Joe Walsh The Eagles

The Eagles began when Linda Ronstadt and then-manager John Boylan recruited session musicians Glenn Frey and Don Henley in the spring of 1971. Henley had moved to Los Angeles from Texas with his band Shiloh (produced by Kenny Rogers), and Frey had come from Michigan and formed Longbranch Pennywhistle; they had met in 1970 at The Troubadour in Los Angeles and became acquainted through their mutual record label, Amos Records. Randy Meisner, who had been working with Ricky Nelson's backing band, and Bernie Leadon, a veteran of The Flying Burrito Brothers, joined Ronstadt's group of performers for her summer tour.

The original Eagles played live together only once, backing Ronstadt for a July concert at Disneyland, but all four appeared on her eponymous album. After the gig with Ronstadt, Henley and Frey asked Leadon and Meisner to form a band, and they soon signed with Asylum Records, the new label started by David Geffen.

The name of the band was first suggested by Leadon during a peyote and tequila-influenced group outing in the Mojave Desert, when he recalled reading about the Hopi's reverence for the eagle. Steve Martin, a friend of the band from their early days at The Troubadour, recounts in his autobiography that he suggested that they should be referred to as "the Eagles," but Frey insists that the group's name is simply "Eagles". Geffen and partner Elliot Roberts initially managed the band; they were later replaced by Irving Azoff.