The Eagles Trivia (Band)
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126 free The Eagles Trivia (Band) trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This is the big Eagles trivia quiz: 126 questions on the country-rock band that formed in Los Angeles in 1971 and went on to sell more than 200 million records. It covers all seven official members from Glenn Frey and Don Henley to Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit, every studio album from the 1972 debut to Long Road Out of Eden, and the singles that made them the biggest American band of the 1970s. The easy questions are for anyone who has heard Hotel California or Take It Easy on the radio; the hard ones are for people who know which Eagle sang lead on which song, who poured a beer over whose head, and how many edits were spliced together to make the Hotel California master. There are questions on the making of Hotel California, the record-breaking Their Greatest Hits, the Long Night at Wrong Beach, the 14-year vacation and Hell Freezes Over, the Don Felder lawsuit, the members' solo hits, the History of the Eagles documentary and the Sphere residency. No lyrics are quoted anywhere; the questions are about the songs, the people, the charts and the stories behind them. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the band, its members, its albums and its songs before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin and 1970s music quizzes next. Looking for the Philadelphia Eagles instead? We have a separate NFL quiz for that.
30 of 126 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01As of 2025, which album ranks second to the Eagles' Their Greatest Hits among America's best-selling albums?
Thriller
Thriller moved ahead after Michael Jackson's death in 2009 sent his sales soaring, but a 2018 recount by the RIAA put the Eagles' collection back in front.
Q 02Which singer's backing band brought the four founding Eagles together?
Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt hired Frey and Henley for her 1971 tour, then helped them leave: Frey credited her with suggesting Leadon, and all four future Eagles played on her 1972 album.
Q 03Which label, newly started by David Geffen, signed the Eagles in 1971?
Asylum Records
Asylum Records was David Geffen's new label, and Frey reached it through songwriter friends already signed there, who told Geffen the young singer would make him more money than they ever would.
Q 04Under what name did the not-yet-named Eagles play their first show, in Aspen in 1971?
Teen King and the Emergencies
Teen King and the Emergencies was the billing at The Gallery, an Aspen club, where the band played four sets a night; Frey recalled 40 people at the first set and a packed room by the fourth.
Q 05Which comedian recalls in his memoir urging Glenn Frey to call the band "the Eagles", not just "Eagles"?
Steve Martin
Steve Martin tells the story in his memoir Born Standing Up: he suggested 'the Eagles', but Frey insisted the name was simply 'Eagles', with no 'the'.
Q 06Which Coen brothers comedy has a hero who hates the Eagles, yet features a flamenco cover of "Hotel California"?
The Big Lebowski
The Big Lebowski's Dude can't stand the band, yet the film hands the Gipsy Kings' Spanish-language 'Hotel California' its showpiece: a slow-motion bowling scene for John Turturro's character.
Q 07Which instrument did Henley play on stage while singing lead for the Eagles?
Drums
Drums: Henley sang lead from behind the kit, and when the Eagles reunited in 1994 they hired a second drummer, Scott Crago, who has toured with them ever since.
Q 08Which English producer made the Eagles' first two albums in London?
Glyn Johns
Glyn Johns banned drink and drugs in the studio and pushed the band's country harmonies; Frey and Henley wanted to rock harder and changed producers partway through the third album.
Q 09In which California desert park were the Eagles photographed for the artwork of their 1972 debut album?
Joshua Tree
Joshua Tree: the band set out for the desert with blankets, tequila and a bag of peyote buttons, and Frey later admitted they were all high when the pictures were taken.
Q 10Who co-wrote "Take It Easy" with Frey?
Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne was stuck on the second verse when Frey, who lived in the same Echo Park apartment building and had heard him working on the song, supplied the lines that got it moving again.
Q 11Which Arizona town, name-checked in "Take It Easy", built a statue and park in the song's honour?
Winslow
Winslow opened Standin' on the Corner Park in 1999 with a bronze statue and a mural, and one line of a song turned a small desert town into a regular stop for road-trippers.
Q 12In the Eagles' "Take It Easy", what make of flatbed truck is the girl driving when she slows down?
Ford
Ford gave Frey his rhyme: shown a song stuck at its second verse, he added the girl, 'my Lord', in a flatbed Ford, and its delighted writer shared the credit with him.
Q 13Who wrote "Peaceful Easy Feeling"?
Jack Tempchin
Jack Tempchin, a San Diego folk singer, began the song on the back of one of his own gig posters while stuck overnight on the floor of a club in El Centro, California.
