“Desperado” by The Eagles

"Desperado" is the title song from the Eagles' second album, released in 1973, and it never went out as a single, yet it became one of the best-known songs the band ever recorded. Don Henley had been carrying the idea around since 1968, a tune in the old-fashioned Stephen Foster mold that was first written about a friend named Leo. In 1972, back from London, where they had cut their debut album, Eagles, Henley and Glenn Frey decided to become a songwriting team, and they finished "Desperado" within a day or two, with "Tequila Sunrise" following that same week.

The piano opening borrows the introduction from Ray Charles' "Georgia on My Mind", played there on strings. Frey is at the piano, Henley sings lead, and Glyn Johns produced and engineered. Rolling Stone later placed it at 494 on its 2004 list of the 500 greatest songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.