(Credits: Alamy)
When you look at the biggest rock stars of all time, Don Henley doesn’t often feel like he’s in that company.
Eagles were never the most engaging artists in the world, and even when they had Joe Walsh in their ranks, they usually couldn’t be asked to put that much stage charisma into their set between those golden harmonies. It could get incredibly boring if you didn’t know any better, but Henley was a much different kind of rock star that most people were expecting when he got started.
Because his heroes weren’t the likes of Mick Jagger or anything. He certainly had a respect for all of the heavy hitters of the genre like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, but what they did with the power of their music, Henley wanted to get there by writing songs. And given the company that he kept when he was off the stage, it’s not like he didn’t have a healthy amount of teachers to help him become great at his craft.
The Los Angeles music scene was already stuffed with some of the greatest rock and roll songwriters ever made, and while The Beach Boys had slowly become a thing of the past, everyone from Jackson Browne to JD Souther to Randy Newman had given Henley a guidebook to how to entertain an audience when he started putting together his first tunes with Glenn Frey.
Was he going to be anywhere near their standard? Well, no, but that wasn’t the point. All great songwriters from that generation were more interested in making tunes that resonated with them before the audience heard them, and even if there were more than a few artists strumming away on their guitars, Henley knew that they had a few secret weapons in Eagles that no one else could have replicated.
Despite Henley being able to keep a decent beat and pen beautiful portraits of American life, he knew that he would have been nowhere without the other members behind him, saying, “Glenn is not a great guitar player and I’m not a great drummer. On the other hand, Randy [Meisner], Bernie [Leadon] and [Don] Felder are incredible on their instruments. We’ve just taken it upon ourselves that this is our department. Maybe we’re full of shit but I think we’ve proven ourselves.”
Henley certainly didn’t need to prove himself, but looking back on that era of the group, it’s hard to really complain about anyone in the group. Meisner’s soaring high voice is what gave them a certain clarity whenever they came on the radio, and when they got Felder in their ranks, they finally had a comfortable middle ground between the rock and roll guitar playing and Leadon’s more straightforward country licks.
And while this is meant as no disrespect to Walsh, Leadon did help them get a bit more credit with the underground players in the industry. None of them could necessarily say that they were deeply entrenched in country music in the way that everyone else was, but given his experience with The Flying Burrito Brothers and friendship with Gram Parsons, there’s a good chance that Leadon could pick out that Hank Williams lick that everyone would have had trouble figuring out around the LA clubs.
Although writing songs also means getting a far greater cut of the royalties, Henley wasn’t strictly looking at his job in that way. Even up to their induction at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Henley realised that while he and Frey might be the team captains that led the band through every single hardship they could think of, it was about what every single person contributed to the group that made them what they were.
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