Happy Anniversary: The Eagles, The Long Run

35 years ago today, one of America’s most popular rock groups released the album that would be referred to as their final studio album for a very long run, indeed, and although that status changed with 2007’s Long Road Out of Eden, there’s still very much an end-of-an-era feeling to the found in the grooves of The Eagles’ The Long Run.

The Eagles had long since earned their status as rock gods by the time The Long Run hit record store shelves, resulting in the album entering the Billboard Top 200 at #2, and it only took one more week for it to take down the previous chart-topper, Led Zeppelin’s In Through the Out Door, and climb that one last rung to reach the pinnacle. This was no doubt a great relief to the band, given that A) the album took two years to complete, B) they had a heck of a lot to live up to after the ridiculously huge success of their previous album, Hotel California, and C) they were moving forward without founding member Randy Meisner in their ranks, with Timothy B. Schmit taking his spot in the lineup. That’s not to say that there weren’t critics who complained that it wasn’t as good as its predecessor, but the voices of the naysayers were decidedly overshadowed by the tremendous success of the album’s trio of hit singles: “Heartache Tonight,” “I Can’t Tell You Why,” and the title track. (The fact that it’s gone on to sell over seven million copies hasn’t hurt its reputation any, either.)

Unfortunately, despite the commercial success of The Long Run, tempers within the Eagles’ camp were running hot, and…well, we won’t go into the tale of how a concert in Long Beach reportedly led to the band’s dissolution, mostly because we don’t know all the sides of the story, but no matter when it happened, the end result was that the band was over and done with by the time 1980 had come to a conclusion.

Of course, as it turned out, they weren’t completely over and done with, but that’s a story for another time. For now, just go listen to The Long Run again.