TOP 40 DEBUT: December 8, 1979
PEAK POSITION: #8 (February 2, 1980)
Don Henley is a man not known for understatement. But in the vastly entertaining documentary History Of The Eagles, he sums up the era surrounding 1979’s The Long Runwith these words: “It reached a point where we were just tired of each other. Tired of the hoopla. Tired of touring. Tired of pretty much everything.”
You can hear that exhaustion all over “The Long Run,” a perfectly adequate single from a band capable of so much more. Throw stones all you want—and there’s bound to be plenty, given the Eagles’ permanent status as critical punching bags—but Hotel California is a legitimately fantastic album. Like several other late ‘70s blockbusters (Rumours and Aja for starters), years of cultural ubiquity have dulled its once-thrilling impact. But listen to Hotel California now, and that record is top-to-bottom solid. Sick to death of the title track or “Life In The Fast Lane”? No problem. The deep cuts (“Pretty Maids All In A Row,” “The Last Resort”) are miles better. No wonder the Eagles blew themselves up trying to top it.
The Long Run manages a few soaring highs of its own (“Those Shoes,” “In The City,” and a song we’ll be discussing later), offset by way too many crushing lows. (Let us never mention “The Disco Strangler” again.) It’s not a bad album, per se. Mostly, it just sounds like a band going through the motions, one whose members are—to quote Henley again—“completely burned out.” The album’s title track crackles and snaps with professionalism, of course; this is the Eagles, after all. Timothy B. Schmidt’s bass locks in perfectly with Henley’s unflashy shuffle. Walsh and Felder intertwine lead lines like a two-headed snake. Frey… adds that little guitar rhythm, I assume. The whole thing goes down easy. But nothing stands out.
"The Long Run” is competence without passion, hooks without heart. It sounds like a million bucks and leaves zero lasting impact. It is no one’s favorite Eagles song. It is no one’s least favorite Eagles song. It simply exists. “The Long Run” was a Top 10 hit, the second single chosen from an album that eventually sold eight million copies, and yet it’s still significantly worse than any of the eight proper tracks comprising Hotel California. But it filled an Eagles-sized hole at radio, and that was enough. At this point in time, the band could’ve released a three-minute edit of Felder and Frey trading insults between songs (“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you.” Three more songs, asshole.”) and gone Top 20.
Perhaps the only truly interesting thing about “The Long Run” is its disputed origin. In his 1979 review for Rolling Stone, critic Dave Marsh accused the Eagles of ripping off “Trying To Live My Life Without You,” a #24 R&B hit for Otis Clay in 1972. I’m no great Marsh fan, but in this case? He’s not wrong. The rhythmic feel, the basic melody, even Henley’s opening gambit (“I used to…”): all feel suspiciously “borrowed” from Clay and his songwriter, Larry Williams.
And it gets weirder. On his 1980 tour, Bob Seger began to cover the song himself, ostensibly to throw shade towards Henley and Frey. (Yes, the same Henley and Frey who sang backup on Seger’s soon-to-be-released “Fire Lake.” The same Henley and Frey whose previous single, “Heartache Tonight,” was co-written with… Bob Seger. You could say their relationship was complicated.) And in September 1981, Seger twisted the knife a little further by releasing his own version of “Tryin’ To Live My Life Without You” to radio. Its eventual peak of #5? Three spots better than “The Long Run.” (We’ll discuss this song, and “Fire Lake,” in future installments, along with additional reasons to love Bob Seger.)
I do appreciate the irony in Henley’s lyrics, the idea of singing about going “the distance” and handling “some resistance” as his band implodes around him. But by this point, neither he—nor the rest of the Eagles—had the energy to truly sell the bitterness such irony demanded. Whatever serrated edge “The Long Run” possessed on paper got smoothed over in the execution. To quote History Of The Eagles yet again (but Frey this time): “We went out with a whimper, not a bang.”
GRADE: 5/10
I WANT MY MTV: See above.
BONUS BITS: I'm as baffled as you at the Eagles' decision to remove some (but not all) of their music from YouTube, leaving a cheap rip of the official video as the only online evidence that "The Long Run" exists. So, rather than post that clip—one of those faked “live in the studio” things that doesn’t require much money or imagination—twice, here's eleven minutes of David Letterman complaining about the Eagles' arcane licensing rules instead.