On the Border

On the Border is the third studio album by American rock band the Eagles, released on March 22, 1974. Apart from two songs produced by Glyn Johns, it was produced by Bill Szymczyk because the group wanted a more rock‑oriented sound instead of the country-rock feel of the first two albums. It is the first Eagles album to feature guitarist Don Felder. On the Border reached number 17 on the Billboard album chart and has sold two million copies. Three singles were released from the album: "Already Gone", "James Dean" and "Best of My Love". The singles peaked at numbers 32, 77 and 1 respectively. "Best of My Love" became the band's first of five chart toppers. The album also includes "My Man", which had started as Bernie Leadon's tribute to his old friend Duane Allman, who always greeted Leadon saying "Hey, My Man", hence the name of the song, and who had died in 1971 in a motorcycle accident. "My Man" eventually also became a tribute to Leadon's old bandmate and friend Gram Parsons, who had died of a drug overdose the year prior at Joshua Tree National Monument in southeastern California. Leadon and Parsons had played together in the pioneer country-rock band The Flying Burrito Brothers, before Leadon joined the Eagles. This is the earliest album by the Eagles to have been released in Quadraphonic surround sound. It was released on Quadraphonic 8-track tape and CD-4 LP. A hidden message, carved into the run-out groove of some vinyl LP copies, reads: "He who hesitates is lunch".