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Eagles · S2 E4
Peaceful Easy Feeling
Jack Tempchin's song, sung by Glenn Frey. Three hit singles from one debut album. The harmonies are already perfect
San Diego, 1971. A singer-songwriter named Jack Tempchin walks out of a bar after meeting a girl whose name he will never remember, sits down with a guitar, and writes a song in twenty minutes that Eagles will turn into their third consecutive hit.
Eagles, Peaceful Easy Feeling (1972). The third single from the debut. Where "Take It Easy" drives and "Witchy Woman" broods, this song just breathes. Glenn Frey's vocal is the most relaxed sound on the entire record, and the harmonies on the chorus feel like a warm California evening.
The Outsider
Jack Tempchin is not in Eagles. He is not signed to Asylum Records. He is a folk singer working the coffeehouse circuit in San Diego, playing small rooms for small crowds. Frey hears "Peaceful Easy Feeling" once and knows immediately he wants to sing it.
“I went to this dance at a bar, met this girl, and there was just this feeling between us. I went home and wrote the song in about twenty minutes. That was it.”
— Jack Tempchin, interview with Songfacts, 2013
Peaceful Easy Feeling, Eagles (1972)
The song is built on a warm acoustic foundation with one of the simplest chord progressions on the album. Listen for the way Glenn Frey's vocal never pushes, never strains, just sits inside the melody like he has been singing it his entire life. The harmonies enter on the chorus one voice at a time, each layer adding warmth. Glyn Johns' production is perfectly transparent here, as if the studio walls have dissolved and you are hearing four people play in someone's living room.
TAP TO REVEAL: What happened to the friendship between Jack Tempchin and Glenn Frey after "Peaceful Easy Feeling"?
Who wrote "Peaceful Easy Feeling"?
Certain Kind of Fool, Eagles (Desperado, 1973)
This overlooked single from Desperado shows where Eagles' softer side would go after the debut. The harmonies are lush, the arrangement is gentle, and you can hear the same instinct that made "Peaceful Easy Feeling" work: let the voices do the heavy lifting and get out of the way.
Three hit singles from four songwriters who can all sing lead. Next: the gift and the curse of a band with no frontman, and the first signs that a democracy of four egos might not survive.
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