The three greatest Eagles songs of all time, according to the Eagles
Eagles are the world’s least mysterious mystery. They are the only act with two records that rank in the ten best-selling albums of all time list, and yet there has never been a firm consensus regarding whether their name is prefixed with ‘the’ or they’re simply Eagles.
They are giants of the soft rock genre but by their own admission, in their prime, they could stroll around Los Angeles barely getting recognised. They blended in. In fact, they were all about ‘blending’ styles. As Don Felder writes in Heaven and Hell, “Radio was truly diverse in the 1970s.”
He continues, “A station would play a rock track, then a country track, then something else. You didn’t have to change the dial if you wanted to hear a certain kind of sound. We knew we had a good shot at getting on the radio with the original Eagles sound.” It helped them achieve that ‘sound’ thanks to the fact that each of them were virtuosos in their field, too. As Glenn Frey famously declared in a galvanising early band meeting, “There are no sidemen in this band.”
Yet, even that made them an oddity in some ways. The band seemed to typify the 1970s, but what exactly they embodied remains unclear. Hell, even the meaning behind their biggest hit, ‘Hotel California’, is as obfuscated as they come, and the gargantuan track weirdly took two months before it hit the top of the charts for a solitary week. It’s also paradoxically about the American Dream but now resides as a global smash.
Even the band themselves failed to agree on many things. This left the firm buddies squabbling and eventually embarking on an onstage brawl that brought things to an end. But during that time, they achieved great things beyond their huge commercial acclaim. Bob Dylan saying that ‘Pretty Maids All in a Row’ “could be one of the best songs ever” is an achievement enough, though.
Aside from that, while John Lydon might have dubbed them “boring” and “irrelevant”, they brought about another commercial triumph in the form of Fleetwood Mac. “The Eagles were very inspirational to both Lindsey and I because we loved their singing,” Stevie Nicks said, “And we loved their ability to bridge country and rock and roll so beautifully.” That bridge was, in many ways, a whole new genre, and the proletariat loved it.
So, while their legacy might be very convoluted, it comes close to being unrivalled all the same. Thus, with that in mind, we figured we’d check out which tracks the bandmembers themselves have actually championed among the murky depths of their peculiar, triumphant discography.
The Eagles pick their favourite Eagles songs:
Glen Frey
Speaking in Life in the Fast Lane, Frey championed an Eagles classic that seemed to personify their second chapter, as their confidence grew and country rock became an AM radio mainstay. “We made a quantum leap with ‘One of These Nights’. It was a breakthrough song,” he said. “It is my favourite Eagles record. If I had to pick one, it wouldn’t be ‘Hotel California’; It would be ‘One of These Nights’”.
According to Frey, the title track caught the band at their most fluid. Devoid of tension in the studio, it typified how well the masterful musicians gelled at their best, with Frey explaining, “One of These Nights was the most fluid and ‘painless’ album [we] ever made.” As a result, he thought the quality shifted up a few gears—moving the sun-kissed band into the fast lane in every sense.
Don Henley
As the band’s talisman, Don Henley often drove the group’s development. He prided himself of pushing them towards a new, polished realm of rock ‘n’ roll. So, with that aim in mind, the drumming singer told Rolling Stone that ‘The Last Resort’ is “one of [his] favourite songs” by any artist, period. Even Frey would later call it Henley’s “opus”. Explaining why that’s the case, Henley said, “That’s because I care more about the environment than about writing songs about drugs or love affairs or excesses of any kind.”
He continued by explaining how ‘The Last Resort’ tapped into his concerns about climate change and responded to growing climate pressure and the environment he held dear, saying, “The gist of the song was that when we find something good, we destroy it by our presence — by the very fact that man is the only animal on earth that is capable of destroying his environment.” It’s a track that gathers even greater poignancy in the present age.
Joe Walsh
Often, for artists, it can be hard to separate the inception of the song from the end result. When it comes to Walsh’s favourite during his time in the band, the backstory certainly endears him to it. “We were looking for input from me – Joe Walsh, rocker – that could be the foundation for an Eagles song,” he told Rolling Stone. “We had a couple false starts on stuff and hadn’t really found anything.”
“But one night, I was in my dressing room getting ready for a show, and I had this one lick I’d play over and over as part of warming up. Because it’s really a hard lick to play. And that’s ‘Life in the Fast Lane’,” he recalled. At that moment, Henley entered the room agog and demanded that they make it into an Eagles song right away. Walsh was more than happy to oblige.
“So it’s a Walsh/Henley/Frey tune, and I’m really proud of it,” Walsh concluded. Alas, it still doesn’t size up to what he claims is the best song he ever wrote, the solo effort, ‘Rocky Mountain Way’, which, in itself, is fairly indicative of how being in the Eagles doesn’t always bring forth the fondest memories.
