{"id":626463,"date":"2026-03-02T08:33:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T08:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/626463\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T08:33:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T08:33:18","slug":"on-this-day-in-1975-the-eagles-went-no-1-with-a-song-birthed-in-a-west-hollywood-restaurant-booth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/626463\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1975, the Eagles Went No. 1 With a Song Birthed in a West Hollywood Restaurant Booth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although they\u2019d already established themselves with breezy ballads like \u201cTake It Easy\u201d and \u201cDesperado\u201d, the Eagles were still searching for that elusive No. 1 hit when they recorded their third album, On the Border<\/a>. On this day (March 1), that finally happened when \u201cBest of My Love\u201d topped the U.S. singles chart. It would also hit No. 1 on both the all-genre Hot 100 and Billboard\u2019s Adult Contemporary chart\u2014not bad for a song conceived in a restaurant booth.<\/p>\n

In a 2003 interview<\/a> with Cameron Crowe, Don Henley said that the Eagles wrote much of \u201cBest Of My Love\u201d while sitting at their favorite booth at Dan Tana\u2019s, a popular Italian restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. Acclaimed singer-songwriter J.D. Souther wrote the bridge, which Henley called \u201cperfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGlenn [Frey] found the tune; the tune I think came from a Fred Neil record,\u201d Souther recalled in 2009<\/a>. He added, \u201cThe three of us were writing it and were on deadline to get it finished. I don\u2019t know where we got the inspiration. I can rarely tell you where I get inspiration.\u201d (According to Marc Eliot\u2019s 2004 book To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles, Henley\u2019s breakup with former girlfriend Susannah Martin inspired \u201cBest Of My Love.\u201d<\/p>\n

[RELATED: The Story Behind the Don Henley Solo Song That Outmatched the Eagles]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTotally Unexpected\u201d: Don Henley Called This Eagles Song \u201cA Miracle\u201d<\/p>\n

Of \u201cBest Of My Love\u201d, Glenn Frey recalled, \u201cI was playing acoustic guitar one afternoon in Laurel Canyon, and I was trying to figure out a tuning that Joni Mitchell had shown me a couple of days earlier. I got lost and ended up with the guitar tuning for what would later turn out to be \u2018The Best of My Love.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Released as the third single from 1974\u2019s On the Border, \u201cBest of My Love\u201d gave the Eagles their first-ever Hot 100 chart-topper. And they owe much of its success to Jim Higgs, a radio DJ from Kalamazoo, Michigan, who promoted the song heavily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Higgs died in 2024. Ten years earlier, the Eagles invited him to their September 2014 show in Grand Rapids, where they personally thanked him<\/a> backstage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had more or less given up hope for the success of the\u00a0On the Border\u00a0album, and we\u2019d begun work on the next album,\u201d Henley told Rolling Stone in 2016. \u201cSo, when \u2018The Best of My Love\u2019 took off, it was like a resurrection, a miracle. Totally unexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Featured image by Gijsbert Hanekroot\/Redferns)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although they\u2019d already established themselves with breezy ballads like \u201cTake It Easy\u201d and \u201cDesperado\u201d, the Eagles were still…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":626464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[29],"tags":[20829,976,171,975,69209,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-626463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1970s","tag-classic-rock","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-the-eagles","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116158661290708994","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}