(Credits: Far Out / Asylum Records)
Wed 25 March 2026 19:45, UK
The entire ascent of the Eagles was never an accident whenever Don Henley had the right idea.
He wanted to put together the band that made the best country-rock that the world had ever seen, and by the time they hit on Hotel California, it was pretty clear that he was the one calling all the shots whenever they went into the studio to make a song. They had a sixth sense for what worked and what didn’t on any one of their songs, but the reason why they worked so well as a whole was because of how Henley reacted to the rest of his bandmates whenever he was singing those tunes.
Because even with all of the solo success he had, Henley was never interested in being a solo artist. The beauty of being in a group is that you share everything together, and even if a record doesn’t find the audience that they want it to, it’s much easier to shoulder the blame among a few people rather than worry about placing all of the blame on yourself for cosigning every single idea.
But even when the band was working at their best, Henley did have some issues with how business was being taken care of. Even though Don Felder claimed to have been promised that he would sing two songs on their magnum opus, everyone knew that Henley should have been the one singing those songs. He was their ex-factor, and there was nothing getting in the way of him making some of the greatest tunes of their career soar even higher.
The same could be said for Bernie Leadon as well. Leadon liked the idea of being in a band of brothers that kept everything true to themselves, and when they started being career-minded and thinking about going in a more serious direction, he was far more interested in going back to country and exploring the kind of music that he first got started with when working in bands like The Flying Burrito Brothers.
And while the arguments got even more heated by the time that they reached The Long Run, Henley was the first to say that he couldn’t have done anything without Glenn Frey. Frey was the brains of the band back when he and Henley were working with Linda Ronstadt, and they were going to do everything they could to make great songs, whether it was Henley’s poetry throughout their later years or bringing in the occasional chord from Frey that made everyone’s ears perk up.
They were bound to have their ups and downs like all songwriters, but Henley felt that what Frey did was something no one could replace, even saying after his passing, “Glenn was the one who started it all. It will be very strange going forward in a world without him in it. But I will be grateful every day that he was in my life.” Anyone else in Henley’s position would want to close up shop, but the fact that Vince Gill and Frey’s son, Deacon, came to the rescue was like a gift from heaven.
Do they sound like Frey? Not exactly. Are they going to take his place when writing? Absolutely not, but what they do is more about being in service to the kind of music that Henley wanted to make at this point. After years of being at the back of the stage, this final trip is a great way for all of them to share in the history that he and Frey wrote together, and you can feel that same sense of urgency whenever Henley’s singing tunes like ‘Get Over It’.
Frey was always going to be irreplaceable in the eyes of most fans, but even when he and Henley had their differences, the drummer knew that there was no way that he could have made this massive trip without him. They were out to write the best songs for their time, and somewhere along the way, they went from biggest superstars to pieces of modern American folklore.