Q 21Which producer took over the Eagles' On the Border partway through to give the band a harder rock sound?
Bill Szymczyk
Bill Szymczyk let the band stretch out and rock harder, and his call for a tougher slide guitar on one track brought Don Felder into the studio and then into the line-up.
Q 22What nickname did Don Felder earn among the Eagles for his guitar playing?
Fingers
Fingers was Frey's name for him, by Felder's account, after a backstage jam in 1972; two years later the band called him in to add slide guitar to one song and asked him to join the next day.
Q 23Which song became the Eagles' first US number-one single in March 1975?
Best of My Love
Q 14Which early Eagles hit did Henley write while feverish with flu and reading a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald?
Witchy Woman
Witchy Woman began as a strange minor-key riff of Bernie Leadon's; Henley wrote the words between bouts of fever, blending Zelda with girls he had met in the Hollywood clubs.
Q 15Which British prog band took the country-rocking Eagles out as a support act on a 1972 tour?
Yes
Yes had the Eagles open shows on the Close to the Edge tour, and by Don Felder's account he first jammed with the band backstage at the Boston date, two years before they hired him.
Q 16On Desperado, the Eagles used Old West outlaws as a metaphor for which modern figures?
Rock stars
Rock stars: Henley called the album a commentary on the evils of fame and success with a cowboy metaphor, seeing a touring band and a gang as living outside the same everyday rules.
Q 17Which outlaw gang, famous for the 1892 Coffeyville bank raid, inspired the Eagles' Desperado album?
The Dalton Gang
The Dalton Gang hit two banks at once in their old hometown, where armed townspeople were waiting; Leadon's song 'Twenty-One' takes its title from Emmett Dalton's age that day.
Q 18How do the Eagles appear on the back cover of their album Desperado?
Lying dead in the street
Lying dead in the street: after a mock gun battle with blank rounds on an old Western film lot, the band played corpses while their manager, producer and roadies stood over them as the posse.
Q 19In which sitcom does the heroine's boyfriend fall into a trance whenever the Eagles' "Desperado" plays?
Seinfeld
Seinfeld's 1996 episode 'The Checks' has Elaine dating a man who won't let her speak while 'Desperado' plays; when she asks to share it as their song, he tells her it's his alone.
Q 20The Eagles' 1974 song "On the Border" fades out with a whispered "Say goodnight, Dick" aimed at whom?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon was the target: the song was written as Watergate came to a head, and Henley called the whisper the band's little kiss-off to a president who was plainly on his way out.
'Best of My Love' reached number one in March 1975; by Frey's account he stumbled on its guitar part after getting lost in a tuning Joni Mitchell had shown him a few days earlier.
Q 24Which Tom Waits song did the Eagles cover on On the Border?
Ol' '55
Ol' '55 was the first song on a Tom Waits demo that David Geffen played for Frey; Waits was less taken with the result and called the Eagles' version a little antiseptic.
Q 25Which 1974 festival at Ontario Motor Speedway did the Eagles play alongside Deep Purple and ELP?
California Jam
California Jam drew a crowd in the hundreds of thousands to a speedway east of Los Angeles; the Eagles played it with a guest guitarist because Don Felder's wife was giving birth to their first child.
Q 26Which album became the Eagles' first US number-one album in 1975?
One of These Nights
One of These Nights topped the chart in July 1975 after the band leaned away from country toward rhythm and blues; Frey called it the most fluid and painless album they ever made.
Q 27Which song won the Eagles their first Grammy?
Lyin' Eyes
'Lyin' Eyes' won Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus at the 1976 Grammys, and its country storytelling carried a rock band to number 8 on the country chart, their only Top 10 there.
Q 28At which LA bar did Frey and Henley get the idea for their song about a cheating wife?
Dan Tana's
At Dan Tana's, their favourite haunt, Frey watched a beautiful young woman with a much older, wealthy man and remarked that she couldn't even hide her lying eyes; the song grew from that line.
Q 29Which Eagles hit single has bassist Randy Meisner, not Frey or Henley, singing lead?
Take It to the Limit
Take It to the Limit became, by Frey's account, the band's first single to sell a million; he recalled being very happy for Randy, for whom they had long tried and failed to find a hit.
Q 30Which Leadon instrumental became the theme for the BBC's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Journey of the Sorcerer
Journey of the Sorcerer was Douglas Adams's own pick: he wanted a theme that sounded spacey but not too serious, something with a banjo, and found it among his own LPs.