{"id":151286,"date":"2025-09-21T14:10:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T14:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/151286\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T14:10:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T14:10:18","slug":"the-supergroup-don-henley-thought-was-too-good-opening-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/151286\/","title":{"rendered":"The “supergroup” Don Henley thought was too good opening for"},"content":{"rendered":"

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(Credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n

Fri 19 September 2025 18:30, UK <\/p>\n

It\u2019s never easy for any band<\/a> to start life off as an opening act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to have people in the crowd that came to see you, but if everyone\u2019s looking for the headliner the whole time, most people can expect having to dodge more than a few things being thrown at the stage back in the day. And while Don Henley did know the ins and outs of touring, he felt that there were some artists who were well beyond anything the Eagles could have done when they were cutting their teeth.<\/p>\n

But when listening to the Eagles play together, most of them don\u2019t need to worry about doing anything too extravagant. Sure, Joe Walsh can be the resident loose cannon every now and again by playing the court jester half the time, but with songs as good as \u2018Take It Easy\u2019 and \u2018Desperado\u2019, it\u2019s easy for the band to simply sing their tunes and have the rest of the crowd carry the entire show whenever they play.<\/p>\n

That said, it\u2019s not like the band is the most engaging stage show in the world. They were content to play their tunes, but in the old days, they may as well have been statues whenever they locked in on the harmonies. Every now and again, there would be some banter with the crowd or having everyone clap along, but when no one had heard them in the early days, it was bound to be a little bit of a mess.<\/p>\n

Then again, there were some strange bills that the band were put on as well. It would make sense for them to work with Heartland artists like Bob Seger<\/a> during their first gigs, but for some reason, their management always made sure to put them onstage with some of the biggest names in prog-rock.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like prog was completely alien to the band, but it was definitely a far cry from what they were used to. A band like Yes doesn\u2019t really have the fanbase that\u2019s looking to hear tunes like \u2018Peaceful Easy Feeling\u2019, and even with a band as accommodating as Jethro Tull, Henley knew working with them was never going to be simple.<\/p>\n

Ian Anderson was already a force of nature onstage, and since their jams could get more and more extravagant, Henley felt that there was no way that they would ever go over well with the crowd, saying<\/a>, \u201cWe went on a tour with Joe Cocker and Jethro Tull even before [\u2018Take It Easy\u2019] was released. With Tull, it wasn\u2019t so hot because the band\u2019s a supergroup. Everybody wanted to hear them and no one else.\u201d<\/p>\n

It did ease up a little bit when they toured with artists like Carole King, but they did seem to learn a few tricks while working with prog-rock artists. A song like \u2018Journey of the Sorcerer\u2019 from Bernie Leadon is definitely a musical journey like some of Yes\u2019s songs were, and even the conceptual idea that they had for Desperado felt like an Americanised take on the fantastical storylines that bands like The Who and Genesis were doing in the 1970s. <\/p>\n

Eagles weren\u2019t trying to expand their horizons that much when working with Jethro Tull, but they all did have at least one thing in common. No matter what kind of record they went in to make, they always wanted a chance to challenge the audience in the same way that The Beatles had challenged them when they were kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credit: Alamy) Fri 19 September 2025 18:30, UK It\u2019s never easy for any band to start life off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[30948,27602,96,31138,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-151286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-don-henley","9":"tag-eagles","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-jethro-tull","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}