Credit: Far Out / Album Cover
Thu 17 September 2026 21:30, UK
Don Henley didn’t anticipate becoming one of the biggest singers in the world; it was something that he worked hard for.
No one wakes up in the morning and slowly finds out that they have a gift for music, and while Henley was blessed with some beautiful pipes, he knew that there was a long road ahead of him if he was going to be one of the greatest country-rock artists to ever grace the stage. And that all came from him listening closely to everything that he heard on the radio when he was still in Texas.
By the man’s own admission, though, Henley’s hometown wasn’t exactly a place where people dreamed of stardom. He likened his home to something that you would see in the movie The Last Picture Show, and even though his parents were supportive and bought him drums that he couldn’t even afford to own at the time, he had the kind of drive that anyone else could see from the moment he started singing from behind that drum kit.
Nothing was going to slow him down, but he just needed to zero in on the kind of music that he wanted to play. He loved that bands like The Beatles took risks on every one of their albums, but that didn’t stop him from loving the more traditional music that he heard. He was raised on the sounds of Americana, and while country music was omnipresent in his household, he wanted to see if he could reach a little bit further than many of his contemporaries.
Half of the greatest country artists of all time usually had a Hank Williams tune in their arsenal, but Henley took to a band like The Byrds because of how much they seemed to make sense to him. Their covers of Bob Dylan tunes were already giving them the reputation as being a great jangle-pop band, but their second act as a country band with Gram Parsons on Sweetheart of the Rodeo was what really opened his eyes.
Parsons was quickly becoming the godfather of country rock in many respects, and while Henley could appreciate the callouts to country legends, he was even more interested in the music that they were working on. There was a simple foundation to all of their songs, but there was also a sense of optimism and a need to send a message that Henley would take to heart throughout every single one of his songs.
Most people would have been too scared to speak up about the problems with the world, but Henley felt it was absolutely necessary to follow in the footsteps of what The Byrds did, saying, “They sounded pretty and they sounded ominous. They sounded hard and yet they sounded soft and gentle sometimes. The mysticism and the transcendence and the peaceful spirituality and that’s something sorely missing from the airwaves and it’s something that we could really use right now.”
Further reading: From The Vault
And while Henley could try his best by talking about his own issues with everything from the greater environmental issues to his own struggles with love, there were still people paying attention. Tom Petty never forgot the lessons Roger McGuinn taught him, and there are still plenty of country rockers who can get up on a pedestal and make their voices known amongst all the other pop country artists talking about beer and trucks all the time.
So while someone like Jason Isbell might not be directly influenced by The Byrds, the raw honesty in his music is the reason why McGuinn was put on this Earth. He wanted people to believe that they could make a difference with a guitar in their hands, and Henley was only one link in the chain when looking at the long legacy of what The Byrds helped pioneer back in the days of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’.
