The Eagles album Don Henley considers their “peak”
Every one of the Eagles’ albums felt like they were building towards something more significant. As much as the band may have coaxed by playing a countrified spin on rock and roll, Glenn Frey and Don Henley always had much more to say than odes to easy living with strummed acoustic guitars. While the group may have lasted less than a decade with their classic lineup, Don Henley considers one album their ultimate moment in the spotlight.
When looking through every one of the band’s records, nearly any of the songs could qualify as being a classic of the 1970s. Throughout their tenure as a group, Frey and Henley were known to keep an impressive track record for fantastic material, never wanting to clog any of their albums with filler.
Then again, some failed to hit the mark more than others. Considering how much conceptual thinking went into the album Desperado, for instance, the band would ultimately see their cowboy-tinged rock opera bomb on the charts, with Linda Ronstadt only resurrecting the title track a few months later.
Once the band found themselves on even footing with their fourth album, One of These Nights, they started to figure out where the next phase of their career would be heading. After longtime guitarist Bernie Leadon departed from the group, newcomer Joe Walsh helped bring in a rock flair that none of the band members could muster.
Wanting to create a new conceptual piece, Henley had the idea of commenting on the American dream, sculpting the idea of fame and fortune in Hotel California. While the title track would go down in legend as one of the most celebrated tracks in rock history, the rest of the album would have many detours into seedy territory.
Throughout the album, the band were both looking at themselves living the rock star life on tracks like ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ and facing inward regarding songs about the human condition like their odes to their replacements, ‘New Kid in Town’. While the writing sessions were anything but painless, Henley claims that the group had made their masterpiece with the album.
When discussing the group’s storied career, Henley would claim that they hit their creative apex with Hotel California, telling Rolling Stone, “I think that we were at the height of our powers. Every band has a peak, and that was ours. And because of various factors – pressure to perform at peak level, pressure to deliver more of the same, the changing nature of the band dynamic, the constantly changing public tastes, etc.”.
Although that pressure may have led to massive sales across the board, the band couldn’t have timed it better, either. Since they had attained one of the highest-selling albums of all time with their greatest hits collection a few months before, their following album was set up to be their second act, creating even more hype than any other rock band could muster.
Then again, the good times wouldn’t last much longer, as the band burned out on the road and eventually fell out after a benefit gig ended in a verbal spat between Frey and guitarist Don Felder. The Eagles may have been on top of the world with Hotel California, but the expectations were far too high for them to be sustained.
