Credit: Far Out / Asylum Records
Thu 30 April 2026 0:00, UK
Cowboys, outlaws, LA roads, the wild west and the Eagles, it really doesn’t get more American than that.
Listen through the Eagles’ Desperado and it feels like stepping into the daydreams of a typical American boy. The songs tell stories of gun-slinging outlaws rebelling against the system, of wide-open journeys along dusty roads, and of outsiders who eventually come out on top and win the girl’s love. By the end of it all, they’re usually celebrating with a cold beer, a cigarette, or a tequila sunrise.
From its very genesis, the band knew this was a classic American album. The initial idea came from a book Don Henley was given on his 21st birthday, all about the country’s most famous gunfighters in the Wild West. From then on, he knew he wanted to write an album about anti-heroes, and he knew they’d probably be dressed up in cowboy clothes.
A whole host of historic American rebels found their way into the stories from the Doolin-Dalton Gang or even James Dean, Hollywood’s rebel without a cause. Even when it came to writing the title track, ‘Desperado’ was Glenn Frey and Henley imagining their own band as this classic gaggle of outlaws, as Frey said, “It has its moments where it definitely draws some parallels between rock-and-roll and being an outlaw. Outside the laws of normality, I guess. I mean, I feel like I’m breaking a law all the time. What we live and what we do is kind of a fantasy.”
Henley added, “We were in LA staying up all night, smoking dope, living the California life, and I suppose we thought it was as radical as cowboys in the Old West. We were really rebelling against the music business, not society.”
So why, when making an album that American, did the whole band decamp to Notting Hill?
There is arguably nowhere as far away from the Wild West as west London. By the 1960s, the area was already being gentrified as it was becoming the bohemian hub of the capital, likened to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury as artists descended. It was there that Island Studios sat, situated inside an old chapel and now offering cheap sessions as it built its reputation.
That’s really the only reason. The band’s second album needed to be done fast and on a budget, so flying them over to London to make it for only £30,000 in only four weeks, keeping them on a tight schedule that only allowed for four or five takes per track, was a way to do that. In February 1973, in the cold British winter, they were worlds away from the hot American summers they were writing about as they buckled down and got to work with producer Glyn Johns, the Englishman they put in charge.
Perhaps their label also thought bringing them to England might beat some of the western elements out of the record, but it seemed to only make them double down. When their label bosses at Atlantic first heard the finished album, he cried, “Jeez, they’ve made a fucking cowboy album!” No amount of grey English skies or posh London accents could change that.
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