Each of the members has pursued a solo career, with Don Henley’s the most successful commercially and critically. In the ’90s, after what they considered a "14 year break", the band’s sound was frequently cited as an influence by young country stars, many of whom contributed tracks to the album Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles (#3, 1993), which won Album of the Year at the 1994 Country Music Associations's CMA Awards. That same year, the Eagles revival culminated in the band’s reunion tour and album.
The group originally coalesced from L.A.’s country-rock community. Before producer John Boylan assembled them as Linda Ronstadt’s backup band on her album Silk Purse (1970), the four original Eagles were already experienced professionals. Bernie Leadon had played in the Dillard and Clark Expedition and the Flying Burrito Brothers; Randy Meisner, with Poco and Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band. Glenn Frey had played with various Detroit rock bands (including Bob Seger’s) and Longbranch Pennywhistle (with J.D. Souther, a sometime songwriting partner), and Henley had been with a transplanted Texas group, Shiloh. After working with Ronstadt, Henley and Frey decided to form the Eagles, recruiting Leadon and Meisner.
Intending to take the country rock of the Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers a step further toward hard rock, the Eagles recorded their first album with producer Glyn Johns in England. Take It Easy (#12, 1972), written by Frey and Jackson Browne, went gold shortly after its release, as did their debut album of the same name. (Another single, Witchy Woman, reached #9 that year.)
Desperado was a concept album with enough of a plot line to encourage rumors of a movie version. The LP yielded no major pop hits, but its title track, Desperado, a ballad penned by Henley and Frey, has become a classic rock standard covered by Linda Ronstadt among others.
With On the Border, the Eagles changed producers, bringing in Bill Szymczyk (who worked on all subsequent albums through 1982’s Greatest Hits, vol. 2) and adding Don Felder, who had recorded with Flow in Gainesville, Florida (and who once gave guitar lessons to another Gainesville native, Tom Petty), then became a session guitarist and studio engineer in New York, Boston, and L.A.
The increased emphasis on rock attracted more listeners - mid-’70s hits included Best of My Love (#1, 1975), One of These Nights (#1, 1975), Lyin’ Eyes (#2, 1975), and Take It to the Limit (#4, 1975) - but alienated Leadon. After One of These Nights, Leadon left to form the Bernie Leadon–Michael Georgiades Band, which released Natural Progressions in 1977. (Leadon went on to become a Nashville session musician, and in the ’90s formed Run-C&W, a jokester group who played a blend of country and R&B.)
Leadon was replaced by Joe Walsh, who had established himself with the James Gang and as a solo artist. His Eagles debut, Hotel California, was their third consecutive #1 album (the second was their record-breaking 1976 greatest-hits compilation). New Kid in Town (#1, 1976), the title cut Hotel California (#1, 1977), and Life in the Fast Lane (#11, 1977) spurred sales of more than 15 million copies worldwide.
Meisner left in 1977, replaced by Timothy B. Schmit, who had similarly replaced him in Poco. Meisner has released two solo albums, Randy Meisner (1978) and One More Song (1980). (In 1981, he toured with the Silveradoes; later, in 1990, Meisner reemerged in the group Black Tie, alongside Billy Swan and Bread’s James Griffin.) Henley and Frey sang backup on One More Song, and in the late ’70s they also appeared on albums by Bob Seger and Randy Newman. In 1981 Henley duetted with Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks on the #6 single Leather and Lace.
Between outside projects and legal entanglements, it took the Eagles two years and $1 million to make the multiplatinum LP The Long Run, their last album of all-new material. Parting hit singles included Heartache Tonight (#1, 1979), The Long Run (#8, 1980), and I Can’t Tell You Why (#8, 1980).
Walsh continued to release solo albums, though his biggest single to date has been 1978’s cheeky Life’s Been Good (#12). Felder and Schmit also put out their own albums and contributed songs to film soundtracks. Schmit’s second LP, Timothy B, included Boys Night Out (#25, 1987).
In 1982 Don Henley and Glenn Frey both embarked on solo careers. Frey charted with The One You Love (#15, 1982) and Sexy Girl (#20, 1984) before a movie proved his ticket into the Top 10: The Heat Is On, featured in Beverly Hills Cop, shot to #2 in 1985.
