The one Eagles album Don Henley was never happy with: “But we vote by committee”
Not every record from your favourite band is necessarily going to be perfect. For all the long hours put into the studio environment trying to get just the right sound, there’s a good chance that some records will shine a little duller than others, either through lacklustre production or songs that don’t have the staying power as their previous classics. While Don Henley always kept a consistent track record with the Eagles, he admitted that one of their later releases wasn’t what it could have been.
Then again, getting the band to release anything following their tumultuous breakup wasn’t an easy task. After the colossal success of Hotel California, The Long Run became one of the most strenuous times the band ever had in the studio, leading to many sessions where hardly any music was being made.
Although the long wait time eventually resulted in songs like the title track and Timothy B Schmidt’s ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’ reaching the charts, that only soothed the tensions within the band. After thinking he wasn’t given his due credit as a songwriter and bandmate, Don Felder would blow up at Glenn Frey during a benefit concert, leading to the band calling it quits for the 1980s.
Once everyone split up into their solo projects, they found common ground again when appearing in a video for a countrified version of their classic ‘Take It Easy’. Putting down all those years of animosity, the band would return to the studio to cut a handful of tracks appearing on their upcoming reunion album, Hell Freezes Over.
While the song ‘Get Over It’ marked the first time Henley and Frey wrote together again, it would be over a decade before a new album was on the horizon. Taking the lion’s share of music they had been working on for a decade, the new lineup without Felder gave the world Long Road Out of Eden.
Although the album would include fan favourite ‘How Long’ on a studio album for the first time, a number of the songs came together from the band working off each other, from Schmidt’s sublime, ‘I Don’t Want to Hear Anymore’ to the ten-minute opus on the title track, documenting the Iraq war. While the band were proud to have new music out in the world, Henley admitted that the album was far too bloated for his taste.
When talking about putting the album together, Henley said that he wasn’t in love with the directions the band went in, saying, “This album’s not perfect. If I were king, I would have done a couple of things differently. I might have left a couple of songs off and perhaps made it a single album. But we vote by committee”.
Even though there is a fair share of lowlights on the record like ‘Frail Grasp on the Big Picture’, it also juggles every member’s strength particularly well. As much as Henley dominates most of the vocals on the album, some of the most lighthearted moments come from when the band are loosening up, particularly on Joe Walsh’s contributions like ‘Last Good Time In Town’.
It’s no surprise that the only disappointing album in their career was recorded decades after the one they seamlessly conquered. Nothing within the album sounds as rich as their first two records, and although the production techniques paper some of the cracks, there’s no denying that the lyrics fail to hold up on repeat listens.
The songs feature a collection of dense, deeply put together rockers that stand as a midway point between the sparkily produced pastoral rock numbers of the past, with the slicker, more energised rock outlet of the millennium.
Without knowing it, though, this would be the last project to feature Frey in any capacity, passing away in 2016 and bringing the band’s recording career to an end. Considering all of the material present on Long Road Out of Eden, though, the band’s swan song feels like an elongated farewell rather than a bloated mess.
