The biggest song Eagles ever tackled, according to Glenn Frey
Eagles were never meant to be the kind of band everyone absent-mindedly listens to.
Even though the thought of hearing ‘Take It Easy’ with a margarita in your hand and a Hawaiian shirt on is almost too accurate, it was always about looking beyond the sweet melodies and listening to the messages lying underneath the surface. Because the country rockers always wanted to tell us something, and Glenn Frey considered this song one of the biggest statements they ever made.
That perspective reframes the Eagles as more than just purveyors of laid-back California cool. Beneath the sun-soaked harmonies and radio-friendly hooks was a band increasingly interested in using their platform to explore weightier themes.
As their songwriting evolved, so too did their ambitions. What began as well-crafted, easygoing tunes gradually gave way to more expansive narratives, with songs like ‘The Last Resort’ marking a point where message and music became inseparable.
When the band first got started, though, they hardly knew how to put together songs from scratch. Many of their greatest tunes had come from co-writes with people like Jackson Browne, and even on their first album, one of their biggest hits, ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’, came from them borrowing a song from fellow California songwriter Jack Tempchin to get them over the line.
Once Frey and Don Henley began working together on something, though, things began to turn a different corner. What they were writing about had the spirit of America laced between the chords, and whether or not they had to mean anything, you could feel the emotion dripping out of their voices whenever they sang tunes like ‘Best of My Love’ or ‘Desperado’.
Although each album was pushing them towards something different, nothing could have prepared them for what they came up with on Hotel California. Compared to the scattershot concept of Desperado, this was the kind of piece that stood as a stark look at what Hollywood was like. The title track already welcomed the listener into the dark world of Los Angeles, but songs like ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ and ‘New Kid in Town’ may as well have been warnings about what the city could do to the poor souls who aren’t careful.
But that wasn’t the only thing they had to say. Because outside of the busy highways, Henley and Frey knew that the biggest problem had to do with them losing a lot of the wildlife that everyone had taken for granted, and ‘The Last Resort’ was their way of commenting on it, complete with an entire tale about those who came from foreign lands and destroyed the pieces of creation that were once held dear to people.
Whereas other Eagles songs may have been standalone stories, Frey thought that this was one of the finest pieces of writing they had ever made, saying, “The Last Resort’ is probably one of the biggest pieces of musical literature we ever tackled. We wanted to pull the whole idea together, so we thought of this girl from Providence, and we took her on an epic journey across America, through Colorado, where they laid the mountains low, through California, where they polluted the sea, to Hawaii, where they were ruining paradise. Really that song embodies the whole spirit of Hotel California and is Don Henley’s greatest lyrical achievement to this day.”
Although Henley thought the song was a bit half-baked, the sentiments certainly were not. The whole point behind the song was about giving back to the land and hearing him talk about those who want to dismantle Paradise to put up their own version of what they think that word means is a shot of reality for those not paying attention.
Those sentiments weren’t lost on Henley in the years that followed, either, eventually founding the Walden Woods Project to protect the forests of America and putting music to the old poem ‘No More Walks in the Wood’ for Long Road Out of Eden. The life of a rich rock star might seem glamorous to the uninitiated, but Henley’s words are still a message to those who ever thought that they could get by without worrying about protecting the grass beneath their feet.
