The one song idea Don Henley thought the Eagles butchered: “Pretty clumsy”
Throughout the Eagles’ career, perfection wasn’t expected out of everyone.
Don Henley and Glenn Frey wanted to make the best rock and roll band there ever was, but Henley knew that they weren’t the best until every single one of them gave the most effort that they possibly could to make everything sound perfect. So when something slipped under that bar on every one of their records, it’s not like Henley was going to stand by and ignore that they were punching below their standard.
Because, as far as the frontman was concerned, there was little room for failure whenever they played. They had the potential to be a great rock and roll outfit, but if they kept making one wrong move after another, there was a good chance that the fans would simply stop listening. At the same time, Henley was going to give people more than their money’s worth whenever they sat down with one of their records.
He had grown up on albums that could hold people’s attention for months on end, and while Desperado was a step in the right direction for them, there were more than a few times when they slipped under the bar. The life of an outlaw was a fine idea for an album, but since it didn’t have as much staying power as they thought it would, the hunt was on for them to make something that could make a larger impact.
Getting Don Felder in the band was certainly a step in the right direction when making tunes like ‘Already Gone’, but the rest of On the Border did have its fair share of ups and downs. Most of what Henley was working on had a lot of merit behind it, but there was also the clashing between the band and Glyn Johns that often threw a wrench into everything they were working on. Johns simply didn’t think they could make a rock and roll album, and it’s not likeHenley couldn’t see his point on the title track.
There were already a lot of moments on the record that worked just fine, but even though the ballads like ‘Best of My Love’ soared over all the other tracks, the title track doesn’t really know what it wants to be. The R&B groove is definitely cool, and what Henley was trying to say about the controversy going on in Richard Nixon’s America does have a lot of punch to it, but both sections feel a little bit clunky when thrown together.
And compared to the other ideas in their arsenal, Henley felt like they blew it trying to put the tune together, saying, “The song ‘On the Border’ had something to do with politics, more specifically with the Watergate scandal. But it was a pretty clumsy, incoherent attempt. It was supposed to be an R&B-type song, but we missed the mark.” That doesn’t mean it wasn’t without some merit, though.
The band at least sound like they’re having a bit more fun, and since they were still discovering their rock and roll chops, this was at least a much better version than some of the toothless rock and roll songs they were making before. And with the right amount of polish and maybe a token appearance from Joe Walsh, there was a good chance this band could turn into one of the greatest acts in the country.
A lot of that may have been wishful thinking at this stage, but ‘On the Border’ isn’t nearly the kind of misfire that Henley made it out to be. It wasn’t perfect, that’s for sure, but it did at least have all the common elements that the group were going to turn into, and once they had everything sorted in the background, nothing would be able to stop them.
