Songfacts®:

• This song finds Henley offering his perspective on days gone by:
  
  Though nostalgia is fine
  I respectfully decline
  to spend my future living in the past
  
  He explained to USA Today: "The point is that it's okay to look back, you just don't want to live back there. You look back in order to see where you've been so that you can appreciate where you are now, and maybe where you're going."
  
  Back in 1984, Henley came up with a similar lyric on "The Boys of Summer":
  
  Don't look back
  You can never look back
• Speaking about the song at a June 18, 2015 event held at Capitol Studios, Henley explained how the Eagles fits into his life currently. "There's a verse in the song that takes a little dig ... You know, Rick Nelson put out a song called 'Garden Party' a long time ago about an experience he had at Madison Square Garden where he was trying to do some new material, and the audience started booing him because all they wanted to hear was what he had done in the past." he said. "And I love my career in the Eagles, and I really appreciate our fans, and God knows it's a miracle we've been around this long. I've got the best of both worlds, really. It's wonderful to have the Eagles as the mother ship, and it's wonderful to be able to go and do this other stuff."
• Don Henley wrote this with Buck Owens in mind and recruited Vince Gill to sing the tune with him. "I thought, 'Who would be great to sing and play guitar on this?' And so I called up my friend Vince Gill, and I said, 'Vince, I got a song here that's kind of a tribute to Buck Owens, and I need somebody to sing the high harmony part,'" he recalled to Taste of Country. "And he said, 'Well, you've come to the right place, because when I was growing up, Don Rich was my hero. I always wanted to be Don Rich.' I said, 'Well, get on down here to the studio, then, and bring your guitar with you.'"
  
  "So he came down, he played rhythm guitar on that track, and then he sang that part perfectly, put all the little vocal inflections - you can hear the bent notes and stuff, just like Don Rich would have done it," Henley continued. "I was so tickled and so pleased with that."