![\"Don](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Don-Henley-Musician-The-Eagles-Drummer-Vocalist-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ TIDAL<\/p>\n
Tue 18 August 2026 23:00, UK <\/p>\n
Any artist is only as good as the last thing they put out. Even though they might be the biggest name in music for an entire year, it only takes one bad song for people to start ignoring you entirely or question whether they even liked you in the first place. <\/p>\n
The Eagles<\/a> needed to spend their first few years struggling after making the album Desperado, but Don Henley thought that \u2018Best of My Love\u2019 was a lifesaver for the group.<\/p>\n First of all, it\u2019s not like On the Border was meant to set the world on fire upon release. From the minute that the band began working on the album, there was already tension in the studio between them and producer Glyn Johns<\/a>. Sure, they could still deliver, but there just wasn\u2019t a spark in the air when they started recording, which didn\u2019t help when Johns started getting picky about them asking for less echo on the vocals.<\/p>\n After they washed their hands of Johns halfway through the project, the band suddenly came alive once they started work on the rest of the material. For Frey, everything clicked when Don Felder came on board, recalling in History of the Eagles, \u201cWe were backstage, and this guy was all over the neck\u201d.<\/p>\n While Frey offered Felder the gig to join the band on the spot after working on the track \u2018Already Gone\u2019<\/a>, it would be one of the leftovers from the Johns sessions that gave them a second wind. Although it still sounded closer to the old version of the Eagles, everything about \u2018Best of My Love\u2019 is pretty much perfect, from the sighing acoustic guitars plodding to Henley\u2019s smooth voice guiding everything along.<\/p>\n Once the album was released, the rest of the singles sank without a trace, except for the ballad. Henley later told Rolling Stone<\/a>, \u201cWe had more or less given up hope for the success of the On the Border album, and we\u2019d begun work on the next album. So when \u2018Best of My Love\u2019 took off, it was like a resurrection, a miracle. Totally unexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n That timing mattered more than the band probably realised. The Eagles were still figuring out what they wanted to be, and another album disappearing without much fuss could easily have left them stuck somewhere between country rock hopefuls and yesterday\u2019s news. Instead, \u2018Best of My Love\u2019 gave them breathing room. It reminded everyone, probably including the band themselves, that there was still something worth chasing.<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n If you look at where the Eagles would be headed just a few albums later, you can see why the song doesn\u2019t exactly fit. The band would still be delivering ballads until they dropped, but the production value and their rock and roll chops would become a lot more defined, especially towards the start of Hotel California <\/a>when Joe Walsh joined the group.<\/p>\n Still, it\u2019s hard not to see \u2018Best Of My Love\u2019 as one of the send-offs for the Desperado period of the band. The group had been working on a lot of the demos from Desperado on their third album, which also marked the final time they started to sound closer to country. There may have been the odd banjo part here and an acoustic guitar lead there, but after this album, you weren\u2019t going to hear something like \u2018Midnight Flyer\u2019 ever again.<\/p>\n In that sense, the song almost sounds like the last clean photograph before everything got bigger. The harmonies are still soft, the arrangement still has one foot in country, and there\u2019s none of the slick menace that would creep into their records later on. Within a couple of years they would sound richer, harder and far more expensive, but \u2018Best of My Love\u2019 catches them just before the machinery really started humming.<\/p>\n Granted, that doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t appreciate a song like \u2018Best of My Love\u2019 while it lasts. The Eagles were progressing by leaps and bounds, though, and in just a few more years, they would be outgrowing their syrupy ballads for more complex material. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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<\/a> The Far Out Classic Rock Newsletter<\/p>\n