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In 1973, one of the most iconic soft rock ballads ever recorded was released, and 53 years later, the Eagles‘ “Desperado” is hailed as a near-perfect classic, even though its singer admitted he “could have done better.”
“Desperado” was a song on the band’s second LP. The ambitious concept project featured an Old West theme, and its tracks were primarily written by Glenn Frey and Don Henley.
The song never cracked the Billboard Top 100, but it remains one of the band’s most beloved tracks. Ranker named it one of the band’s best songs of all time in 2025, where it landed at No. 8 between “Tequila Sunrise” and “Life in the Fast Lane.” Additionally, a decade earlier, Rolling Stone placed the song at No. 3 in a readers’ poll ranking the band’s best songs.
In a 2015 conversation with Howard Stern, Eagles drummer Don Henley revealed that although “Desperado” has become one of the band’s most iconic songs, he felt he could have delivered a stronger vocal performance.
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Henley revealed, “I could have done better [vocally] because I didn’t get a chance to sing it more than three or four times. We had an English superstar producer, Glyn Johns, who was trying to make an album in an economical fashion.”
“They sent us to England, and we were in this huge studio. The London Philharmonic was sitting behind me. I was scared [expletive].”
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He continued, “I was out there trying to sing, and a lot of these guys were older guys. And they brought chessboards with them. They would set up the chessboards between their chairs, and between takes, they would play chess. They weren’t really into it.”
The takes were done live with the band and the orchestra in the studio simultaneously. Henley said that the recording session reflected the collaboration, showing “Desperado’s humanity.”
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“It gives it a certain immediacy. It gives it a certain humanity. It’s flawed, like humans are,” Henley concluded.
“I could have sung it a lot better. I could hear them making remarks once in a while. I could hear one say to another musician, ‘I don’t feel like a desperado.'”
In an interview with Cameron Crowe, Henley said “Desperado” marked the beginning of what would become a legendry songwriting partnership with Frey.
“Glenn came over to write one day, and I showed him this unfinished tune that I had been holding for so many years. I said, ‘When I play it and sing it, I think of Ray Charles — Ray Charles and Stephen Foster. It’s really a Southern gothic thing, but we can easily make it more Western.'”
He concluded, “Glenn leapt right on it — filled in the blanks and brought structure. And that was the beginning of our songwriting partnership; that’s when we became a team.”
Glenn Frey died in 2016. Don Henley remains a core member and frontman of the Eagles, and the band is currently in its final era, with a 2026 residency at the Las Vegas Sphere.
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