![\"Don](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Don-Henley-Musician-The-Eagles-Drummer-Vocalist-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ TIDAL)<\/p>\n
Fri 24 October 2025 19:00, UK <\/p>\n
In the 1970s, a new fever was simmering in the underbelly of New York, one that Don Henley<\/a> would soon come to despise so passionately he had to write a song about it.<\/p>\n The fever \u2013 or, more specifically, disco fever \u2013 was a cultural slow burn, starting in nightclubs with a specific appeal to marginalised and oppressed groups, providing a space for them to let loose and self-express before bursting into the mainstream as a major genre of music.\u00a0<\/p>\n For some at the forefront of this explosion, like the Bee Gees, it was so gradual to explode that they didn\u2019t even realise they were part of it, much less leading the charge. Or, at the very least, they didn\u2019t ever enter the studio thinking they were going to make a disco record, or even felt that they were playing into those tropes at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n As producer Albhy Galuten once told Music Radar<\/a> while discussing the pinnacle of all disco records, Saturday Night Fever: \u201cWe didn\u2019t listen to disco. We didn\u2019t think we were a disco band. We thought we were an R\u2019n\u2019B band. Barry [Gibb] and I connected because we loved Stax and Motown. We had the same sort of history.\u201d<\/p>\n Those immersed in the scene didn\u2019t realise what was happening until much later, but those in other spaces, like rock and country, were already feeling the fatigue. The Damned\u2019s Captain Sensible once said that, were it not for bands like them, people would have had nowhere to turn to<\/a> \u2013 it was either disco or \u201cpogoeing spiky-haired types having a bloody good time\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Don Henley was another established hater. Something about disco made his hair stand on end, and it wasn\u2019t just the fact that it threatened to overthrow every other genre vying for commercial success. It was the way it sounded, the song structures, the rhythms \u2013 all of it filled Henley with this inexplicable rage, enough for him to start a song about it, aptly titled \u2018The Disco Strangler\u2019.<\/p>\n As the name suggests, it captured the crux of Henley\u2019s feelings towards disco. He\u2019d actually worked to finish the lyrics with Don Felder, both of them creating a story where this \u201cdisco strangler\u201d character observes the disco scene unfold and lures unsuspecting victims into his embrace like a predator. Discussing the song in a previous interview with Guitar World<\/a>, Felder recalled how Henley\u2019s distaste for the entire genre is where it all started.<\/p>\n \u201cI wrote the song that Don Henley started writing lyrics to called \u2018The Disco Strangler\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was back in the disco days, and [Henley] hated disco. He hates the four-on-the-floor beats; he just wanted to kill disco, you know? So he took this little music track I had written and he wrote [the lyrics for] \u2018The Disco Strangler\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n The song sat on The Long Run, the highly anticipated follow-up to the \u201cmonster\u201d that was Hotel California. A new music scene and pressures to maintain success likely made Henley even more sceptical about disco, but it\u2019s also clear it was simply a matter of personal taste. Henley was never one to follow the crowd, and with a sound so different from his own game, it\u2019s no wonder he felt completely plagued by it.\u00a0Enough to feel vengeful. <\/p>\n As is clear in the lyrics: \u201cYou looking for attention, darling \/ He will surely give you some \/ He\u2019s the crimson in your face du jour \/ The fiddler in your darkest night.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ TIDAL) Fri 24 October 2025 19:00, UK In the 1970s, a new fever was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49367,43260,30948,27602,96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-223732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-disco","9":"tag-don-felder","10":"tag-don-henley","11":"tag-eagles","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223732","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=223732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}