Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles

Background

The album was initiated by Eagles co-founder Don Henley with help from the band's manager, Irving Azoff. It was intended as a charity album to raise funds for the Walden Woods Project that Henley founded in 1990 to buy the land around Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. On the back cover of the album, it states:

A portion of the royalties from the sales of this collections will go to the Walden Woods Project, a non-profit organization founded in 1990. The purpose of the Walden Woods Project is to purchase, and thereby preserve, environmentally sensitive and historically significant forestland located near Henry David Thoreau's famed retreat at Walden Pond.

The idea for a charity album with country musicians came after a Walden Woods benefit concert in Los Angeles in May 1992 where several country artists also appeared. Later in the year at the 1992 Country Music Awards show, where Henley appeared with Trisha Yearwood in a duet, a number of artists told Henley how the Eagles’ music had inspired them. Henley and Azoff then decided that the project may be feasible, and with the help of record producer James Stroud, a number of country musicians were chosen for the album. The Eagles themselves were not involved as a band in this project, however, and none of its members played on the album, although Timothy B. Schmit provided harmony vocals for Vince Gill's rendition of "I Can't Tell You Why".

"Take It Easy"

The most notable track in the album was the cover of "Take It Easy" by Travis Tritt. The song reached No. 21 on the US Country chart, and No. 12 on the Canadian RPM chart. For the music video of his rendition of "Take It Easy", Tritt requested that Eagles join him for the filming, and the resulting video featured the full Long Run-era lineup of the Eagles (Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, and Schmit). It would be the first time since disbanding in 1980 that the five members of the band appeared together (Frey, Henley, Walsh and Schmit, however, had all united for a benefit concert in 1990). Their appearance on the video subsequently led to the band being officially reformed. Both Frey and Henley met with their management over lunch two months later and agreed to a reunion, and a new album, Hell Freezes Over, was released and a concert tour launched the following year. Frey, who had previously been reluctant to reunite with the band, later said of the making of the video: "After years passed, you really sort of remember that you were friends first ... I just remembered how much we genuinely had liked each other and how much fun we'd had."

Personnel

Compiled from liner notes.

Technical

Production

The 1994 Country Music Association (CMA) award for Album of the Year was awarded jointly to Suzy Bogguss, Tony Brown, Don Cook, Jerry Crutchfield, Billy Dean, Christy DiNapoli, Garth Fundis, Doug Grau, Scott Hendricks, Richard Landis, Lynn Peterzell, Monty Powell, Keith Stegall, and James Stroud for their contributions in producing the album.