"[5] Glenn Frey recalled: "I was playing acoustic guitar one afternoon in Laurel Canyon, and I was trying to figure out a tuning that Joni Mitchell had shown me a couple of days earlier.

[10] After six weeks in London—which yielded "Best of My Love" and one other usable track, "You Never Cry Like a Lover"—the Eagles discontinued working with Johns, then spending eight weeks touring in Europe and the US, before completing the recording of On the Border at the Record Plant in their hometown of Los Angeles with Bill Szymczyk producing.

Advised by Higgs of the strong positive response of WKMI's listeners to "Best of My Love", Asylum Records gave the track a limited single release of 1000 copies available only in the Kalamazoo area, with reaction to this test-release securing the full release of "Best of My Love" as a single on November 5, 1974.

[13] When the single was finally released, Asylum Records had truncated the song so that it would be more radio-friendly, but had done so without the band's knowledge or approval.

[12] Cash Box called it "a very pretty country flavored ballad" and said "the harmonies are of the usual Eagle excellence and the instrumentation is mild and acoustic.

"[14] Record World called it a "folksy ballad" which "has the easy-goin' beauty to be one of [the Eagles] biggest and best" and said that "soaring production takes their harmonies sky high.

[citation needed] South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela covered the song on his 1976 album Melody Maker.