The backstage fight that forced Bernie Leadon out of Eagles
For a band that sang about California sunshine, there was never a lot of happiness between every member of the Eagles. As much as they may have had a penchant for upbeat material, the group was all a well-oiled machine, thanks to the songwriting prowess of Glenn Frey and Don Henley. That pedigree left little room for experimentation, and it didn’t take long for Bernie Leadon to want out.
When first putting the band together, Leadon was originally more of a country player, playing banjos and country guitar across their debut album and Desperado. As the band started to spread their wings on subsequent records, Leadon’s approach to songwriting tended to clash with their set of songwriting standards.
Describing that time in History of the Eagles, Glenn Frey talked about how tense it became between Leadon and the rest of the band, saying, “Bernie Leadon is one of the greatest country guitar players, but whenever I wrote a rock and roll song, he was the lead guitarist. When Bernie would write a country song, I was supposed to be the lead guitarist, and I wasn’t a country player by any means.”
It was clear that the group needed another presence in the band, bringing in Don Felder on their third album, On the Border, after contributing amazing lines to the song ‘Already Gone’. While that compromise suited the band at the time, it didn’t stop Leadon from growing resentful of where the group was going, with Henley recalling, “For Bernie, any kind of success was the equivalent of selling out.”
It didn’t take long before Leadon’s indifferent behaviour started showing up at album sessions, including one instance where he walked out of the studio. As engineer Bill Szymczyk remembered, “We had spent all night working on this track, and it was fully rock. And we couldn’t decide where it was supposed to go. And I looked over the board and said, ‘Bernie, what do you think’ and he stretched his arms and said, ‘I think I’m going surfing’, and he left.”
Although the band were adamant about making significant changes to their sound, the last straw came when they were about to go on the One of These Nights tour. Shortly before the show, Frey was talking about what the band’s next direction would be when Leadon took objection, with Frey recalling, “I was talking about where we should be doing, here, there, and everywhere. And Bernie comes over and pours a beer over my head and says, ‘You need to chill out, man.”
While Leadon has since apologised for his outburst at the time, the writing was already on the wall that he would be leaving soon. However, Frey didn’t have to look far for a replacement, picking up opening act Joe Walsh as the next guitar player. Although the vocals could have used some work, the band soldiered on to make the colossal Hotel California. It’s completely understandable for Leadon not to be creatively satisfied with the band’s direction, but his departure coincided with one of the biggest triumphs of their career.