The 1973 Eagles song Don Henley knew he could never sing: “I missed the whole thing”Eagles never had that much of a problem running into filler material. So, for On the Border, the band really needed to regroup in a sense. When it came time to do On the Border, we got ‘James Dean’ right off the shelf and said, ‘Let’s finish this.’” It definitely fit Frey’s voice, but Henley felt that the song never really fit in with what they were supposed to be. So while Henley knew when he needed to step away from the lead singer role, ‘James Dean’ didn’t really need to go down in history as one of their all-time classics or anything.