WAY OUT WEST – the EAGLES & ‘DESPERADO’

[email protected] December 14, 2020

For a country-rock band to score a commercially successful album in the early 70s was no mean feat, the latter-day Byrds, Poco and the Flying Burrito Bros, making records variable in quality, but alike in terms of barely selling a copy.

For those ploughing such a furrow and doing so for scant commercial return, it must have been a touch galling when the Eagles came from nowhere in 1972 to strike gold – and with their debut effort at that, three best-selling singles ‘Take it Easy,’ ‘Witchy Woman’ and ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling‘ hoisting ‘Eagles‘ into the upper reaches of the US album charts.

While hardly the most original entry into the growing country pop calibrate, there were enough catchy choruses and agreeable guitar lines to attract mainstream listeners, although the most striking feature were the soaring harmony vocals – the Eagles resembling magpies as they gathered elements from Crosby, Stills & Nash, Poco and the Flying Burrito Bros in tendering their nest.

Two founding Eagles in fact had associations with the last two aforementioned acts, bassist Randy Meisner previously a one album member of Poco, while guitarist/banjo player Bernie Leadon had been two years a Burrito brother. Their gravitation into Los Angeles session work aligned them with guitar player Glenn Frey and drummer Don Henley, who at the time were members of a touring band put together to back vocalist supreme Linda Ronstadt.

For a group who would later define the soft-rock sound of 70s LA, none of the founders were Californians. Henley (Texas), Frey (Michigan), Meisner (Nebraska), Leadon (Minnesota) each brought individual influences that encompassed bluegrass, R&B, pop and country – Frey once half of a duo with singer-songwriter JD. Souther named Longbranch Pennywhistle, who styled themselves as a two-man James Taylor. 

Encouraged by friend and song-writing genius in the making Jackson Browne, the Eagles auditioned for agent David Geffen who made them an early signing to his fledgling Asylum label, sending them out on a series of club dates to hone and tighten their sound. 

When time came to record Geffen put them in the hands of English production whizz Glyn Johns, who had recently lent his production and engineering skills to such notable albums as ‘Who’s Next‘ and ‘Sticky Fingers’ – sessions at Olympic Studios in London yielding the ten track ‘Eagles‘ debut LP.

Including covers of ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ (Jack Tempchin) and ‘Nightingale‘ (Browne – who also co-wrote signature hit ‘Take it Easy’ with Frey), country-pop leanings are apparent in the songwriting contributions of Leadon and Meisner who virtually dominate side two. Frey chips in with a couple of unremarkable efforts representative of the soft-rock musings heard aplenty in 1972 Los Angeles, with sole mention for Henley a co-writing credit with Leadon on the uptempo ‘Witchy Woman‘.

Given ‘Eagles‘ was a success on several fronts, the temptation must have been to record a suitably formulaic follow-up.

But to their credit (and commercial detriment), for the next step the Eagles took the biggest chance of their entire career, recording a thematic piece based on an outlaw gang of the old-west; ‘DESPERADO‘ (April 1973) – a cowboy concept-album without any obvious hit singles.  

Having originally conceived an album based on anti-heroes (the energetic rocker ‘James Dean‘ would be held over until the next album), the focus of Henley and Frey became the outlaw cowboy gang of Bill Doolin and Bill Dalton, creating a musical version of their bank-robbing, living-beyond-the-law story.

In conjunction with Browne and Souther they wrote the opening ‘Doolin-Dalton‘ scene-setter and the closing reprise, Henley and Frey forging a song-writing partnership that would feature on eight of the eleven tracks – the demographic of the band changing from that point onward as they became the prime source of material.

On outlining the story to their fellow Eagles, Leadon weighed in with two songs that broadened the concept, Meisner wrote a character sketch of a gang member fleshed out by Henley and Frey, while a cover of ‘Outlaw Man‘ by David Blue fitted seamlessly into the narrative.

Although the music retained many of the country nuances heard on the debut – Leadon keeping connection to his roots with judicious use of banjo and dobro – a number of songs receive increased decoration, most notably the poignant title-track, built on a gentle piano melody and finished with a background string arrangement.

