"[The recording of the new Eagles album is] going quite well. We're all very pleased -- surprised even. I think everybody in the group is surprised about how well it is going and how well we're getting along, and how everybody is stepping up to the plate, you know. So we're just going to keep recording. We might record enough material for two albums. I don't know."

		Don Henley/Stevie Nicks Where: Post-Gazette Pavilion When: 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $28.50-$126. 412-323-1919.

That was Don Henley talking back in March ... 2002.

Now, it's 2005 and the last Eagles album was still in 1979.

This was, after all, the band that gave us "Take it Easy." But they've done plenty of that: So what's up with this Eagles record?

"We've been recording Eagles material for the last four or five years and putting it away in the vaults," says Henley, who brings his solo tour with Stevie Nicks to the Post-Gazette Pavilion Saturday, "but we've been away so much we haven't had a chance to complete a lot of it. The other big factor is that we're all married and have children -- three of us have young children -- and that takes a lot of time. Whereas the Eagles were once our main priority, I think our families are our priority now."

So how many songs would he say they've recorded and finished?

"I think only one or two of them are finished out of 15 or 16," he says.

Yes, while the Eagles have been in the fast lane, touring-wise, since they declared that Hell Freezes Over in 1994, when it comes to recording, they seem to be broken down on the side of the road.

"We don't feel a great deal of pressure to finish anything," Henley says. "We're not signed to any particular label. I think the primary impediment has been the touring. If we wanted to finish a record we could. ... And there is the fact," he adds, "that we are competing with our legacy, our former music. We all agree that if we can't make a record that we think measures to the standards that applied in the '70s, then we'd just as soon not do it. We're working toward that. We're still working on songwriting chops and experimenting with various styles."

Henley adds that it doesn't help that he lives more than a thousand miles away from the other members. Eleven years ago, he left L.A., where he co-founded the Eagles in 1971, and returned to Texas, settling in Dallas, a little to the west of Linden, where he was born and raised.

"I wanted to have a family, and we didn't want to raise them [in L.A.], frankly. My mother was still living in Texas. Her parents are still in Texas. We both agreed that it was very important to have children who knew and interacted with their grandparents on a frequent basis. My mother passed away a couple of years ago, but my wife's parents are still active with our children. I still love California; we still maintain a home there, but it's good to have a different perspective and to get out of the fast lane -- I think you could say that."

Henley -- whose image is so tied to the bronzed Californian, hair slicked back and sunglasses on -- enjoys a daily life that consists of waking up at 6 a.m., getting his kids (girls 5 and 9, boy 7) ready for school, hitting the local coffee shop, gardening, working out and dealing with office work regarding everything from the Eagles to the Walden Woods Project to a revitalization of the courthouse in his hometown.

He has a recording studio at the house, but with all that other stuff going on, the songs don't come easy.

"It never came easy," he says. "There are certain instances where Glenn and I wrote a song in a matter of three or four days. Like the song 'Lyin' Eyes,' for instance. 'Desperado' was something that evolved over a span of four or five years. I started that song in 1968, before I even met the other guys in the band. ...

"The key to songwriting," he says, "is to try to eliminate distractions and to concentrate and to focus. That has become more difficult as the years go on. We're just simply not as self-absorbed as we were when we were younger. Songwriting requires a certain amount of self-absorption, or at least to the degree that one can meditate and concentrate and dream and get into what we call 'the zone.' That simply becomes more difficult whether you have kids or not. Life rushes in. It's a noisy, clanging world out there."

Henley has always liked to collaborate. He co-wrote with Glenn Frey in the Eagles, and, as the Eagle with the most successful solo career (with Top 10 hits like "Dirty Laundry," "The Boys of Summer," "All She Wants to Do is Dance" and "The End of the Innocence"), he's co-written with producers and artists like Bruce Hornsby and Danny Kortchmar.

"I'm not a musical island. I like to collaborate because it gives variety to the material and takes me in places that I wouldn't be able to go myself."

Henley's last solo record was "Inside Job" in 2000, and now, he says, "I have some things in the can. But there's a gray area between my own material and the Eagles material. If I'm writing something, even if I might have intended to put it on my solo record, if I get to a certain point in the creation and I decide it might be good for the Eagles album, I might give it over to that. That would be my first priority. Some of my solo stuff would not be suitable for the Eagles."

For now, he's put all of those projects on hold while he does a quick June tour with Stevie Nicks, with whom he recorded the hit "Leather and Lace" for her first solo record back in 1981. They plan to do a few songs together on stage, and he, of course, will front his solo band, many of whom also play on the Eagles tour.

In August, he'll hook up with the Eagles again for a West Coast tour. Asked if playing classic Eagles songs remains fresh for him night after night, he laughs and says, "Depends on how far into a tour we are. The audience makes it fresh every night. Sure, we get tired of some of these songs sometimes. Some of these songs we've been doing for 33 years. But when the lights go down and we walk out on stage and the cheers go up from the audience, it's a brand new world every night. The crowds are what make it worthwhile. They give us our energy."