(Credits: Far Out / TIDAL)
Tue 21 October 2025 18:00, UK
No member of the Eagles prided themselves on staying in just one genre. Throughout their time together, the California rock group dipped their toes into whatever kinds of music would suit the song, whether putting bluegrass parts into their songs or getting into the world of soul and R&B music. For Don Henley, though, one of the most significant pieces of his palette came from country music.
Growing up in a small town in Texas, Henley gravitated towards The Grand Ole Opry’s sounds throughout his youth, eventually becoming fascinated with music. We are all so often inspired by our formative years, and Henley’s dalliances with four-square dances and the up-and-down rhythm of country would have certainly infiltrated his earliest inspiration.
But, like so many of us, eventually, he would move away from the childhood preferences and start to find favour in rock and roll. Once he began to make his first steps into music, though, Elvis Presley and The Beatles inspired him to put a band together. Initially playing traditional jazz music for anyone who would hear him, it was only a matter of time before Henley opened his mouth to sing, becoming one of the most recognisable high tenors in the business when he teamed up with Glenn Frey.
The band would become a gigantic influence in rock music. Pioneering soft rock and perhaps launching the very notion of yacht rock before it even had a mast, the Eagles would become genuine behemoths in the music industry. But, underneath it all, there was still a little boy from Texas who loved country. Even though Henley got his signature tone through years of practice, the impact of Merle Haggard can’t be overstated in his mind.
Born and bred in the world of country, Haggard came out of the same outlaw country that spawned legends like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. While none of them came from the same places, the lonesome quality in their voices gave them a mystique that few others could capture, making fans intrigued about where the stories in their songs were headed.
(Credits: Far Out / Country Music Association)
Outside of the fine tunes that Haggard made, Henley was more into the sound of his voice than anything else, telling BBC Radio 2, “My absolute favourite Country singer of all time is probably a gentleman named Merle Haggard. He has a voice that is just like gold to me. It’s one of the greatest voices of all time, I think”.
Even though not every Haggard tune was supposed to be the most meaningful track in the world, Henley’s attention to his voice moulded him into the singer he is today. Throughout songs like ‘Desperado’, Henley is pulling from the same well that countless country artists before him have done, putting a twang into his voice that brings to mind the image of someone sitting down to tell their epic story.
Haggard also seemed to impact the way the Eagles approached their second album. Although the inspiration behind Desperado was centred around various gunslingers that had become notorious decades prior, a song like Haggard’s ‘Mama Tried’ was a proof of concept for Eagles, telling the story of a man on the wrong side of the tracks who admits that his mother did everything she could for him.
Henley would also make his takes on country-tinged rock music later in the band’s career, including bitter tales of heartache on songs like ‘How Long’ off their final album, Long Road Out of Eden. Although Henley thought that Haggard’s voice was one of the purest voices in all of music, the lessons he learned from the country maestro are part of the reason why he is nicknamed ‘Golden Throat’.
Henley’s vocal is like pure butter. The real brilliance comes form the myriad of genres he adores and how he threads them altogether to make the archetypal rock sound. He manages to feel powerful and vulnerable in consecutive notes and delivers a sense of beautiful poetry with his performances.
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