The best lineup the Eagles ever had, according to Glen Frey
Any band can end feeling like a marriage after too much time in the limelight.
Even though everyone might have different opinions on how the music should go or who should be singing every song, there’s usually a holding pattern where it’s understood that one person writes the material, one person is in charge of solos, and one person hopes to hold everything together by the time the show starts. Glenn Frey was more than happy to operate as the coach of the Eagles, but there are always preferences when it comes to team members.
When Frey first started the group alongside Don Henley, they had never dreamed of being merely good. That kind of music was reserved for the rest of the California rock scene, but what they were looking for was the stature The Beatles had, and that meant making sure that everyone was at the absolute top of their game.
It’s not like the starting team was suffering, either. Outside of Henley and Frey, bassist Randy Meisner gave them one of the greatest high voices in the industry when harmonising on ‘Take It Easy’. And despite Bernie Leadon’s emphasis on country and bluegrass music, his fingerpicking and banjo work on their early records gave them some credibility among those who thought they were riding the coattails of The Byrds.
But Frey didn’t like the idea of being tied to country music. He wanted to see what other music was out there, and if that meant cutting someone loose, it wasn’t too much of a problem for him. So when Leadon left, bringing in Joe Walsh was like a dream come true for a kid who had been listening to the James Gang throughout his youth in Detroit.
Walsh’s arrival marked a decisive shift in the band’s sound, steering them further away from their country-leaning roots and toward a harder, more expansive rock identity. His chemistry with Don Felder quickly became one of the defining features of the group’s next phase, giving the Eagles a dual-guitar dynamic that elevated their arrangements and added a new level of intensity to their recordings.
That partnership reached its peak on Hotel California, where their interplay created some of the most memorable moments in the band’s catalogue. The extended closing section of the title track, in particular, showcases their ability to weave together intricate, harmonised lines that feel both precise and spontaneous, capturing a musical connection that Frey later regarded as the band’s creative high point.
And once they reached Hotel California, hearing Walsh play off of Don Felder was a thing of beauty. Even though many of the solo spots on ‘Hotel California’ were scripted, hearing them trade licks back and forth feels like listening to a playful guitar duel across two minutes, especially when they go into those harmonised parts towards the very end.
Despite Meisner not staying long after the tour, Frey admitted that the Hotel California lineup could never be touched in his mind, saying, “The Eagles had its best chemistry when Don Felder and Joe Walsh were both in the band at the same time. Don and Joe were both tremendously gifted guitar players.”
Even when the band were at half-capacity during The Long Run, that guitar chemistry was never a problem. Even though there’s hardly that much of a song on ‘King of Hollywood’, hearing Felder and Walsh put together a wall of harmonised guitars is well worth the price of admission, even managing to top themselves on the song ‘Those Shoes’ by having one of the first dual talkbox solo.
Although Frey’s time with Felder would eventually be the reason why he was let go from the Eagles, it’s hard to deny good chemistry in the wild. They may have had hired guns fill in for Felder on their subsequent tours with Frey, but no one filling in the parts will ever have that creative spark that happened whenever Walsh and Felder got that twinkle in their eyes whenever they played their solos.