Frey followed this success by becoming an actor, making a guest appearance as a drug dealer on the popular TV series Miami Vice. The episode was based on a track from his album The Allnighter, Smuggler’s Blues, which consequently reached #12 (1985). Later in 1985, Frey’s You Belong to the City hit #2. While still dabbling in acting with roles in the short-lived TV series South of Sunset, the movie Jerry Maguire, and a guest spot on the Don Johnson post–Miami Vice series Nash Bridges in the ’90s, Frey also cofounded a music label, Mission Records, in 1997.
Ultimately, though, Henley was the ex-Eagle who garnered the greatest chart success, and the most critical acclaim as well. His Dirty Laundry (from his first solo effort, I Can’t Stand Still) made it to #3, but the 1985 album Building the Perfect Beast was to be his true arrival as solo hitmaker and respected singer/songwriter. The kickoff single, The Boys of Summer, went to #5 - supported by an evocative black-and-white video that fast became an MTV favourite - and earned Henley a Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male; the hits All She Wants to Do Is Dance (#9, 1985) and Sunset Grill (#22, 1985) followed. A third album, The End of the Innocence, produced a #8 title track, End of the Innocence, and the additional singles The Last Worthless Evening and The Heart of the Matter, which both hit #21. The LP won Henley another Grammy, in the same category as before.
In the early ’90s, Henley sought release from his Geffen Records contract, initiating a long and bitter legal dispute. After participating in the release of a solo best-of album in 1995, Henley was freed from his contract. Five years later, he released a studio album of all-new material, Inside Job (coproduced by former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch), and embarked on a solo tour to support it. Henley had married for the first time in May 1995 and had three children before releasing Inside Job. This life-altering change for the longtime bachelour resulted in a new theme in his songwriting; several of Inside Job’s tracks were clearly about marriage and family, including the gentle ballad Taking You Home (#58 pop, #1 Adult Contemporary, 2000). Much of the rest of the album, however, still explored Henley’s cynicism toward the business world and the media.
In 1990 Henley founded the Walden Woods Project, dedicated to preserving historic lands around Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts (where Henry David Thoreau and others reflected and wrote), from corporate development. Among the singer’s various fund-raising means were holding charity concerts, featuring other top rock artists, and donating proceeds from some of his own recordings, including a reggae version of the Guys and Dolls standard “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat” (1993). In 1993 the Walden Woods Project got a big boost from Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles, coorganised by Henley and featuring Clint Black, Trisha Yearwood, Travis Tritt, and others.
In 1994, after years of fielding off reunion rumours, Henley, Frey, Walsh, Felder, and Schmit - who had appeared together in the video for Tritt’s version of Take It Easy - hit the road for a massively successful tour, the third-highest grossing concert tour of that year. The tour went on hiatus toward the end of 1994, due to Frey’s gastrointestinal surgery, but it continued in 1995. In November 1994, the band released Hell Freezes Over, which featured four new songs, including the singles Get Over It (#31, 1994), Love Will Keep Us Alive (#1 Adult Contemporary, 1994), Learn to Be Still (#15 Adult Contemporary, 1995), and 11 of the old hits culled from the band’s 1994 live appearance on MTV. Within months the reunion LP had sold more than 10 million copies and gone to #1 on the pop album chart.
In 1998 the Eagles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. All seven members of the band performed together for the first time at the induction ceremony. The core members of the group - the ones who had recorded and toured together in the mid-’90s - reunited again for a few concerts at the end of 1999, including a New Year’s Eve show in L.A. A four-CD retrospective set, Eagles 1972–1999: Selected Works (#109, 2000), was released in November 2000.
Don Felder was fired from the band in 2000, leaving Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit as the remaining members of the band.
In 2007 they released a double album Long Road out of Eden, logically followed by a world tour, which was, regardless of people's opinion on the new album, a guaranteed sold-out event. The base line-up on this album is Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit. Also performing on the studio recording are Steuart Smith (guitar, keyboard, mandolin), Scott Crago (percussion) and Will Hollis (keyboard).
