How a West Hollywood Restaurant Booth Inspired The Eagles' No. 1 Hit 'Best of My Love'

Effie OrfanidesSun, March 1, 2026 at 2:49 PM UTC

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(David Tan/Shinko Music/Getty Images)

Fifty-one years ago today, the Eagles soared to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with "Best of My Love," their first No. 1 single and a defining soft-rock anthem of the 1970s. The hit, featured on their 1974 album On the Border, began taking shape in an unlikely place: a booth at Dan Tana's, where Don Henley later recalled working on the lyrics near the famed Troubadour.

Interestingly, it seems the melody for "The Best of My Love" was created by chance.

"I was playing acoustic guitar one afternoon in Laurel Canyon," Glenn Frey told Cameron Crowe in 2003. "I was trying to figure out a tuning that Joni Mitchell had shown me a couple of days earlier. I got lost and ended up with the guitar tuning for what would later turn out to be 'The Best of My Love.'"

Dan Tana's is located on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood and was a popular hangout spot for the Eagles. The band famously wrote the track "Lyin' Eyes" on a napkin at the restaurant.

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According to American Songwriter, some of the band members were hanging out at the Italian eatery one day when they saw an attractive female with an older man. Frey said to Henry, "she can’t even hide those lying eyes," and, from there, the song's lyrics pretty much wrote themselves. The guys started taking notes on napkins based on what was happening around them. According to Frey, it took the band just two nights to compose the song.

The Eagles have a big 2026 ahead, with upcoming shows at The Sphere in Las Vegas. The band received rave reviews after their shows at the venue in 2024.

“For more than 50 years, the Eagles have been painting vivid pictures with their music, from the dark desert highway of ‘Hotel California’ to the billion stars all around of ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ to the cold, cold city of ‘Life in the Fast Lane.’ On Friday night, those images came to intense life at Las Vegas’ Sphere, where the technology of 2024 finally caught up to the band’s enduring artistry and created a technicolor display worthy of their classic, illustrative songs from the 1970s and beyond," Billboard said.

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This story was originally published by Parade on Mar 1, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”