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Thu 20 August 2026 22:24, UK
Don Henley wasn’t afraid to dish out some critiques on people who really deserved them.
He hated the idea of getting too comfortable in his own skin in Eagles, and a lot of his solo material is a masterclass in someone tearing down those who only serve the bottom line whenever they ask for a record. He needed to hear some passion whenever he listened to a record, and he knew that the right people had the kind of musical heart that he had all the time in the world for whenever they came on.
Then again, the whole reason Eagles existed was because of the California rock and roll scene. There were plenty of people who were willing to open up about their feelings in their songs and get candid about what they wanted out of their own music, and it wasn’t out of the question for Henley to see the beauty in everyone, from Joni Mitchell to Crosby, Stills, and Nash to the California-rock sunshine of The Byrds in their country era.
Those people were his teachers when he first moved to LA, but he also understood that he wasn’t exactly to that level yet when working in the band Shiloh. He had a lot of music to work through before becoming the man that would one day sing ‘Hotel California’, and a lot of the biggest parts of his education came from honing his craft playing night after night. But if you’re honing your chops playing songs no one wants to hear, it can get pretty depressing after a while, and Henley found a godsend when working with Linda Ronstadt.
Her voice was one of the finest in California at the time, and the kind of effect that she had with her harmonies was the kind of thing that Crosby, Stills, and Nash needed three whole voices for. She could level any club to the ground with only the power of her voice, so when Henley got the call to join her on the road as a drummer and a backup singer, he didn’t really have to do a lot of homework to get what he wanted.
The drumming already sounded fine, but from the first meeting that Henley had with Ronstadt’s manager, John Boylan, Henley felt that he didn’t need much practice to get the sound of the record, saying, “He hired me to be [her] drummer after about a ten-minute audition. I said, ‘Well, that’s good because I’ve only listened to this album 50,000 times. I should know the songs by now.’ And we went on the road with Linda, partly in a station wagon at first.”
Ronstadt didn’t have a ton of albums to her name yet, but the whole reason why she fits so well into music history also has to do with her proximity to Henley’s other dear friend, Glenn Frey. Frey was the one who was hired on as a rhythm guitarist, and from the first few shows that he and Henley were playing together, it was clear that they were working with some kind of magic that could have worked a whole lot better if they were in a separate band.
Further reading: From The Vault
While Ronstadt was gracious enough to let them go off on their own, it’s not like she needed members of the Eagles to be one of the biggest stars in the world. She could have done anything with her voice, and when listening to the more risky records that she made afterwards, she was ready to do anything and everything that sounded right to her as long as she had the right practice to pull it off.
But above all else, Henley seemed to know a lot about trusting his instincts by working with someone like Ronstadt. Just like he has been saying for years now, it doesn’t work for someone to get too comfortable, and going with his gut paid off in spades when the Eagles first became one of the biggest sensations to come out of California.
