The Eagles had not released a full studio album since 1979, but on October 30, 2007, the band returned with Long Road Out of Eden, their seventh studio album. It arrived on Lost Highway Records as the group's first double album, a double album that ran more than ninety minutes. Nobody expected the California rock institution to vanish quietly, yet the way this record reached the public was as startling as the music itself.
A Wal-Mart-only release strategy
For the first year, the album was available in North America only through the Eagles' own website or at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. It was a gamble that could have buried the project, but the result rewrote the rulebook: Long Road Out of Eden became the first album sold exclusively through select channels to reach the top of the US chart.
Long Road Out of Eden became the first album sold exclusively through select channels to reach the top of the US chart.
The road to that moment had been long. The band's previous studio album, The Long Run, came out in 1979, and after that the Eagles scattered. In 1994 they recorded four new songs for the live album Hell Freezes Over, and in 2003 they contributed the track Hole in the World to a greatest-hits collection. A Joe Walsh song appeared on a live DVD in 2005. But a full studio album remained out of reach while old tensions simmered and the music industry changed around them.
Six years of recording with Bill Szymczyk
Work on Long Road Out of Eden took nearly six years, with producer Bill Szymczyk returning to the fold. Szymczyk had shaped the band's earlier records, and his steady hand helped guide the sprawling sessions. The album was recorded in a hard-rock style that suited the Eagles' layered guitars and harmonies, and it gave the band room to stretch without losing the polish their fans expected.
When the album finally appeared, the chart battle became a story of its own. Long Road Out of Eden debuted at number one in the US only after Billboard changed its rules at the last moment. That change also blocked Britney Spears' Blackout from taking the top spot. Instead, the Eagles claimed their sixth consecutive number-one album in the US, a streak that stretched back through their classic run.
Sales figures and Grammy recognition
The numbers behind the release were staggering. The record became the best-selling album of the year, moving 3.5 million copies in the US alone. The RIAA certified it seven times platinum, a mark of the album's commercial strength. The exclusivity deal with Wal-Mart and the band's own site had not limited its reach; it had concentrated demand into a single, powerful channel. The album also earned Grammy recognition: it won Best Pop Instrumental Performance and received three other nominations, while the songs How Long and I Dreamed There Was No War brought the group two more awards.
Long Road Out of Eden also marked the end of an era in quieter ways. It was the band's first album without guitarist Don Felder, who had been dismissed in 2001, and it would be their last with Glenn Frey, who died in 2016. The band's future remained uncertain. In 2007 Don Henley said the album would probably be their last, but by 2010 Timothy B. Schmit was not ready to close the door, and Joe Walsh suggested the group might record one more before retiring.
Nearly two decades later, the album stands as a strange monument: a double hard-rock record from a veteran band that refused to play by the industry's fading rules, and won anyway. The Eagles did not just return with new music; they changed how that music could be sold, and the top of the Billboard chart proved they had made the right bet.