(Credits: Far Out / Derek Russell)
Sun 22 February 2026 20:30, UK
Nothing that the Eagles did was going anywhere without getting past Don Henley.
He and Glenn Frey had built their band to be one of the greatest rock and roll bands to come out of California, and even when they were working on some of their lesser-known records, they both had a keen ear for when things sounded great and when they were working with a bunch of filler. Not all of their albums were going to be absolutely perfect by any stretch, but Henley figured that his solo career would be a lot more fine-tuned than everything else that he heard on the radio throughout the 1980s.
But by the time the Eagles called it a day, it was really time for them to take a break. They had reached the greatest heights that anyone had ever heard of, and while they could have picked a better time to break up than onstage at a charity event, it was inevitable that things were going to fall apart. They had been running themselves ragged for years, and it was now time for them to take a break and regroup a little bit.
Henley was completely fine with that, but he would have been lying if he said he didn’t get a bit antsy when Frey released his first solo album shortly after they broke up. He wanted to show the world that he could be just as good as his friend, and while I Can’t Stand Still did a fair bit of success, it wasn’t until Building the Perfect Beast came out that people really started to pay attention to what he was doing.
Admittedly, the 1980s trends of the time didn’t always work for him, but you could definitely feel the same wise sage that sat at the back of Eagles was still there. His golden throat hadn’t lost an ounce of shine over the years, and while ‘Boys of Summer’ was a far more commercial record than anything he had worked on before, ‘A Month of Sundays’ more than made up for some of the more overt pop songs on the record.
After all, it was only natural for Henley to see what else was going on. He had already started to make a piss-take on new wave during the sessions for The Long Run, and while a lot more people were interested in him trying to embrace MTV and bring more synthesisers into heartland rock, there was no chance that he was ever going to make any attempt at shoehorning any hip-hop into his music.
The genre was still in its primitive stages with bands like Run-DMC and Public Enemy making waves, but since a lot of the biggest names at the time were MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, it’s not surprising that Henley wasn’t the biggest fan, either, saying, “Most of it’s macho posturing. Lyrics for the dim. The English language is in enough trouble already. Some of the groups are trying to deliver a positive message, but I’m not sure it’s being perceived that way. I enjoy watching the choreography of MC Hammer, and I thought Tone Loc’s video for ‘Funky Cold Medina’ was hilarious, but other than that…”
Sure, if you’ve only listened to pop-rap, you’d be forgiven for thinking that 2 Live Crew weren’t exactly for the smartest members of society, but there was a lot more the genre had to offer. A Tribe Called Quest had started their ascent around that time, and even if you weren’t as down with the more mainstream-flavoured stuff, it’s not like It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is all macho posturing from back to front, either.
In fact, there are some emcees around that time that had even better social commentary than Henley did in spots, but it was never the former Eagles’ forte. He had a more direct way to deliver all of his tunes, and there was no way that he was going to sacrifice his integrity to have a hip-hop break in the middle of one of his tunes.