The 2007 song Don Henley called Eagles’ final statement: “That would be it”
Trying to get the best out of Eagles was always going to feel like pulling teeth for Don Henley.
He knew what the band was capable of in their prime, and if they ever decided to get back together for a tour or make a new record, he knew that the standards were insanely high if they were competing with what they had done on Hotel California and One of These Nights. But on their massive comeback records, there were at least a few songs that helped put a bow on their recording days.
For a long time, The Long Run was the final album that anyone thought the band was going to release, but Hell Freezes Over felt like a miracle had occurred in the mid 1990s. No one expected the band to overcome their problems that quickly, and while not every one of their new songs sounded as good as they did back in the day, ‘Learn to Be Still’ and ‘Get Over It’ were solid enough for them to see if they could write some more songs together later down the line.
But after that one record, Eagles fans went back to doing their favourite thing in the world: waiting. The band clearly had the same spark that they had back in the day, but it was going to take a while before they had enough material to constitute an album. And while they had to lose Don Felder in the process over business matters, ‘Hole in the World’ was at least the first time where fans knew that their favourite band hadn’t completely lost the plot.
And while Long Road Out of Eden still seemed to take forever to get off the ground, it did feel like the definitive version of what the band had been working towards all those years. This was the sound of the band all grown up and trying out something new on a handful of tracks, and even if it was overly long, it’s not like they didn’t have some great tunes to go around whenever in between the fluff.
‘How Long’ was a good return to form, and Henley was still as critical about the country as he ever was on the title track and ‘Frail Grasp on the Big Picture’, but Glenn Frey didn’t want the entire record to be a bunch of whining. One can only take so many of those songs before sounding like a curmudgeon, and Frey’s tunes were a lot more loving on tracks like ‘What Do I Do With My Heart’.
It’s been almost 20 years since the album was released, but Henley felt that Frey’s message on the song ‘It’s Your World Now’ is one of the best ways for them to close out their career, saying, “The crux of the whole thing for me is those two lines: ‘Be part of something good, leave something good behind.’ For me that sums up everything – to my children, to my fans, to everybody. If there was one message to this album that I want to impart, that would be it.”
And since Henley has been true to his word, ‘It’s Your World Now’ does feel like the last true statement that the band are ever going to make. It doesn’t make sense for the band to go into the studio one more time without Frey and pretend that everything is the same, so hearing Frey’s message to the next generation about treating each other well is one of the best kinds of epitaphs to leave behind.
There was a lot more drama behind such a carefree band throughout their career, but it’s nice to see that they had ironed out their differences enough to put that one final cherry on top of their career by the end. It wasn’t pretty, and there were more than a few times where the band left their fans heartbroken, but no one could deny that it had been one hell of a ride while it lasted.
