A Joni Mitchell–Inspired Guitar Melody Shaped The Eagles' Best-Charting Single Of 1974

No Eagles song from 1974 performed better on the pop chart than "The Best of My Love," and it only existed because Glenn Frey tried to play guitar like singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. Mitchell's music is vaguely folk rock; the Eagles are history's most successful purveyors of country rock. Nevertheless, both parties were regulars in the electric Laurel Canyon music scene, and in 1973, Frey and Mitchell became a romantic item. The short-lived relationship lived on forever through "The Best of My Love."

"The Best of My Love" is a soft and warm song driven by a unique, finger-picked guitar motif, which was a derivation of Mitchell's style. "I was trying to figure out a tuning that Joni Mitchell had shown me a couple of days earlier," Eagles guitarist and singer Glenn Frey told Cameron Crowe (via The Uncool) in 2003. "I got lost and ended up with the guitar tuning for what would later turn out to be 'The Best of My Love.'"

The Eagles are rockers that became mega-successful off of their first single ever, but it took more than two years after "Take It Easy" hit the Top 20 for the group to score its first chart-topper. Debuting in late November 1974, "The Best of My Love" became the Eagles' top performing single of the year, following the disappointing No. 32 and No. 77 peaks for "Already Gone" and "James Dean," respectively. Here's the story of "The Best of My Love," the first-ever No. 1 for the Eagles.

While Glenn Frey took on the main music writing duties on "The Best of My Love," fellow Eagle Don Henley took charge of the lyrics, penning most of them in the bar at historic Los Angeles restaurant Dan Tana's, a hangout for the Eagles in the early 1970s. "The Best of My Love" sounds like a tender love song on first listen, what with lines like "every night, I'm lying in bed / holding you close in my dreams." But then comes the turn — it's a breakup song that will take every Boomer back to their first heartache.

In "The Best of My Love," the narrator sheepishly laments saying things he can't take back, recalling how the relationship was irrevocably fractured. He realizes that he couldn't accept the outpouring of love his former flame tried to give, and how he's left reeling with a broken heart and a bundle of regrets. It's part of the shady truth about Don Henley that "The Best of My Love" is based on a true story of an ugly split. Henley wrote his part just after breaking up with actor Suzannah Martin, so "The Best of My Love" is about letting the proverbial "one that got away" get away, and dealing with the painful consequences. In the end, the Eagles' chart-topping smash was inspired by two women, musically constructively and lyrically cathartically.