Katie Allen
Associate Specialist
Lot 52
Eagles: The original hand-drawn concept design by Gary Burden for the album cover for Desperado, 1973, 2
20 – 30 June 2025, 12:00 PDT
Online, Los AngelesUS$30,000 - US$40,000
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Fred Lawton
Cataloguer
Claire Tole-Moir
Head of Department
Eagles: The original hand-drawn concept design by Gary Burden for the album cover for Desperado,
1973,
four panels, pencil on blank LP cover, each panel with Gary Burden's artwork design for the album cover, with handwritten annotations such as Move Art To Right and written dimensions in black marker, accompanied by a black and white photograph taken by Henry Diltz (sold without copyright) with Burden notes in black marker reading Crop Pix From Right Edge...,
each panel 12 x 12in (2)
four panels, pencil on blank LP cover, each panel with Gary Burden's artwork design for the album cover, with handwritten annotations such as Move Art To Right and written dimensions in black marker, accompanied by a black and white photograph taken by Henry Diltz (sold without copyright) with Burden notes in black marker reading Crop Pix From Right Edge...,
each panel 12 x 12in (2)
Footnotes
For the Desperado album cover, Burden collaborated with photographer Henry Diltz to create a Western-themed visual narrative. The photo shoot took place at the Paramount Ranch, an old film set for Western movies in Malibu Canyon. The band dressed as outlaws and staged a mock gunfight, capturing the essence of the Wild West.
Gary Burden's drawing for the album cover of Desperado depicts the band as outlaw cowboys. On the back of the album is an image of the band members together with Jackson Browne and JD Souther lying dead and bound with rope on the ground. Standing over them, is producer Glyn Johns on the far right in a white hat, manager John Hartmann, road manager Tommy Nixon, artist Boyd Elder, roadies, and of course Gary Burden on the left.
"The reason it worked so well was that 100 years ago these guys would have been outlaws rather than guitar players...They were restless young men and rock'n'roll kept them out of trouble."
- Henry Diltz
The original concept was to depict the Eagles 'gang' alive on the front cover and dead at the hands of the posse on the back – with pictures of the bank robbery and ensuing shoot-out in which they met their grisly fate displayed across a double spread in the middle. Diltz says "Then, at the last minute, without telling anybody, David Geffen scrapped the centrefold."
Desperado:
Burden wrote; "I wanted to make a dramatic visual image that would fit the conceptual music they had put together, drawing a comparison between the guitar player in the '70s and the gunslinger in the 1870s. It was a story of four guys who come to town, decide to stop working, and take the easy way by becoming outlaws. They rob the bank but are killed in the process. The band's roadies, their manager, and their record producer were playing the posse coming after these outlaws. Boyd Elder, a friend of ours and an artist from Texas, was riding through the scene, galloping on a horse... The photos of the band look like they really were taken back in the 1800's, standing there with these wild looks on their faces..."
"Originally the album was meant to be a gatefold (double album cover). The front cover was to show the beginning of the story with the four fresh-faced young guys coming to town. When you opened up the cover the inside photograph would show their gunfight, with them backing out of the bank with blazing pistols. The back is a shot of the gang laying bound and dead on the ground... But the record company decided not to have the album fold out (too expensive). So it was like the beginning of the story and the end of the story without the middle (meat) of the story. I did actually manage later to use that inside spread of the gunfight when I designed a billboard on the Sunset Strip to promote the album."
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