100 Best Albums
![](/https/music.apple.com/assets/artwork/1x1.gif)
- 8 DEC 1976
- 9 Songs
- Hotel California · 1976
- One of These Nights · 1975
- One of These Nights · 1975
- Eagles · 1972
- Eagles · 1972
- HoHoHo - Merry Christmas · 2024
- Live from the Forum MMXVIII · 2020
- Live from the Forum MMXVIII · 2020
- Live from the Forum MMXVIII · 2020
- Live from the Forum MMXVIII · 2020
Essential Albums
- 100 Best Albums To put the Eagles’ mid-’70s dominance into perspective, consider this: in early 1976, the group released Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975, a compilation that would spend the next half decade in the Billboard Top 200 and go on to become the biggest-selling album of the 20th century in the United States. But here’s the crazy thing: the band’s most popular, career-defining song was still to come. That honour, of course, goes to the title track of their 1976 smash Hotel California, the record where the Eagles expunged any lingering trace of their country-rock roots and took up residence in the football stadiums of the world. That shift can be largely attributed to the new kid in town: Joe Walsh, who replaced outgoing founding guitarist Bernie Leadon. Formerly the frontman of dirty-boogie outfit the James Gang and an eccentric, hard-rockin’ solo artist in his own right, Walsh immediately puts his stamp on the band with the opening “Hotel California”, where he and six-string wingman Don Felder added the exclamation point to Don Henley’s eerie, enigmatic narrative with one of the most dramatic, finger-aching guitar solos in the rock canon. That swagger spills over into the brontosaurus stomp of “Victim of Love” (the closest this band ever got to heavy metal) and the disco-fied “Life in the Fast Lane”, an account of Hollywood hedonism as alluringly decadent as a penthouse masquerade ball with an open bar. But Hotel California is both a portrait of ’70s excess from behind the velvet rope and the soundtrack to the inevitably cruel comedown. In the sweeping yet cynical piano ballad “The Last Resort”, Henley is already bracing for the moment when the party has to end—not just for a band that would split within four years, but for the very notion of American capitalism itself.
- The members of the Eagles were struggling to write strong material for the band’s fourth album when, one night in the mid-1970s, guitarist Glenn Frey went out to dinner with a friend, the songwriter J.D. Souther. At their favorite restaurant next to the Los Angeles club the Troubadour, Frey noticed an attractive blonde woman out to dinner with a much older man. “Look at those lyin’ eyes,” Frey said, before immediately picking up a pen. The moment was, of course, the genesis of the Eagles’ “Lyin’ Eyes”, which Bob Buziak, the former president of RCA Records, called “among the best LA rock ’n’ roll songs ever written.” Released in 1975, One of These Nights was the Eagles most “painless” album, according to Frey, whose songwriting partnership with Don Henley was hitting new peaks. Sharing a Beverly Hills home together, the two wrote classic after classic: The sleazy dance-floor stomper “One of These Nights”, and “Take It to the Limit”, an anthem about the downsides of life on the road, co-written with Randy Meisner. While chronicling fame’s dark side can be a tired trope, Henley and Frey proved they were keen observers of life in the fast lane. “The only two people in this group who tend to think alike are Glenn and me,” said Henley, “and we’ve always wanted every song to be the best that it could be.” Working with their producer Bill Szymczyk, the band took new risks. They layered complex guitar riffs on “Too Many Hands”, and built Bernie Leadon’s banjo instrumental “Journey of the Sorcerer” into a folk-prog epic. Inspired by Al Green, Henley belted the title track with a soulful falsetto over a four-on-the-floor dance groove. Not everyone was happy with the sessions. Leadon resented Henley and Frey listening to demos and making changes without the rest of the band, and at one point disappeared from sessions for three days. He left the group in 1975. One of These Nights became the band’s first album to top the Billboard charts, producing a trio of hit singles: “One of These Nights”, “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Take It to the Limit”. It also propelled the group to stadium-headliner status. “Although there were still disparities within the band in terms of songwriting, direction, [and more],” Henley said later, “Glenn and I now wanted to take advantage of the momentum we had going. We wanted to write more songs that would be played on the radio.” Mission accomplished.
