(Credits: Far Out / Steve Alexander)
Thu 29 May 2025 19:00, UK
Nothing Eagles ever made was supposed to be viewed at the surface level. Some of their best tunes may have blended in well on any summer playlist, but for anyone that bothered to look beyond the breezy chords and soaring harmonies, Glenn Frey and Don Henley always wanted their music to mean something in the same way that their idols like The Beatles and The Stones had done before. And when they reached their magnum opus, Frey figured it was time to enter the big leagues of songwriting.
When looking at their first four records, every Eagles project sounded like they were building to something bigger. There may have been some stumbling blocks along the way that they couldn’t avoid, but whereas an album like Desperado was never going to gel with everyone, getting Don Felder and Joe Walsh into the band ahead of Hotel California gave them a massive shot in the arm.
And once people heard what they could do on songs like ‘Life in the Fast Lane’, they were no longer trying to be the same old country-rock band. They were staking their claim as one of the best bands of their generation regardless of genre, and looking through the entire record, it’s like watching a movie every single time it comes on, whether it’s the harsh side of fame on ‘Victim of Love’ or bringing their tender side back in on ‘Pretty Maids All In a Row’.
Every movie needs to have a stellar ending, though, and ‘The Last Resort’ was the one time Henley started to look at the bigger picture of Los Angeles. There were many critiques about the state of the world and how fame can corrupt someone, but from where Henley stood, all of that paled in comparison to the irreparable damage that Americans were doing to the environment, especially those in big business who couldn’t care less about what’s happening on the ground floor.
Whereas the title track opens up like a strange episode of The Twilight Zone, the closer is where they open their cinematic lens a bit more, to the point where an entire storyline goes on between the verses amid all of the key changes. The album may have started promising with one of their biggest songs, but getting every single line right on this tune was no easy feat when Frey looked back on it.
There had been other long songs before, but Frey felt there was no way for them to get bigger than ‘The Last Resort’, saying, “’The Last Resort’ is probably one of the biggest pieces of musical literature we ever tackled. We wanted to pull the whole idea together, so we thought of this girl from Providence, and we took her on an epic journey across America, through Colorado, where they laid the mountains low, through California, where they polluted the sea, to Hawaii, where they were ruining paradise.”
And by the time the band reaches that final verse, those people ruining America have still not paid for their crimes. They had spent all of their days trying to use religion as their excuse to do the most despicable things anyone could do to the land, and whereas most people would think that they were scoundrels for their actions, they’re still going to be found on Sunday morning in a churchhouse thanking their higher power for giving them to strength to harm everything in their way.
But the reason why this song is the biggest undertaking isn’t only because of how intense the story behind it is. It’s because this kind of practice still happens day after day, and it’s up to the rest of America whether they should accept it or stand up when they see something wrong in society.
Related Topics
Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter