Song Lyric Sunday – Desperado

This week, Jim Adam’s prompts for Song Lyric Sunday are Alone, Confined, Depressed, Isolated, Restless and Solo . I instantly thought of Desperado by The Eagles because of the line:

And freedom, oh freedom, well that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

I always found truth in that statement. Hope you enjoy this classic Eagles song.

On the surface, this song is about a cowboy who refuses to fall in love, but it could also be about a young man who discovers guitars, joins a band, pays his dues and suffers for his art. The stress of being a rock star is a recurring theme in Eagles music (e.g. “Life In The Fast Lane”). The overall theme is how you must suffer for your art.

Don Henley began writing parts of this in the late ’60s, but it wasn’t arranged into a song until his songwriting teammate Glenn Frey came along. It was the first of many songs Henley and Frey wrote together.

Henley explained in the liner notes for The Very Best of the Eagles: “Glenn came over to write one day, and I showed him this unfinished tune that I had been holding for so many years. I said, ‘When I play it and sing it, I think of Ray Charles – Ray Charles and Stephen Foster. It’s really a Southern gothic thing, but we can easily make it more Western.’ Glenn leapt right on it – filled in the blanks and brought structure. And that was the beginning of our songwriting partnership – that’s when we became a team.”

The album had an Old West theme. It was inspired by The Dalton Gang, a notorious group of outlaws. The Eagles recorded it in the very cosmopolitan setting of Island Studios in the Notting Hill section of London with the British producer Glyn Johns, but they went Western for the tour, making their set look like Deadwood.

Courtesy of Songfacts

Lyrics

Desperado
The Eagles

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
You been out ridin’ fences for so long now
Oh, you’re a hard one
But I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin’ you
Can hurt you somehow
 
Don’t you draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy
She’ll beat you if she’s able
You know the Queen of Hearts is always your best bet
 
Now, it seems to me some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can’t get
 
Desperado, oh, you ain’t gettin’ no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they’re drivin’ you home
 
And freedom, oh freedom, well that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone
 
Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine
It’s hard to tell the night time from the day
You’re losin’ all your highs and lows
Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?
 
Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you (let somebody love you)
You better let somebody love you
Before it’s too late
 
Songwriters: Glenn Lewis Frey / Don Hugh Henley
Desperado lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group