‘Best of My Love:’ Slays as a Hit but a Hacksaw to The Eagles’ Bond

For any Eagles fan out there, it’s easy to say that ‘Best of My Love’ has been one of the earliest milestones of their career. Released in 1975, the song is their first-ever #1 hit with Glenn Frey and Don Henley co-writing the song. But one of the mysteries that this band has hidden this whole time is why they don’t want to release the song again to the public, and why they dislike it despite the single being one of the factors for their success in the industry.

Pride and Preferences

As Glenn Frey contemplates one of the notes of ‘The Very Best of the Eagles’, he started having mixed emotions towards the song as he plays his acoustic guitar one afternoon in Lauren Canyon. This is while figuring out what the thing his colleague Joni Mitchell showed him a few days earlier. The memory was dire, but what he does remember is that his guitar got out of tune which leads him to draft the ‘Best of My Love’.

After Henley and Frey completed their soon-to-be blockbuster song, their band set out to record it at the Olympic records. For other members like Johns, the sudden creation of the song made a crack in the band’s solidarity. Their opinions on music shift from the group’s original purpose into what we call ‘personal preferences’. Johns wanted to continue to pursue country-rock elements as those were the original feel they have implemented when they released the first two albums of The Eagles. The musicians, on the other hand, wanted a new-experience with up-tempo songs.

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No Band Has it All

The Eagles eventually broke off. All the band members were perfectionists, but regardless of what the media says, the song has nothing to do with it. It probably started some cracks that caused rifts in their relationship.

Eliot’s biography writes how Frey refused to release ‘Best of My Love’ to be streamed on the radio despite it being a hitmaker. Olympic Records did their best to get the song back on track by cropping out parts other members hate, but to their dismay, Henley used his authority to immediately pull it out of the radio at its release.

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‘Best of My Love’ practically turned into a double-edged sword for the former band. Despite its success, it resulted in unwanted consequences that are too late to revert. Eventually, Olympic Records received an award from The Eagles manager Irving Azoff. It’s a gold record plaque which he infamously named the ‘Golden Hacksaw Award.’