It wasn’t for the money. At least, it didn’t start that way, sings Randy Meisner, opening side two of the Eagles’ sophomore album, Desperado. Meisner had the first half of his acoustic-heavy tale of a young man who leaves home to become a guitarist and turns toward a fugitive life, “Certain Kind of Fool,” written before asking bandmates Don Henley and Glenn Frey to help with the remaining lyrics.
“I had the beginning of it, but not the body of the song,” recalled Meisner in Discoveries magazine in 2006. “So, in London, they helped me finish it real quick, and it turned out real good. It fit with what they were portraying in the theme. That outlaw theme was a neat idea.”
In the 2013 History of the Eagles documentary, Meisner added, “That’s usually what would happen. I would get a verse or two, and I’m done, and they would help fill in the blanks.”
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Produced by Glyn Johns and recorded in 1973 at Island Studios in London, the songs on Desperado were inspired by the 19th-century Doolin-Dalton Gang outlaws. The stories resonated with the band, with Henley being from Texas, Frey from Michigan, Meisner, a Nebraska native, and Bernie Leadon from Minnesota, and their quest for a different life, out west.
“All of us went out west,” said Leadon. “People would go to LA and fail, and the responsible ones would move back home and start a family, while the malcontent never-say-die type personalities said, ‘No, I’m staying!’ That was our story. The idea was: ‘How are we feeling about our lives and what we’re doing, and would the people in a gang have felt the same way?’”
Leadon added, “Breaking out of societal expectations and doing something extraordinary. We were just kids, but we were looking at our lives and trying to make reasonable comments about it.”
Meisner’s storyline follows a man drawn to the path that would bring him recognition, living as an outlaw or playing guitar.
He was a poor boy, raised in a small family
He kinda had a craving for somethin’ no one else could see
They say that he was crazy
The kind that no lady should meet
He ran out to the city and wandered around in the street
He wants to dance, oh yeah
He wants to sing, oh yeah
He wants to see the lights a-flashin’ and listen to the thunder ring
He saw it in a window
The mark of a new kind of man
He kinda liked the feeling, so shiny and smooth in his hand
He took it to the country and practiced for days without rest
And then one day he felt if
He knew he could stand with the best
They got respect, oh yeah
He wants the same, oh yeah
And it’s a certain kind of fool
Who likes to hear the sound of his own name
“We got to do this outlaw album and we had eight songs finished, and we needed two more,” recalled Frey during a BBC in Concert in March 1973. “The idea Randy came up with was how the guy became an outlaw or how he became a guitar player.”
“Certain Kind of Fool” aas part of the Eagles’ setlist during the 1973 through ’74 Desperado era, and was typically performed before “Outlaw Man,” but was dropped from live shows after this period. Meisner also left the song out of his solo sets since it was part of the Desperado narrative.
Photo: Henry Diltz
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