Released in 1979, The Long Run became theEagles‘ longest-running No. 1 album. It was also the beginning of the end for the band.
A lot was shifting behind the scenes. It was the first Eagles album with bassist Timothy B. Schmit, who replaced cofounder Randy Meisner, and the last to feature guitarist Don Felder.
By then, the Eagles had already reached superstar status thanks to 1976’s Hotel California. The harder part was figuring out what could possibly come next.
“I suppose we’d eventually finish some songs if we didn’t have the pressure, but up to now it’s been that way,” Don Henley admitted in a 1977 interview, according to Ultimate Classic Rock. “I remember an interview I read a long time ago where [John] Lennon and [Paul] McCartney said that the only way they ever finished anything was to have a deadline, some kind of pressure.”
That pressure didn’t bring out the best in the band. Hotel California had already put a strain on them, thanks to its long recording process and an exhausting tour. Those tensions followed them into the next album.
They went into the studio in 1977 with plans for a double record, but nothing came out until September 24, 1979. And even then, it wasn’t what they’d envisioned.
Longtime collaborator J.D. Souther and Bob Seger pitched in to help finish a 10-song record. “It made us very paranoid,” guitarist Joe Walsh once said of the years that followed Hotel California.
“People started asking us, ‘What are you going to do now?’ and we didn’t know. We ended up on the next album in Miami with the tapes running, but nobody knowing what was going on. We lost perspective. We just kinda sat around in a daze for … months.”
The band found itself torn between the pressures of fame and staying true to who they were. “You can get out,” Henley said. “The problem is getting out without getting completely out – without losing touch with everything. You have to work out a happy medium to keep your health and your wits about you. It can be done.”
That balance was hard to find on The Long Run. The album had moments of the band’s classic sound, but too much of it felt overproduced. Critics weren’t especially kind, and many saw it as a step down.
Commercially, though, the album was a huge success. Led Zeppelin‘s In Through the Out Door blocked it from debuting at No. 1, but The Long Run took over the top spot just a week later. It went on to win a Grammy, sell more than seven million copies and produce three hit singles.
Both the title track and “I Can’t Tell You Why” reached No. 8, while “Heartache Tonight” hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in November 1979.
Fans still wanted more music, but the band was falling apart. Things had become especially strained between co-frontman Glenn Frey and Felder, who could barely share a stage together.
During a July 1980 show in Long Beach, tensions escalated to threats of violence between songs. Not long after, Frey walked away.
Frey wasn’t the only one who felt the band had run its course, but they still owed their label one more album. The Eagles gave fans more music with the double-disc Eagles Live in November 1980.
But putting the album together turned out to be just as messy as everything else going on between them.
According to producer Bill Szymczyk, Frey wouldn’t record overdubs with the others, or even talk to them, so the team had to get creative. “I had my assistant in Los Angeles with Glenn, and I had the rest of the band fly to Miami,” he recalled, per UCR. “We were fixing three-part harmonies courtesy of Federal Express.”
The band was so ready to move on that they turned down $2 million to record two new songs for the album.
Looking back, Frey seemed at peace with it all. “We all came out here from different places, developed our talent, saw what it took to succeed and got the job done better than any of us ever imagined. At that point it ended, and life goes on,” he once said. “We always vowed to quit when we were still on top and that’s what we did.”
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