“G ARY Burden was an architect,” Henry Diltz says, recalling the pioneering work done by Burden, the designer of some of the ’70s most iconic album covers. “He was fixing Mama Cass’s house, and she told him, ‘If you can make a blueprint, you can make an album sleeve.’” His work on the Eagles’ debut certainly boasts architectural ambition. “Gary had the idea he would print this thing 24 x 24 inches,” Diltz explains, “like four album covers in a square, opening like a poster. When I was high on peyote he told me, ‘Just get on your hands and knees and photograph the desert floor,’ for the inner sleeve. The album was supposed to wrap around it, with a picture on the bottom of the Eagles around the campfire, and then right at the very pinnacle in blue sky was an eagle flying. It would have been very beautiful.
But David Geffen thought, ‘That’s too far out,’ and told the printers, ‘Just glue it shut.’ Which was really stupid, because now the inner spread is upside-down! Geffen made similar last-minute changes on Desperado and On The Border. So he saved three cents an album! His business sense and Gary’s design sense kept butting heads.”