The one song that made the Eagles classic rock legends, according to Don Henley
“The songs have taken on a life of their own. We’re only the vehicle for presenting these songs to the people,” Don Henley proclaimed in faux humble praise of the transcendence that the Eagles have achieved.
There’s always been a certain line that rock stars have to cross before they reach legendary status. Sometimes, it’s a single show or maybe that one iconic song, but the moment that it registers with the public, nothing is ever going to be the same again when talking about that group of musicians. While many would consider that moment for the Eagles either the beginning of ‘Take it Easy’ or ‘Hotel California’, Don Henley thought ‘Best of My Love’ was the true turning point in their career.
When they were recording the track, though, the Eagles were actually saying goodbye to the first phase of their career. They had already started off as a rock and roll outfit with a country flair on their debut, but the conceptual piece Desperado sank like a stone, with hardly any singles breaking into the charts.
Once they regrouped, the band came to the conclusion that producer Glyn Johns didn’t understand what they were going for, eventually sacking him to work in America. Still, ‘Best of My Love’ was one of the last pieces Johns worked on, and it would become the true lynchpin of their third outing, On the Border.
While the entire record had single material all over it, like on the Gram Parsons pastiche ‘My Man’ or the rocker ‘Already Gone’, this feels closer to soul music than anything they ever wrote. Written by Frey in some unknown tuning he used to emulate Joni Mitchell, the track is vaguely reminiscent of Mitchell’s more ethereal material, especially with Henley’s vocal on top of everything.
Before Hotel California was officially underway, Henley would cite ‘Best of My Love’ as being a bigger moment for him than the release of their famous greatest hits album, saying, “‘Best Of My Love’ kicked off a whole big thing for us, moving us from the top 90 per cent of bands in America to the top ten per cent, we’ve been running, and I never had time to stop and think about how well the Greatest Hits record did. We just wanted to stay busy.”
It topped the charts in ‘75, despite being written to a rushed “deadline to get it finished” when the group were cutting On the Border in London. No one in the group could have imagined what was on the horizon. They simply reworked a Fred Neil melody and tried their best to put something together in a hurry.
They knew that they had a phenomenal album on their hands with Hotel California, but their latest ballads could put ‘Best of My Love’ to shame. ‘New Kid in Town’ is a gorgeous song about the latest transplants in Los Angeles, and even resident rocker Joe Walsh turned ‘Pretty Maids All In a Row’ into a raw piece of beauty.
At the same time, none of them ever managed to match what ‘Best of My Love’ did for their career at large. Since it didn’t have to worry about being the greatest rock song or anything, the tune could easily fall under easy listening alongside the Barry Manilows of the world and be completely fine.
That’s probably not the accolade that Henley or Frey were going for when writing the tune, but it’s still a human strength to be able to write something that open-hearted. Most people can try to hone their riffing chops all they want, but it takes a special kind of writer to have this only be a dent in a career full of ballads.
What other Eagles songs have hit number one?
The country rock pioneers managed to muster five number one hits during their tenure. While that’s nothing to be scoffed at, their album sales are far more eye-watering. The band remain the only group with two separate records in the ten best-selling albums of all time list. That’s a unique feat, but its also one that wouldn’t have been possible without ‘Best of My Love’ endearing them to the masses and securing constant radio play.
You can check out the other five below.
- ‘Best of My Love’
- ‘One of These Nights’
- ‘New Kid in Town’
- ‘Hotel California’
- ‘Heartache Tonight’
