The Best Eagles Solo Albums You May Have Missed

The years between the release of 1979’s The Long Run and 1994’s Hell Freezes Over marked a major period of separation for the Eagles. During this time and beyond, band anchors Glenn Frey and Don Henley experimented heavily with new sounds—displaying unexpected penchants for saxophones and synthesizers respectively—while trying to connect with new audiences. Meanwhile, members like Joe Walsh, Bernie Leadon, and Timothy B. Schmit brought their own unique resumes to the table, though not every side project found lasting mainstream traction.

Why Some Solo Projects Slipped Through the Cracks

Several solo records arrived at inopportune times in the music industry. Glenn Frey’s most underrated LP followed three straight gold-selling Top 40 hits, but ultimately failed to chart amid major industry shifts. Other members struggled to get their solo output moving while the band was still active.

Don Felder’s “Heavy Metal (Takin’ a Ride)” reached No. 43 on the Hot 100 in 1981 and topped the Mainstream Rock chart, but he didn’t truly focus on his solo career until the 2010s, long past the group’s heyday. Similarly, early roots contributor Bernie Leadon—an alumnus of the Flying Burrito Brothers—did not release his most complete solo project until 2025’s well-received Too Late To Be Cool.

Timothy B. Schmit brought his experience from country-rock pioneers Poco to the fold, yet his most underrated solo album failed to chart. In fact, it was just one of five Schmit solo releases to meet a tough commercial fate. Schmit’s career best-seller remains 1987’s synth-driven Timothy B, which reached No. 106.

Shadowed By Massive Success

The label of “underrated” does not always point to commercial failure. In some cases, strong LPs were simply cast aside by far greater blockbusters that followed.

Don Henley earned a gold-selling, Top 25 release featuring the No. 3 breakthrough single “Dirty Laundry.” However, that record became somewhat overlooked once his next two albums combined for nearly 10 million sales in the U.S. alone, overshadowing everything outside of 1984’s Building the Perfect Beast and 1989’s End of the Innocence.

Randy Meisner followed an undistinguished solo debut with an underrated album boasting a No. 22 hit single (“Deep Inside My Heart,” 1980), alongside another release that just missed the Top 20. Despite those relative peaks, the music largely faded from public memory before Meisner ultimately stepped away from solo recordings prior to his death in 2023.

Joe Walsh’s 1981 album There Goes the Neighborhood peaked at No. 20 — its lead single, “A Life of Illusion,” reached No. 34 on the Hot 100 but topped the Mainstream Rock chart. Walsh later hit a platinum peak with 1978’s But Seriously, Folks…, leaving earlier efforts sitting in the shadows.

Related reading: Patti Smith and Carlos Santana Contributes to New John Coltrane Book, Don Henley Reflects on the Making of the Eagles’ Hotel California, Eagles Founding Member Randy Meisner Dies at 77

Why Some of These Careers Took Off and Others Didn’t

The gap between Henley’s and Frey’s commercial solo success and everyone else’s isn’t really a talent gap — it’s largely a timing and identity one. Henley and Frey were the Eagles’ primary singers and public faces, so their solo records had an existing audience ready to follow them, and both leaned into the era’s dominant sound (glossy, synth-inflected ’80s pop-rock) rather than fighting it. Walsh, Felder, Leadon, Meisner, and Schmit were, to varying degrees, defined by their instrumental or harmony roles within the band rather than as its voice — a harder position from which to launch a solo career, regardless of how good the songs were. It’s the same pattern that plays out across most bands with one or two clearly dominant frontmen: the singers’ solo careers get a running start the instrumentalists don’t.

Bernie Leadon’s 2025 return, Too Late to Be Cool, is a useful coda to that pattern: forty-plus years after leaving the band, and with no chart expectations attached, he made the kind of unhurried, craft-focused country-rock record that a mid-career solo album chasing radio play in 1978 might not have allowed him to make.

Sources & Further Reading

• Wikipedia — There Goes the Neighborhood (Joe Walsh album, chart peak reference)
• Wikipedia — “Heavy Metal (Takin’ a Ride)” (Don Felder single, chart peak reference)
• Wikipedia — “Deep Inside My Heart” (chart peak reference)
• Noise11 — “Ex-Eagles Bernie Leadon to Release First Album in 22 Years”