What was the first Eagles song Glenn Frey and Don Henley ever wrote together?
As Eagles lead guitarist Don Felder said in the 2013 documentary History of the Eagles, “The magic ingredient that made the band successful was the relationship between Don and Glenn”. He was, of course, referring to the group’s co-leaders, lead vocalists and main songwriters, Don Henley and Glenn Frey.
Yet that relationship hadn’t always involved a close songwriting partnership. The Eagles’ self-titled debut album includes three songwriting credits for Frey and one for Henley, but none of the album’s songs were written in collaboration between the two. Their days as the Lennon-McCartney of country rock took a while to neatly formulate.
After all, the group was effectively born from shards of pre-existing bands coming together. So, a unique overlaid way of working dominated their early days. They were still figuring out their sound in this early period, too. So, the outlook was a little more hodgepodge than what it would eventually be honed into. And boy did they hone it!
That all changed once Henley and Frey became neighbours in the Laurel Canyon district of the Hollywood Hills. They’d become very close while out on the road. Frey would visit Henley’s house to write, and one day, the Eagles drummer plucked up the courage to bring out an unfinished piece he’d kept in his back pocket for the previous four years.
Henley explained what he thought the song was and how he wanted to finish it. He described it as “Southern Gothic” music because it borrowed the introduction from Ray Charles’ ‘Georgia on My Mind’, but suggested he and Frey “make it more Western”. Without hesitation, Frey “leapt right on it”, fleshing out what his bandmate had into a fully-fledged song.
So, what was the classic debut song?
As its lyrics took shape, the track turned into ‘Desperado’, a gun-slinger of a title track for the Eagles’ second LP. It soon became a staple at live sets and featured on the band’s best-selling compilation album. It is now one of the band’s best-known and most loved songs.
Although soft and balladeering, the track also defines their outlook in some way. It is as though Henley’s description of the song to Frey inadvertently saw the duo construct the blueprint of their sound.
From that point on, Frey and Henley never looked back, co-writing their first Eagles single together, ‘Tequila Sunrise’, that same week. Those songs marked the beginning of a creative surge that carried them throughout the recording of their fifth album, Hotel California, in 1976.
“I think I brought him ideas and a lot of opinions,” Frey told Cameron Crowe in 2003. “He brought me poetry,” he added in relation to Henley. “We were a good team.” That might be understating it by some measure.
Henley and Frey were arguably the most equal-rights prolific songwriting partnership of any band anywhere in the world during their heyday in the mid-1970s. They wrote eight top-ten singles and four number one albums together, including two of the best-selling records of all time. Not bad for a couple of buddies putting around to say hi.
Eagles fans should be thankful they neighboured up in Laurel Canyon. And raise a glass to ‘Desperado’, too. The start of it all. And the song that Henley described as “very poignant and beautiful”, although that was rather humbly in relation to Linda Ronstadt’s hit version.
