The producer who couldn’t stand working with the Eagles
From the first time the Eagles entered the studio, they were still kids.
While they had been making waves as one of the biggest bands on the California rock scene, the thought of creating different sonic textures still felt alien to them when they worked on their first handful of demos in Aspen. Although the band struck gold when finding a record label, one of the giants of rock and roll production wanted nothing to do with them.
That early hesitation from established figures in the industry reflects just how difficult the Eagles were to categorise at the time. They weren’t heavy enough to sit comfortably alongside the harder rock acts of the era, nor were they purely country, leaving them caught somewhere in between genres that didn’t always command the same immediate respect.
It also meant the band had to develop a strong sense of identity on their own terms. Rather than relying on outside validation, Frey and Henley began sharpening their vision of what the Eagles should sound like, gradually building the confidence to push back against producers and expectations that didn’t align with where they wanted to go.
Arriving on the scene while acts like Linda Ronstadt were making waves, Glenn Frey and Don Henley wanted to create a band that would blend different elements of country, rock and R&B under one roof. While the band were told to return to the drawing board when they first signed with music mogul David Geffen, they eventually got the opportunity of a lifetime when working with producer Glyn Johns.
Having worked on artists like The Who and The Rolling Stones during his tenure, Johns admitted to not being impressed with the band until he heard their signature harmonies blend on tracks like ‘Seven Bridges Road’. Although songs like ‘Take It Easy’ and ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ came together flawlessly in the studio, Henley remembers having problems from the minute he walked into the studio.
Remembering the basic setup that Johns had for his drums, Henley told History of the Eagles, “He was used to recording John Bonham of Led Zeppelin. I told Glyn I wanted the bass drum louder, and he said, ‘If you want it louder, hit it harder’. And I hit it as hard as I could, but I couldn’t get it to sound like John Bonham”.
Once the band’s sophomore album Desperado flopped, they wondered if Johns had their best interest at heart. Since he had worked with the thunderous sounds of Zeppelin and The Stones, Henley thought that Johns was using them as a conduit to make mellow music than they wanted.
By the time they got around to making On the Border, Frey recalled that Johns was starting to get too controlling in the studio. Compared to the other acts he had produced, Frey thought that Johns had no faith in the rock-focused side of their sound, recalling, “Glyn Johns was a schoolmarm. He pushed-pushed-pushed. He would say, ‘You don’t tell me what to do. You’re not a rock and roll band. The Who is a rock and roll band, and you’re not that’”.
Now that the band was seeing more significant success in the US, they started looking around for new producers before landing on Bill Szymczyk. A fixture of the rock and roll scene, Szymczyk had been known for his work on various albums by Joe Walsh, each of which had the sound that the Eagles were looking for, emphasising that they wanted a microphone on every drum so that they could have more control over the mix.
Although Szymczyk took the diplomatic approach by calling Johns before taking on the project, he did admit that the producer was thrilled not to have to work with the group anymore, “I told him, ‘Glyn, the Eagles want me to be their producer’. All he said was, ‘Better you than me, mate’”. Despite Johns’s lack of faith in the Eagles as rock and rollers, songs like ‘Already Gone’ and ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ would demonstrate their versatility whenever they approached a rock and roll song.
