there’s a very high chance that they weren’t written, recorded or toured entirely sober.
The Rolling Stones were relying on more than just Mother’s Little Helper, The Beatles were getting high with a little help from their friend Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix was disappearing into a purple haze, the Grateful Dead were spiking their support acts, The Velvet Underground were singing about harder stuff than anybody else, and that was all just in the 1960s.
Though there are plenty of songs about boozing and drinking, in the world of rock and roll, alcohol is probably seen as so much tamer than the harder stuff that everyone else was doing. All our heroes probably polished off a couple of beers for breakfast before working their way into the whiskey, gin and bourbon bottles through the rest of the day.
Thin Lizzy sang ‘Whiskey in the Jar’, and Willie Nelson sang about a ‘Whiskey River’ (though neither of those two actually wrote those songs, it’s hard to look past their versions as definitive). The Electric Flag sang about ‘Wine’, while the Andrews Sisters preferred a ‘Rum and Cola’, and The Clovers just wanted ‘One Mint Julep’. John Lee Hooker took things a little further, ordering ‘One Whiskey, One Bourbon and One Beer’, while Mary Gauthier didn’t discriminate, simply singing that “Fish swim, birds fly, Daddies yell and mamas cry / Old men sit and think. I drink”.
Sinatra sang that he was “drinking again”, and similarly, Rod Stewart belted out that “I’ve been having a few” (we could tell), and in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the Eagles were, too.
When asked who the “Guido” character was in ‘Best of My Love’, and what “TNTS” meant in the thank you’s on the liner notes of the On the Border album, Don Henley replied, “Guido was the maître d’ at Dan Tana’s restaurant during the ’70s and part of the ’80s. We conjured up part of that song in that restaurant. The TNTS refers to our producer, Bill Szymczyk’s, drink of choice at that time.”
“Tanqueray ‘n’ tonic. He recalls that the reason we ‘thanked’ those drinks is that they ‘helped out’ on the hand-clap overdub and the Temptations-like background vocals on the title track.”
Don Henley
And how did those Tanqueray ‘n’ Tonics help out? Well, as Henley explained, “Sometimes, lubricants were beneficial–they add a nice element of spontaneity or ‘anti-perfection’”.
Actually, the Eagles should really have been thanking the Kalamazoo, MI-based DJ Jim Higgs, from the WKMI station, for the eventual success of the album, as it was his faith in playing the release on the air which tuned more people into the release.
As Henley explained, “We had more or less given up hope for the success of the On the Border album, and we’d begun work on the next album. So, when ‘Best of My Love’ took off, it was like a resurrection, a miracle. Totally unexpected. On our last tour–the History of the Eagles Tour–we tracked down that DJ, Jim Higgs, and we invited him to our show in Grand Rapids.”
Concluding, “His daughter brought him, and we had a nice visit backstage, thanked him for his early support and took some photographs – it was a sweet moment, and I’m glad we got the chance to acknowledge him in person… He wasn’t expecting it, and I think it made him very happy.”
