Credits: Sports and Music Photographer via Flickr
Thu 9 April 2026 20:00, UK
When any musician gets to the position that Don Henley is in, the bucket list starts to get pretty small.
Anyone is hoping to make a great record whenever they walk into the studio, but Henley’s perfectionist tendencies has always been one of the key factors that made all of his sogs work, whether it was pushing himself to give the best vocal on ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ or slaving over a lyric until he finds a song like ‘A Month of Sundays’ come out of the blue on Building the Perfect Beast. But after making so many records, Henley’s greatest pleasure was getting the approval of some of his musical idols.
After all, his contemporaries like Billy Joel had called the Eagles the closest thing that America has to The Beatles, so it’s not like Henley was lacking in technique. He was making some of the finest records that he knew how to make when he was still a massive solo artist, but even if radio wasn’t willing to play him anymore, he was more than happy to go back to his roots when making the album Cass County.
While it’s hard to call the album ‘country’ in the traditional sense, the sense of Americana is strong throughout every track. Henley had a lot to say about the way that he saw the country going after one too many years in the music business, and aside from working with Mick Jagger on one of the first tracks, he felt that singers like Dolly Parton and Miranda Lambert were the best people that could translate the ideas that he heard in his head.
A lot of the appeal of getting guests on a record is like casting a musical actor for a specific part, and it’s hard to think of anyone other than Parton singing along with Henley on a song like ‘When I Stop Dreaming’. But the fact that someone like Merle Haggard would give a second glance at a kid like Henley was all that he was asking for when he came in to work on a song like ‘The Cost of Living’.
Haggard’s voice is the embodiment of what classic country sounds like, and Henley felt that getting the chance to work with him was one of the most proud moments of his career, saying, “I was just thrilled to have him in the room and it turned out well. We made him do too many takes and it pissed him off. But he’s an interesting guy to talk to. It was one of my lifetime dreams to sing with him.”
Then again, Henley has always been pretty good at speaking the same language as the greatest country artists of his time. He had already done the same thing when singing backup for Johnny Cash in the 2000s, and since Kenny Rogers had been the one who introduced him to the world of the music business, it seemed like all of the workingman spirit that he brought with him to California was a lot more authentic than any other rock and roll pinup star.
And when looking at the kind of song that Henley had brought Haggard to sing, you’d sworn that both of them had lived through that same predicament. The blue-collar workers may know a thing or two about the cost of living constantly going up and trying their best to keep their heads above water, but even in the music industry, both the country legend and the rock and roll frontman probably saw a few too many dark times for their brand of music and wondering where all the magic had gone.
Their type of music wasn’t necessarily a dying breed by any means, but since the pop charts were becoming much more concerned with the bottom line, Henley knew it was important to keep reminding everyone of why songwriters like Haggard were so relevant. They were all relating to each other in a far more natural way, and it was better for Henley to find common threads in a song rather than try to change with the times.
