(Credits: Far Out / Don Henley)
Wed 11 February 2026 22:50, UK
When Eagles first started making their hits, Don Henley wasn’t out there for fame and fortune.
Their music definitely wasn’t the most credible thing in the world once they started having their massive hits, but when the dust had settled, the reason people would remember them was for the excellent songs they made rather than the trends they were following. Every one of their albums felt like a new step forward for them, but sometimes songs can be a little bit too close to the bone for anyone to work on immediately.
At the same time, most of what held Henley back a lot of the time was an emphasis on getting everything perfect. There was no way that every member of the band was going to hit everything right on the money every time they walked into the studio by any stretch, but he wanted to push himself as far as he could whenever he was working, both as a drummer and one of the greatest singers of his generation.
But when you’ve reached a level as high as Hotel California, it’s hard to imagine anyone having the guts to say that they were going to make something better than that. They had released one of the defining records of the 1970s, and even though The Long Run saw them bow out with a bit of a whimper, Henley figured it was better to leave the legacy where it was when working on his solo career.
He didn’t want to go back and make new songs for the wrong reasons, but when Hell Freezes Over came around, the drummer seemed open to the idea of working with Glenn Frey again. They had each grown up as songwriters in their respective solo careers, and when making tunes like ‘Get Over It’, Henley had the same social critiques that he had during his solo years with a little bit more of a punk edge to it.
Those few tunes were proof that he and Frey could write classic tunes again, but there had to be some question over what to do when they started recording their next record. Henley wanted the chance to get into the studio and work things out piece by piece, but after the September 11th attacks, the beginnings of the song ‘Hole in the World’ fell out of him after they had cancelled their session.
Although the song was one of the most cathartic tunes in their discography, Henley initially thought that the rest of the band should hear it, saying, “That evening, our recording session having been cancelled, I sat down at the piano in my home studio and started putting some chords with the phrase ‘hole in the world.’ Just sort of wrote the refrain in one sitting. After that, the first verse came fairly quickly and then I was stuck. Months went by, but I didn’t show it to anybody. Then, other things started happening that gave additional meanings to ‘Hole In The World,’ particularly after the [Iraqi] war started.”
But whereas ‘Hole in the World’ is a subtle plea for the world to come to their senses, what turned up on Long Road out of Eden had a lot more bite to it. Henley was looking at America in the 21st century and wasn’t particularly in love with what he saw, so tunes like the title track and ‘Frail Grasp on the Big Picture’ are a snapshot of the darker side of society, where people pray to a God that resides over football games and sends children off to die in an unjust war.
The wounds of 9/11 may have still been fresh when ‘Hole in the World’ came out, but Henley wasn’t about to stop once everyone started to move on from their grieving. He saw a bigger problem going on in the modern age, and the world would end up looking a lot uglier if all of us didn’t straighten things out sooner.