The Eagles album Don Henley thought should be cut: “It could have been better”
There’s no real answer for when an album is truly “finished”. Most artists are constantly toying with how their songs should sound, and it’s only the curse of deadlines that actually makes them either finish their favourite songs or admit defeat and put their masterpieces as is. The Eagles already had a bit of a high bar when stacking their classic records with their new material, but even upon release, Don Henley thought that they stumbled working on the album Long Road Out of Eden.
It’s not like they didn’t have ample time to prepare for it. The California icons had already reformed as far back as 1994 with the release of Hell Freezes Over, and ever since that record, they had only released one major single with the 9/11 response, ‘Hole in the World’. They could have definitely gotten started years before, but sometimes, it’s the fear that keeps people away from the studio.
They had already let go of Don Felder, and since they already had a high bar to clear in the 1980s when making The Long Run, how the hell were they going to reach Hotel California levels again? Well, the short answer is they didn’t really try to match their past glory at all.
Being their first double record, Long Road Out of Eden is a bit of an odd outlier in their catalogue. There are some great songs like ‘How Long’ that had been on the backburner, but some of the deep cuts are a lot less interesting than even their lacklustre moments in the 1970s. Compared to a goofy song like ‘Last Good Time In Town’, Henley’s ‘Business as Usual’ and ‘Frail Grasp on the Big Picture’ are way-too-serious slogs that should have been left on the back end of one of his solo records.
The album is also way too overloaded, at 20 tracks, when a refined single album would have left everything off on a good note. Even though the group were so loaded that they could have probably released a triple record and made back their money, Henley was also a little pissed that the album ran too long.
Speaking with Rolling Stone upon release, Henley complained that the album could have been the band’s true final statement if they had been able to take a little longer on it, saying, “The album would have been better if we had taken another six months. There are some weak spots…This album is very good, but it could have been better. But that thing called democracy reared its head.”
The problem is that some songs should have been cut but would, in turn, wreck the flow of the record. The instrumental ‘I Dreamed There Was No War’ is a nice comedown from the ten-minute title track, but when you put it in context with the rest of the record, it just makes everything sound a little bit too flabby.
At this point, we probably should have just been happy with what we got. For a while, it felt like nothing would bring the core lineup back together, and even if they didn’t have Felder, they still put together a decent collection of songs to wrap their career on. Most artists don’t get an opportunity to go out on their own terms, but since the Eagles waited so long, Long Road Out of Eden still had enough good tunes to feel like it was worth the wait.