The Story Behind “Peaceful Easy Feeling” By The Eagles
The Eagles live in 1973 - Juana Vaina / Youtube
From The Eagles’ debut get-go with their self-titled album, “Peaceful Easy Feeling” achieved massive success as it became a radio staple and ranked pretty high in the charts for breakout single. But do you know how the song came to be? Read on to find out.
The song was written by American singer-songwriter Jack Tempchin in a period where he was performing at folk coffee shops in San Diego. During one particular instance that he was waiting for a waitress to hook up with (who was a no-show, by the way), Tempchin was left with no ride home, so he crashed on the floor of the club to sleep. He couldn’t sleep, however, so he grabbed his guitar and wrote the first draft of “Peaceful Easy Feeling” on a piece of promotional poster his friend made for him.
He soon finished the song up and went to hang at the Troubadour where he hung out with Jackson Browne, Glenn Frey, and other new faces in the block as well. Frey heard him play the song one day and made a cassette recording for Frey to take home. Frey came back the next day with a demo he did with Linda Ronstadt’s backing band – who would become the future Eagles.
The song’s placid and laid-back arrangement evokes a sigh of contentment and resignation, where the lyrics talk about a man’s admiration for a lady and how he’d love if things would go right for them, but he doesn’t dismiss the fact that it might all be for naught as she might leave one day. “It’s not a love song exactly. The guy’s going, ‘Hey, either way it’s going to be fine’,” says Tempchin.
Tempchin says the inspiration for the song came when he was just a young musician on the lookout for love, saying, “We’d sit in front of the picture window and watch the beautiful girls on the bus stop bench and fall in love with them until their bus came. We talked in those days about how love never seems to show up until you stop looking for it. But, as young guys, we were unable to stop looking for love even for one day.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEVa4ZNOna0