On January 18, 2016, it was announced that Glenn Frey had died at the age of 67 in New York City from complications arising from rheumatoid arthritis, colitis and pneumonia.
New Kid in Town
Eagles Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Great expectations, everybody's watching you
People you meet, they all seem to know you
Even your old friends treat you like you're something new
Johnny come lately
The new kid in town
Everybody loves you
You look in her eyes, the music begins to play
Hopeless romantics, here we go again
But after a while you're looking the other way
It's those restless hearts that never mend
Johnny come lately
The new kid in town
Will she still love you
When you're not around?
There's so many things you should have told her
But night after night you're willing to hold her
Just hold her
Tears on your shoulder
There's talk on the street, it's there to remind you
It doesn't really matter which side you're on
You're walking away and they're talking behind you
They will never forget you 'til somebody new comes along
Where you been lately?
There's a new kid in town
Everybody loves him, don't they?
And he's holding her, and you're still around
Oh, my, my
There's a new kid in town
Just another new kid in town
Everybody's talking 'bout the new kid in town
Everybody's walking like the new kid in town
There's a new kid in town, I don't want to hear it
There's a new kid in town, I don't want to hear it
There's a new kid in town
There's a new kid in town
There's a new kid in town, everybody's talking
There's a new kid in town, people started walking
There's a new kid in town
There's a new kid in town
There's a new kid in town
The lyrics to Eagles' song "New Kid in Town" tell the story of someone who is new to a particular place, and is experiencing the overwhelming emotions that come with sudden popularity and attention. The first stanza describes how everyone seems to know the new kid, and how even their old friends treat them like something special. The second stanza introduces the idea of a romantic interest, and how the new kid is caught up in a whirlwind of emotions shared by all hopeless romantics.
The third stanza introduces a sense of regret and missed opportunities, as the new kid realizes all the things they should have said and done. However, they are still willing to share their love and support with this new person, even though tears are being shed. Finally, the last stanza describes the realization that the new kid is just one in a series of constantly changing figures on the scene. This person has become popular and important, but eventually, they too will be displaced by a new arrival who captures everyone's attention.
Throughout the song, there is a sense of longing and nostalgia for a simpler time when things were not so complicated. It also highlights the fickleness of human emotions and the fleeting nature of popularity.
Line by Line Meaning
There's talk on the street, it sounds so familiar
People are talking about you because you are new and exciting
Great expectations, everybody's watching you
Everyone has high hopes for you and is paying close attention to your actions
People you meet, they all seem to know you
You are already famous and recognized by everyone you meet
Even your old friends treat you like you're something new
Your old friends are treating you differently now that you have achieved success and fame
Johnny come lately
You are a newcomer and people are taking notice
The new kid in town
You are the center of attention because you are new to this place
Everybody loves you
People are enamored with your newfound success and popularity
So don't let them down
Do not disappoint those who have high hopes for you
You look in her eyes, the music begins to play
You are falling in love and everything feels perfect
Hopeless romantics, here we go again
You are getting swept up in the fantasy of romance and love
But after a while you're looking the other way
Eventually, the romance fades and you start to lose interest
It's those restless hearts that never mend
Some people are never able to find true love and constantly move on to new relationships
Will she still love you
You are uncertain if your new love will remain loyal when you are not around
When you're not around?
You fear that your new love's affection for you will disappear when you are not together
There's so many things you should have told her
You regret not expressing your true feelings to your love
But night after night you're willing to hold her
Despite your regrets, you still want to be close to your love and hold her
Tears on your shoulder
You are comforting your love and being there for her in her time of need
It doesn't really matter which side you're on
Everyone talks behind your back regardless of whether they support you or not
You're walking away and they're talking behind you
People are gossiping about you even as you leave the situation
They will never forget you 'til somebody new comes along
People will continue to talk about you until someone else new arrives to steal the spotlight
There's a new kid in town
Someone else has arrived and taken over the attention
Everybody's talking 'bout the new kid in town
People are fascinated with and discussing the new arrival
Everybody's walking like the new kid in town
Everyone is trying to emulate the new arrival and be like them
I don't want to hear it
You are tired of hearing about the new arrival and wish everyone would move on
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: Don Henley, John Souther, Glenn Frey
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind