Jim has given us a long list of related words for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, inviting us to play a song ‘that mentions abandoning, departing, deserting, exiting, leaving, resigning, or retiring.’ Is it National Bugger Off Day, or something? Nope, his post explains that today is the anniversary of the day that Paul told the others he was leaving The Beatles. But given the American propensity to name days for ridiculous reasons, I vote to put my idea forward!

It didn’t take me long to choose a song for this, as this has long been a favourite of mine:

Having to get round the usual restrictions on anything by The Eagles I found this one, which is described as a ‘studio version’ but shows a live performance. I’m getting old and easily confused, and that does it for me! But before I forget, in my dotage, you can of course find the lyrics at genius.com.

A little unusually for The Eagles they didn’t write this song: it was by two singer-songwriters called Jack Tempchin and Robb Strandlund, about five years before The Eagles did their version. Jack was then managing a club called The Back Door at San Diego State College (which later became San Diego State University). The club was a showcase for folk music, and he and Robb often performed there together. Songfacts quotes him as saying

“We were playing one night and we were in the back room, which was the kitchen where there were these big refrigerator doors. I opened the door and there was a white jug. So I got this jug out, and for some reason, we thought it would be OK to just drink out of this jug. It was hard cider, and I had never had any alcohol or any drugs or anything at that point.

So, we were drinking out of this jug and we started to feel really good, and I said, ‘Let’s write a country song.’ So in about 20 minutes in the back room there, we wrote ‘Already Gone.’ The chorus goes ‘woo hoo hoo’ because I just felt so good suddenly.”

Jack was good friends with Glenn Frey of The Eagles, and whilst he had played the song himself a few times he was apparently surprised to get a phone call from Glenn, who was in the recording studio. Glenn said something like “Do you know that country song you wrote? I think that’d be a good rock song.” Then he held the phone up to the speakers and played Jack their newly recorded version of his song.

The Eagles opened their third album, On The Border, with Already Gone. The album came out in March 1974 and peaked at #17 in the US and #28 in the UK: it has since gone 2x Platinum in the US and Silver in the UK. This was the first single taken from it, in April 1974, reaching #32 in the US and #12 in Canada. The album was notable for being the first the band recorded in the US: their two previous records had been recorded in England, but they felt they needed a change of both location and producer, and Glenn has said that moving the process to LA helped him relax more with his music.

Songfacts comments that The Eagles often had notable lines in their lyrics, and cites two from this song:

So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key

When you look up in the sky
You can see the stars and still not see the light

I’d add a third to those, the one I have partially used for today’s title. This is a reminder of the opening verse: