(Credits: Far Out / Don Henley)
Fri 21 November 2025 18:30, UK
Don Henley was never satisfied with the idea of being merely a good writer.
Every single Eagles project needed to push the envelope in a different way, and while there were many opportunities for him to make the stereotypical love songs, he wanted to make his audience think outside the box a little bit more as to what a song could be outside of a catchy tune. And while tunes like ‘Hotel California’ did give people food for thought, there were still artists who packed way more punch into a few minutes.
Granted, it’s not like Henley was willing to say that he was spotless, either. The early Eagles albums did have more than a few corny songs thrown into the mix for good measure, but that only served to tell the story of a band a lot better. They were wet behind the ears on that first album, so it was only natural for their next record to have a few frayed ends when they tried to make a comment on what the modern outlaw looked like.
But what the band lacked in polish, they made up for in raw discipline when it came to songwriting. Glenn Frey learned firsthand how to write great songs thanks to Jackson Browne living right next to him, and while Henley might not have had such a luxury, his history as an English major is as clear as day when looking through a lot of their greatest works.
If you take the lyrics off of any Eagles hit and even some of Henley’s solo works, they are pure poetry most of the time. There is the odd joke tune that’s a little bit trite, but whether it’s ‘The Last Resort’, ‘Wasted Time’, or a tune like ‘A Month of Sundays’, every piece of those tunes work because of how layered they are and how they unfold over the course of a few minutes to tell their epic tales.
It’s easy to see the Bob Dylan influence in the size and scope of everything, but what Henley was after had much more to do with the songwriters he knew personally. Because as much as Dylan liked to paint you a picture, he didn’t have the sincerity of a Paul Simon or the musical intuition that Randy Newman had whenever they started working on their own classics.
Henley may have taken his star power further than nearly any other rockstar, but he said that he’s still working on songs that he hopes would be half as good as his colleagues, saying, “I’m a fairly mediocre musician, but I like to think of myself as a singer and a lyricist, and I read a lot. I majored in it anyway, just because I enjoyed it, but I was wrong. I’m still not a lyricist on the caliber of Randy Newman or Paul Simon, but I aspire to be, and I hope that my best stuff is yet to come. I’m working on it.”
Although Henley has carved out his own spot in history, you can see what he’s saying when looking at the finer details of both artists. Simon’s songs are detailed stories that have complex characters throughout every one of them, and while Newman might not have had the most soothing voice in rock and roll, the metaphors that he would pack into his songs are still beyond anything that other rock and rollers could do.
But even if Henley never reached that level, it’s not nearly as important to reach the same heights as his heroes. Because throughout rock and roll history, the ones that have stood the test of time aren’t the ones that are copying other people. They’re those few that have made their own sound that everyone else has tried to steal from.
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