Songfacts®:

• With new technology available, the Eagles could have updated their sound for their 2007 album Long Road Out Of Eden, but decided instead to keep it familiar, sticking to the country-rock sound that made them one of the most popular bands in rock history. "How Long," with a shared lead vocal by Don Henley and Glenn Frey, sounds especially familiar, like it could have come from the 1970s. That's because it did.
  
  The song was written by the band's longtime friend J.D. Souther in 1969; the Eagles performed it live in the early '70s, but didn't record it. Souther put it on his first solo album, John David Souther, in 1972. At the time, if one member of their cohort released a song, the Eagles wouldn't do it themselves, but with 35 years separating them from Souther's version, they had no problem adding it to Long Road Out Of Eden.
  
  Souther wrote or co-wrote some of the Eagles' biggest hits, including "Best Of My Love," "Heartache Tonight" and "New Kid In Town."
• A throwback to the Eagles days when they sang about outlaws and desperados, this song is sung from the perspective of a prisoner asking his girl how long she'll wait for him to get out. According to J.D. Souther (as told to Rolling Stone), it was inspired by a soldier in the Vietnam War who went AWOL, was caught, and was sentenced to murder. "His girlfriend at home had been counting down the days until he returned," Souther said. "How long? He never did."
• We have YouTube to thank for the Eagles recording this song. Glenn Frey's kids were online watching videos when they came across footage of the Eagles performing "How Long" in 1974 on a Dutch TV show called Pop Gala. They showed it to their dad and had a good laugh, then Frey's wife suggested he record it with the Eagles. He took the idea to the band and they all got on board.
• Six years in production, Long Road Out Of Eden was the Eagles seventh studio album and their first full studio record for 28 years. "How Long" was released as a single and bubbled under at #101 in America, but the group wasn't all that interested in selling singles. They released the album on their own label and made a deal to sell it exclusively at Walmart (in America) for the first year. Don Henley talked about how environmentally forward Walmart was, but the economics worked out very well for the Eagles because the retailer was willing to sell it for $11.88, likely taking a loss on it but driving traffic to the stores during the holiday season because they had the exclusive. The Eagles, no longer beholden to a label, could keep a much bigger share of the profits and made out quite well when it sold over 7 million copies.
• Long Road Out Of Eden marked the longest time a group has ever taken to reach the top of the UK charts from its album debut - 33 years and seven months. The Eagles first album, On the Border, reached #28 in the UK in April 1974. Despite their huge success, the Californian rockers, responsible for hits like "Hotel California," "Desperado" and "Take It To The Limit" have never had a UK #1 single or album before. Their Greatest Hits 1971-75 and Hotel California albums both peaked at #2.
• In the late 1960s J.D. Souther and Glenn Frey joined together to form the folk duo Longbranch Pennywhistle. They made one self-titled album, which sold little but featured a number of outstanding session musicians including Ry Cooder, Larry Knechtel and Jim Gordon.
• This won the Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocals.
• The first concept video the Eagles ever made was for "How Long." It's not all that conceptual, just showing the band walking through sand in a desert and performing the song in what looks like a hangar, but getting these guys on board for a real video shoot was no easy task.
  
  The Eagles called it quits the first time before MTV went on the air and never made a video in that first run. They did a concert film for their live album Hell Freezes Over in 1994, and in 2003 released a video for their "Hole In The World" comprised of footage of them working up the song in the studio. After "How Long" they made one more video: for the Long Road Out Of Eden track "Busy Being Fabulous."