Desperado, <\/i>for all its virtues, showed the Eagles moving in a more country direction than Glenn Frey and Don Henley were comfortable with, and so they attempted to steer the ship back the other way by bringing on a second guitarist (Don Felder) and writing more rock-oriented songs. The end result is a mix of the two styles that flows better than it ought to.<\/p>\n
Sure, there is an obvious hit single (\u201cAlready Gone,\u201d a fun rocker that\u2019s among the band\u2019s best songs) and too many ballads, but it\u2019s clear on their third album that the band is embracing country, rock and a few Southern music tropes to broaden its sound. The first side veers from \u201cGone\u201d to the flat-out bluegrass of \u201cMidnight Flyer\u201d to the country ballad \u201cMy Man,\u201d a tribute to Gram Parsons. \u201cYou Never Cry Like A Lover\u201d is a sneaky song, an ersatz Don Henley ballad that shifts gears halfway through with a very good guitar solo and ends on a strong note. <\/p>\n
The first side\/half ends with the snarling title track directly influenced by Joe Walsh; in hindsight, this sound would predict the band\u2019s career in the second half of the decade, when they ditched Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner, brought on Walsh and all but abandoned their country\/Western origins. What\u2019s interesting here is how Meisner and Leadon are still equals, with the musicians sharing vocals and\/or songwriting duties throughout. Granted, \u201cOn The Border\u201d is a bit too close to \u201cRocky Mountain Way\u201d in structure to be necessary, and the handclaps and background vocals sound a bit grafted on without adding much, but it\u2019s still fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cJames Dean\u201d is a more overt and Southern rock homage to its title character than \u201cMy Man,\u201d but it fits, while the cover of \u201cOl\u2019 55\u201d is yet another country ballad (note: one of these goes a long way). The guitar work is the only noteworthy part of Meisner\u2019s \u201cIs It True\u201d and \u201cGood Day In Hell\u201d is another, lesser Walsh knockoff and another step toward the rock direction Frey and Henley wanted. The album closes with the hit ballad \u201cBest Of My Love,\u201d much as Greatest Hits 1971-75 <\/i>did, because there\u2019s really no way to follow it, as it\u2019s one of Henley and Frey\u2019s most affecting songs in this vein.<\/p>\n
On the Border <\/i>has too many mediocre songs to be essential, but its eclectic nature is the most appealing thing about it, and it\u2019s a great place to start exploring the band\u2019s back catalog beyond the overplayed radio hits that everyone knows by heart. More than the band\u2019s other three pre-Walsh albums, this one establishes that the Eagles were truly a band<\/i>, not Henley\/Frey and assorted studio help, and even if that doesn\u2019t make this album all that exciting or necessary, its best moments are as good as anything the band ever did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":32620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5764],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-44383","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-eagles","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44383"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44383"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}