- In 1973, as the members of the Eagles began work on their second album, Glenn Frey and Don Henley rented a mountaintop home in Laurel Canyon. Sitting at the piano overlooking the city, Henley played “Desperado”, a ballad inspired by Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. Frey told Henley he needed to finish it. “He said, ‘This is really good, man,’” Henley later remembered. The band desperately needed inspiration after the surprise success of their 1972 debut album. “Don Henley and I sort of looked at each other and said, ‘We better start writing some good songs, or we’re not going to be around here for very long,’” said Frey. They found inspiration in a coffee-table book belonging to Jackson Browne, one that covered the history of the gunfighters of the Old West. Reading about the Dalton gang, a family of officers turned train robbers, Frey and collaborator J.D. Souther wrote “Doolin-Dalton”, a meditative ballad about an outlaw stuck in a cycle of violence, gambling and women. The song became a recurring motif on Desperado, the Eagles’ 1973 sophomore album. “The basic premise was that, like the outlaws, rock ’n’ roll bands lived outside the ‘laws of normality,’” said Henley. “We all went from town to town, collecting money and women—the critical difference being that we didn't rob or kill anybody for what we got. We worked for it.” After Henley and Frey wrote “Desperado”, Frey brought another classic to the table: “Tequila Sunrise”. Frey initially thought it was cliché to write a song about the popular tequila and orange juice drink, but Henley convinced him it could be more than that, resulting in a song about the sad cycle of relationships on the road. “I don't think there's a single chord out of place,” said Frey later. The band also included “Out of Control”, a rowdy party anthem with a fiery slide solo by Frey, and Bernie Leadon’s “Twenty-One”, which he wrote about Emmett Dalton, the young outlaw who survived 23 gunshot wounds when his gang raided the two banks in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1892. Henley recorded “Desperado” live in London’s Island studios, backed by musicians from the London Philharmonic. “I was scared shitless,” says Henley, who complained years later he could have sang the track a lot better. While Desperado wasn’t a hit, the album proved Henley and Frey could write strong material together. “We were commenting on the ephemeral nature of success in the music business—and the outlaw business,” Henley said later. “We were attempting to presage our own demise. Problem is, we—or at least our body of work—lasted much, much longer than we would ever have suspected.”
Albums
- 1979
Artist Playlists
- Laidback anthems and blistering rockers pack the canon of these ’70s superstars.
- See the country-rock kings fly high across eras.
- These classic rockers are renowned for flawless concert performances.
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
- Listen to the hits performed on the blockbuster tour.
Compilations
More To Hear
- Best rock songs from the ‘80s.
About Eagles
The Eagles evolved from talented country rockers to arena stars thanks to angelic four-part harmonies that sweetened lyrics about the dark side of the American dream. Primary songwriters and vocalists Glenn Frey and Don Henley decided to start a band together the day they met as members of Linda Ronstadt's backing group in 1971, and soon recruited the more seasoned Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. Their 1972 self-titled debut brought hits like "Take It Easy", "Witchy Woman" and "Peaceful Easy Feeling", but Frey and Henley almost derailed their trajectory with Desperado, a loosely conceptual song cycle that favourably equated SoCal guitar singers to Old West pistol packers. The Eagles' soft rock hardened with the addition of crackerjack guitarist Don Felder for 1974's On the Border, whose uncharacteristically political title track referenced the ongoing Watergate scandal. The next year, after charismatic guitar badass Joe Walsh swapped in for Leaden, One of These Nights became the first of four consecutive chart-topping Eagles albums, with its unbeatable blend of impeccable radio hits ("One of These Nights", "Lyin' Eyes") joined by all-too-knowing interrogations of success and overindulgence like "After the Thrill Is Gone". Record buyers found the Eagles' ambivalence about love and fame irresistible: The group's first compilation, Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), has sold more copies than any other 20th-century American album, and they followed it with a masterpiece. Hotel California was a velvet glove cast in irony and—in singles like "New Kid in Town", "Life in the Fast Lane" and its epic title track—the very definition of classic rock, possessing a polish that future country stars would eagerly adopt. A 14-year hiatus followed the Eagles’ 1979 The Long Run, but from the mid-'90s and well into the 21st century they've found their way back to each other for reunion tours, a live album and even a final studio effort, 2007's characteristically world-weary Long Road Out of Eden. It was the closing track of The Long Run, though, that clarified the soft-rock sultans' career-long lament: "I don't know why fortune smiles on some/And lets the rest go free."
- ORIGIN
- Los Angeles, CA, United States
- FORMED
- 1971
- GENRE
- Rock