Recording once again in London, Johns does another simple but effective job with production on what would prove his final full outing on an Eagles album, the relationship between him and the band ending two tracks into their next album.

Operating a strict ‘no drink or drugs in the studio’ policy, the directive brought Johns into conflict particularly with Frey, who in the ‘History of the Eagles‘ documentary film of 2013 humorously recalled assailing the producer with ‘we’re a rock band, man,’ to which Johns, with an air of superiority replied, ‘No you are not. The Who are a rock band.’

The first lines of the piece are sung by Henley over an acoustic guitar and plaintive harmonica, ‘Doolin-Dalton’ serving as a preamble in which lead vocal duties switch between him and Frey, the latter a lone voice when it comes to the lines that best evoke the 19th century west:

‘Well, the towns lay out across the dusty plains/Like graveyards filled with tombstones, waiting for the names.’

After the soft-rock inflections of the opening cut, Leadon introduces the country element of the Eagles sound by utilising banjo and dobro on ‘Twenty One.’ Harnessing an energetic banjo rift, the composer sings this simple coming of age tale that at times comes across as an update of ‘Oh Susannah.’

In contrast it segues into the fast-paced ‘Out of Control,’ the protagonist (his actions described by Frey) heading to the local saloon for a night of hellraising (‘There’s a card game in the corner/And the barmaid smiled at me‘).

If, as often stated, Henley and Frey are creating an analogy between gunslingers of the old west and themselves as guitar-slingers in the new west of early-70s Los Angeles (offering a parallel that outlaws (then) and rock bands (now) exist at the edge of society), then the line, ‘Come on, saddle up, boys, we’re gonna ride into town, We’re gonna get a little out of control,’ could easily be transposed to jumping into a Mustang and heading down to LA rock bar The Troubadour for a night of revelry.

Whether the dual representation was there at the start or came after the fact has never been clear, but Henley (‘It’s an artistic commentary on the evils of fame and success, with a cowboy metaphor‘) and Frey (‘It has its moments where it definitely draws some parallels between rock-and-roll and being an outlaw,’), were both happy to make the case – the comparison allowing the Eagles’ to cultivate a mystique setting them apart from anyone else in the country-rock market.

It also helped they could come up with songs as accomplished as ‘Tequila Sunrise’ and the title-piece. The former laments a lost love, the pain of which is medicated by drinking through the night, Frey delivering a fine vocal atop of a melody similar to that of ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling‘.

Henley meanwhile announces himself as a truly great vocalist on ‘Desperado,’ capturing every nuance in depicting not an anti-hero but one who cannot, or refuses, to see the contented existence that can be reached if self-imposed barriers are removed – the song deeply resonant whether applied to 1873, 1973 or any point thereafter.

With ‘Certain Kind of Fool‘ that opens side two things become more plot driven. Over acoustic and electric guitar breaks, Meisner lends his distinctive vocals to an account of how a gang member becomes infatuated with guns, but what at first is excitement ultimately turns to doom:

‘A poster on a storefront, the picture of a wanted man/He had a reputation spreading like fire through the land/It wasn’t for the money, at least it didn’t start that way/It wasn’t for the running, but now he’s running everyday.’

Led by Leadon on banjo a brief instrumental version of ‘Doolin-Dalton’ leads into ‘Outlaw Man,’ a moody, simmering piece which Frey leads on vocal and electric piano. With its references to ‘bible,’ ‘gun‘ and ‘riding night and day,’ the song plays up to the ‘life beyond parameters of the law’ theme suggested by the title. As it drives on to a conclusion, the closing line, ‘When you got no life to lose, then there’s nothing left to gain,’ simply adds to the sense of foreboding.

The old west imagery of ‘Saturday Night‘ (written by all four Eagles) is conjured as much by the cowboy-waltz tune as a reflective lyric that ponders a time when ‘the years brought the railroad, it ran by my door,’ and love of a woman lost along the way, ‘now she passes her time at another man’s side, and pass the time with my pride,’ the trilling mandolin of Leadon adding to the rustic feel.

