(Credits: Alamy)
Wed 22 October 2025 20:30, UK
Nothing about Eagles was made by accident.
Although Don Henley was a firm believer in the collaboration between bandmates, he also knew when songs weren’t cutting it for the group, and he wasn’t about to let musical slop on the record if he had anything to say about it. Even though the California rockers’ discography is pretty air-tight all things considered, there are more than a few times when Henley knew no one should see their musical dirty laundry on record.
It was bad enough that he had to compromise back in the day by giving songs like ‘I Wish You Peace’ the green light, but it was always about more than a few half-hearted songs. He wanted his discography to hold up in the same way that his heroes like The Beatles’ did, and while that did mean expanding albums like Long Road Out of Eden for way too long, Henley figured that he would try to put his best foot forward on each release.
And listening to the stories behind Hotel California, you would have thought that the band were sticklers for perfection. They knew that not every harmony was going to sound absolutely fantastic every single time they got up to the microphone, but they could always tell when to push a song just far enough to where it sounded like a piece of magic once it came through the speakers. But when you make that sweeping of a statement, there’s really nowhere left to go but down afterwards.
The amount of cocaine that they were going through during The Long Run probably didn’t help, but it’s not like the band didn’t have a few lofty ambitions for the record. There were even talks about them turning the record into a huge double album experience, but given the state they were in, they knew it was better for them to cut their losses and make sure to deliver a single album everyone could be proud of.
You can still see the makings of a more epic album to be found in there, though. Joe Walsh’s ‘In the City’ is a nice slice of hard rock, and given the massive overdubs they put into the guitars on ‘King of Hollywood’ and those shoes, this had the makings of being an even more brutal dissection of the star-making machine. When it comes to the rest of the material, though, Henley has no plans to ever go back and reminisce.
The album itself was already a nightmare to make, and judging by their usual standards, Henley knew there was no point in digging in the vaults for some of those undiscovered gems, saying, “We’ve been through the vaults three or four times at the urging of the record label. There’s nothing else there. There were a few things that got started for The Long Run, but they didn’t have enough steam. They never got finished. If I had my way, they would never be released. Glenn wouldn’t want them out.”
That’s not to say that every one of the songs from that time was downright awful by any stretch. It’s easy to hear the fatigue that they all have from working too long, but since they were also finding time to cut loose on the record and even add in a subtle layer of R&B onto tunes like ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’, there was definitely potential there to build on the fertile ground they were working with.
But with Glenn Frey having long since passed on and the ongoing feud between the band and Don Felder being a lot more heated, it’s not like they have any reason to kiss and make up for a re-release. Hotel California is the kind of record that warrants that treatment, but The Long Run will always be a morbid curiosity to fans looking to figure out where everything went wrong in their final years.
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