Desperado

Desperado is the second studio album by the Eagles, released on April 17, 1973, on Asylum Records.^[1] Produced by Glyn Johns and recorded at Island Studios in London, the album is a loose concept record built around the mythology of the American Old West, drawing particular inspiration from the story of the Dalton Gang, a notorious group of outlaw brothers from the late 19th century.^[1]

The Western theme emerged from conversations among Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, and Ned Doheny, who recognized parallels between frontier outlaws and the rock musicians of the early 1970s Los Angeles scene.^[1] The album marked the beginning of the Henley-Frey songwriting partnership, which would become one of the most successful collaborations in rock history. The pair wrote both "Desperado" and "Tequila Sunrise" within their first week of working together.^[2]

Critical reception was mixed upon release. Paul Gambaccini of Rolling Stone praised the album as "a unified set of songs" that was not pretentious, calling it a "second consecutive job well done."^[1] Robert Christgau was less kind, dismissing the outlaw concept as "mindless" and criticizing its "barstool-macho equation of gunslinger and guitarschlonger."^[1]

Commercially, the album was the Eagles' lowest-charting release, debuting at number 145 on the Billboard 200 and peaking at number 41.^[1] Neither of its singles, "Tequila Sunrise" and "Outlaw Man," reached the top 50. Despite this initial commercial underperformance, the album's influence proved lasting. Music writer John Einarson argued in his book Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock that it "would set the tone for all the later soft country rock sounds, and impact what would become the foundation of 'new country,' in both image and music."^[3]

The title track, though never released as a single, became one of the Eagles' most beloved songs, aided by Linda Ronstadt's 1973 cover version that introduced it to a wider audience.^[2]