The rattlesnake percussion effects of Leadon’s ‘Bitter Creek’ give his largely acoustic ballad an ominous, uneasy feel, the pristine harmonies and terse guitar chords giving it the feel of something Neil Young might have concocted had he been recording with Crosby, Stills and Nash at the time. As a penultimate track it sets up the ending by declaring:

‘We’re gonna hit the road for one last time/We can walk right in and steal ’em blind/All that money/No more runnin”

Henley returns to the vocal front line for reprise of ‘Doolin-Dalton‘ (‘well the stage was set the sun was sinking low down, as thy came to town to face another showdown‘), the consequences of their latest violent encounter described as, ‘four men ride out and only three ride back.’

To bring the story full circle, ‘Desperado‘ is also reprised, but as an epilogue is given a different twist with the melody played on guitar and banjo – the distant string-section an emotive touch – while a different set of lyrics (‘You sealed your fate up a long time ago‘), add to the sense of finality, repeated refrains of ‘Desperado‘ serving to bring down the curtain.

Keen to emphasise the nature of their work, for the album cover shoot Henley, Frey, Meisner and Leadon, strike a pose similar to that of Peckinpah film bandits ‘The Wild Bunch.’

The back cover photograph meanwhile is even more graphic, recreating an actual image portraying the capture and death of the Doolin-Dalton gang – the four Eagles, joined by Browne and Souther, lying dead in the dust, surrounded by their apprehenders.

Despite showing creditable initiative, particularly with regard to subject matter, the Eagles initially had a lukewarm response to their efforts. Jerry Greenberg, president of Atlantic Records of whom Asylum were a subsidiary, baulked at it being a ‘cowboy album,’ early sales of the record took it no higher than 41 on the US album charts, with critical reaction distinctly mixed.

Noted New York rock writer Robert Christgau had all manner of complaints, citing a ‘paucity of decent songs‘ and describing the overall concept as ‘mindless‘ – country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons (who would die at 26 later in the year), expressed severe reservations about the Eagles as a whole, the former Byrd and Burrito Brother reportedly making his loathing known to anyone prepared to listen.

On the other hand ‘Desperado‘ was the first country-rock album to offer something different since the Burrito debut LP of four years before, the enterprise shown in stepping away from the five-unconnected-songs-per-side format deserving of more praise than the Eagles received at the time, irrespective of the odd sentimental lyric or obvious guitar hook.

It was, let us not forget, only their second album.

Over time, however, the album has grown in reputation and significance, ‘Desperado‘ now viewed as bettered only by ‘Hotel California‘ in the Eagles roster and regularly cited as a major influence on the new wave of huge-selling country-pop artists who emerged in the years after the Eagles split in 1980 – not least in all the obligatory stetsons.

As for the Eagles and 1973-74, after pulling the plug on the follow-up sessions with Johns they returned to LA, recruited another guitar player in Don Felder and with Bill Szymczyk found a producer more attuned to their intentions.

With ‘On The Border‘ they cut a more conventional album, the record proving enormously successful and containing their first number one hit single, the country-tinged ‘Best of My Love‘ – ironically one of the two songs brought back from the London sessions overseen by Johns.

The country-leaning material, now restricted to the odd contribution from Leadon, disappeared altogether when he quit to be replaced in 1976 by guitar/hotel room wildcat Joe Walsh.

The subsequent ‘Hotel California‘ album showed how much Henley and Frey had matured as song-writers – even if their ambition was best served back on the dusty, desert plains of ‘Desperado.’

‘DESPERADO‘ (Released April 1973):

Doolin-Dalton/Twenty One/Out of Control/Tequila Sunrise/Desperado/Certain Kind of Fool/Doolin-Dalton (instrumental)/Outlaw Man/Saturday Night/Bitter Creek/Doolin-Dalton/Desperado (reprise);

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NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE’ – an acclaimed thriller now available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book.