Artists
Musicians featured in this piece are:
Don Henley – lead vocals, drums
Glenn Frey – piano, backing vocals
Bernie Leadon – electric guitar, backing vocals
Randy Meisner – bass, backing vocals
Jim Ed Norman – string arrangement, piano
Written by Don Henley & Glenn Frey. Produced by Glyn Johns, engineered by Glyn Johns with Howard Kilgour as assistant engineer, string arrangement recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra.
“Desperado” traces back to a song Don Henley began writing in 1968 in the style of old Stephen Foster tunes, later reworked with Glenn Frey into their first songwriting collaboration, written at a Laurel Canyon house in the winter of 1972. Producer Glyn Johns brought in Jim Ed Norman, Henley’s old bandmate from Shiloh, to arrange a sweeping orchestral backing recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. Despite never being released as a single and the Desperado album underperforming commercially compared to the band’s debut, the song became one of the Eagles’ most enduring tracks, helped in part by Linda Ronstadt‘s own recording of it, which Henley has credited with first popularizing the song.
Eagles – Desperado Lyrics
Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
You’ve 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, whoa, 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 walkin’ through this world all alone
Don’t your feet get cold in the wintertime?
The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine
It’s hard to tell the nighttime from the day
You’re losin’ all your highs and lows
Ain’t it funny how the feelin’ 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
To listen to other songs from the Teleskop 17 program and the full program, click here.