Eagles
On The Border

THE REVIEW

The Eagles arrived at the recording of their third album, dated 1974, quite disappointed by the poor outcomes of their second, "Desperado", on which they counted a lot and rightly so... in my opinion, "Desperado" is the absolute masterpiece of country rock.
They then had rocker itches, their producer Glyn Johns (the one who was at the mixer alongside producer Jimmy Page for Led Zeppelin's first album) mocked them for this:

"Glyn! I want my bass drum to sound like John Bonham's!"
"But Don (Henley)! You are NOT John Bonham!"

...so they decided, halfway through the recordings, to start over with a new producer, then they brought in a third guitarist named Don Felder, whom they liked so much that they overlooked the fact he couldn't sing (after all, there were already four beautiful voices), and finally, they gave the most prominence to the more rock'n'roll tracks, "Already Gone" and "James Dean", putting them at the beginning of each side and releasing them as singles.
But it was all in vain, moderate sales, dismay... until many months after the album's release, the record label published "The Best Of My Love" as the third single, one of the ballads of the album (not even the best one, by the way, much more beautiful is, for example, "My Man", composed, sung, and divinely accompanied on the steel guitar by guitarist Bernie Leadon): this song shot up to number one on the charts and from there everything changed, the Eagles moved to the major league, from a cult band to superstars, selling millions of records, making piles of money and then fights, cocaine, decadence, etc., etc.

The album is still decidedly country rock but already less so than the previous two, Don Henley began to sing most of the repertoire and write a good part of the lyrics, his tense but evocative voice became the group's trademark. Glenn Frey, the "leader," focused on singing, leaving the solos to the newcomer and to Leadon, but still did a good job on the slide in "Midnight Flyer", sung in his own way (i.e., an octave above normal) by bassist Randy Meisner.
It is perhaps the least known Eagles album, in my ranking of their studio works I place it second to last, superior only to the epitaph "The Long Run". It remains nonetheless an excellent effort, from people who know how to compose and sing in harmony like few others.