“We can really rock”: Glenn Frey once picked the most painless Eagles album
Despite the obvious joyful, almost summer-like quality of most of the Eagles‘ hits, the dynamics behind the scenes were often anything but plain sailing. In fact, as the band got bigger and better, their relationships became more fractured, and the bitterness they fostered towards one another arrived in direct contrast to the bright and catchy tunes they crafted.
This wasn’t a deliberate approach, nor was it one they used to their advantage as their contemporaries, Fleetwood Mac, did. Rather, the behind-the-scenes fallout and feuds caused significant rifts in the band’s dynamics, nearly to the point of stalling or stagnating progress completely. Nonetheless, they pushed through, and almost none of these tetchy moments filtered through into the music itself.
By the time the band began working on their fourth album, 1975’s One of These Nights, a number of changes had taken place that altered both their sound and their intrinsic ways of working. For instance, the addition of their third guitarist, Don Felder, with his sharp and unforgiving licks, added a new rock element to the band’s sound.
Moreover, Glenn Frey and Don Henley had established themselves as the band’s leaders, and they each handled the songwriting, compositions, and arrangements. While they had been working like this to some degree throughout the previous albums, One of These Nights saw them utilise their partnership to its full potential. As Frey once explained, sometimes it was as easy as playing a “little minor descending progression”, and Henley would be on the exact same page.
In fact, this dynamic allowed the material to flow freely, and Frey was so happy with the recordings that he once regarded it as one of their most accomplished projects to date. “A lot of things came together on One Of These Nights – our love of the studio, the dramatic improvement in Don’s and my songwriting,” the musician wrote in the liner notes of The Very Best Of.
Discussing the process and the smoothness of their progress while creating the album, he continued: “There’s no doubt in my mind that One Of These Nights was the most fluid and painless album we ever made.” Adding: “A lot of things came together on One Of These Nights — our love of the studio, the dramatic improvement in Don’s and my songwriting.”
Perhaps that’s also why he described it as “my favourite Eagles record”. Considering the popularity and enduring appeal of some of their other albums, like Hotel California, it’s likely that One Of These Nights became the forerunner because it also represented a major sonic transformation for the band. The record might have been a more conscious move towards an overtly mainstream sound, but it was much closer to where they actually wanted to be and one step closer to proving “we can really rock”.
