[2][3] According to Don Henley, the band members were "completely burned out" and "physically, emotionally, spiritually and creatively exhausted" from a long tour when they started recording the album, and they had few songs.

[4] However, they managed to put together ten songs for the album, with contribution from their friends JD Souther and Bob Seger who co-wrote with Frey and Henley on "Heartache Tonight".

According to Henley, the title track was in part a response to press articles that said they were "passé" as disco was then dominant and punk emerging, which inspired lines such as "Who is gonna make it/ We'll find out in the long run".

He said that the inspiration for the lyrics was also "irony", as they wrote about longevity and posterity while the group "was breaking apart, imploding under the pressure of trying to deliver a worthy follow-up to Hotel California".

[4] Randy Meisner decided to leave the Eagles after an argument in Knoxville, Tennessee, during the Hotel California Tour in June 1977.

5E-508) had text engraved in the run-out groove of each side, continuing an in-joke trend the band had started with their 1975 album One of These Nights: In 1979 Rolling Stone wrote, "Overall, The Long Run is a synthesis of previous macabre Eagles motifs, with cynical new insights that are underlined by slashing rock & roll...(it) is a bitter, wrathful, difficult record, full of piss and vinegar and poisoned expectations.

"[19] The Globe and Mail determined that "the Eagles' fawning synthesis of various kinds of rock and that roll sits less well the smoother it gets.

"[20] The New York Times stated that The Long Run "is neatly balanced among standard Eagles rockers, rather shallow social commentary, ballads and novelty numbers," and noted that the band's "mean streak" has "never been so apparent.

Some of these are included in the collection Selected Works: 1972–1999, with the title “Long Run Leftovers”, though in a barely-recognizable form.

Joe Walsh later resurrected two of them, which surfaced on his solo albums: “Rivers (of the Hidden Funk)” on There Goes the Neighborhood (1981) and “I Told You So” on You Bought It, You Name It (1983).