Desperado Album

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Lore & Background

After their commercially successful first album, Glenn Frey wanted the second album to be one with which they could be taken seriously as artists. The original concept was for songs about anti-heroes, inspired by a book on gunfighters of the Wild West given to Jackson Browne by Ned Doheny. Frey, Don Henley, Browne, and JD Souther came up with the idea after a Tim Hardin concert. The first songs Frey and Henley wrote together after returning to Los Angeles were 'Desperado' and 'Tequila Sunrise,' both written within the first week of their collaboration. The album was recorded at Island Studios in London over four weeks at a cost of £30,000. Producer Glyn Johns limited each track to four or five takes. Henley later regretted not singing as well as he could on the title track. The band was so happy with the finished result that after Johns played it back to them, they carried him on their shoulders out of the control room. However, Jerry Greenberg, president of Atlantic Records, said: 'Jeez, they've made a fucking cowboy album!'

In Their Own Story

The album's artwork was done by Gary Burden with photos by Henry Diltz. The photo shoot took place at Paramount Ranch, an old film set for Western movies in Malibu Canyon. On the back cover, all four band members lie dead and bound on the ground alongside Jackson Browne and JD Souther, with a posse standing over them including producer Glyn Johns (far right in a white hat), manager John Hartmann, road manager Tommy Nixon, artist Boyd Elder, roadies, and Gary Burden (far left). The photo reenacts the historical image of the capture and death of the Dalton Gang. A promotional film was also made during the shoot, shot on Super-8, sepia-tinted, and transferred to videotape. Frey described the loss of video quality as a 'nice accident' that made the video appear aged and more realistic.

Reader's Guide

Desperado is the beginning of the songwriting partnership of Frey and Henley; they were involved in writing eight of the eleven songs. Henley noted: 'That's when we became a team.' The album yielded two singles: 'Tequila Sunrise' (reached number 64) and 'Outlaw Man' (reached number 59). The title track 'Desperado' was never released as a single but was ranked number 494 on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of 'The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.' In 2000, Desperado was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The only song not written by band members is 'Outlaw Man,' written by David Blue. Bernie Leadon wrote 'Twenty-One' and 'Bitter Creek'; Randy Meisner co-wrote 'Certain Kind of Fool' and 'Saturday Night.' 'Twenty-One' refers to the age of Emmett Dalton, the youngest of the Dalton gang, who was shot 23 times but survived during the raid on Coffeyville, Kansas, in October 1892. Film director Sam Peckinpah planned to use the album as the basis for a film, but the plan did not come to fruition.

Did You Know?

• The title track 'Desperado' was never released as a single, despite being one of the Eagles' signature songs.
• The album was recorded in just four weeks at Island Studios in London at a cost of £30,000.
• The back cover photo reenacts the capture and death of the Dalton Gang, with band members and friends lying dead on the ground.
• Film director Sam Peckinpah planned to use the album as the basis for a film, but the plan never happened.
• The only song on the album not written by Eagles band members is 'Outlaw Man,' written by David Blue.