![\"Don](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Don-Henley-Musician-Eagles-2023-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ Don Henley)<\/p>\n
Sat 29 November 2025 18:23, UK <\/p>\n
Don Henley<\/a> found fame and fortune in the 1970s, and unlike most, he had never been looking for it.<\/p>\n For as long as they could, the Eagles kept their faces from album covers, tried to keep interviews borderline anonymous, and shirked the usual trappings of fame. Their goal was simply to catch a snatch of original Americana, putting the grand notion of the nation\u2019s fabled \u2018Dream\u2019 to the sword with a searing brand of innovative country rock.<\/p>\n One of the follies that Henley and his bandmates identified in this \u2018Dream\u2019, capitalised as a strange collective noun, was that it often held the wrong people in lofted esteem \u2013 folks like Frank Ocean, whom he thought of as a \u201ctalentless little prick\u201d. Plenty of people would readily agree with him on that take, but he\u2019d find far fewer fellows in the know who would debate his picks for the \u201cunderappreciated\u201d nearly-stars who deserved more praise from the American public.<\/p>\n While Henley hailed Randy Newman as \u201ca national treasure<\/a>,\u201d the Pixar-scoring star has himself said that he has never really had more than \u201c200,000 fans\u201d worldwide. Perhaps the \u2018Short People\u2019 songwriter didn\u2019t help that matter when he said that those 200,000 were never the most attractive bunch, but that\u2019s exactly where Henley thinks America has gone wrong with its subdued judgment of the master of his craft.<\/p>\n Newman is wry and sarcastic, and he\u2019s always for the song rather than commercialism. Take, for instance, \u2018You Can Leave Your Hat On\u2019: Tom Jones scored a huge hit covering the song by making it a sordidly sexual jaunt. This was a complete misreading of a song that was actually about meek sexual ineptitude, but the public didn\u2019t notice. So, while Newman\u2019s original version was a fantastic, faithful portrayal of how the protagonist was an odd, comic mix of commanding and mild, his stuttering rendition never had the same radio appeal. Newman knew this, and he also knew it was all the better for it.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what makes him a master, or in the former Eagles man\u2019s book, a \u201cgenius\u201d. As Henley told the Los Angeles Times<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019s a songwriter\u2019s songwriter; a musician\u2019s musician. He\u2019s also probably the most misunderstood and underappreciated recording artist alive.\u201d<\/p>\n But there\u2019s another in America\u2019s midst who he also sees as sorely overlooked. Henley knows a thing or two about blending genres, and perhaps that\u2019s been the downfall of this next fellow, too. But in the clear light of day, he\u2019s just a legend who wrote bloody good songs, and could do it all, so he did do it all.<\/p>\n \u201cThis gentleman, I had the pleasure of meeting only once,\u201d Henley said in a speech honouring Glen Campbell. \u201cWe had a wonderful evening together talking about music and the recording industry many, many years ago. He has one of the greatest voices in music. He is also a very underappreciated musician. One of the best guitar players ever to emerge on the American music scene.\u201d<\/p>\n Newman and Campbell are both married by this uncanny for truly realising a song to the nth degree. In Newman\u2019s satire, you sense the whole of America is encapsulated, not just the subject he is skewering. And the same can be said when Campbell sings something like \u2018Wichita Lineman<\/a>\u2019 and conjures up something that seems to capture the very essence of the workaday existence of the working classes.\u00a0<\/p>\n These are the stars Henley thinks America ought to appreciate more than the next winner of The Voice, because they surely say a hell of a lot more about the state of the States and its quirky array of hardy citizens.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Don Henley) Sat 29 November 2025 18:23, UK Don Henley found fame and fortune…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[30948,96,128,105569,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-290290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-don-henley","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-randy-newman","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290290","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=290290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-Eagles-Don-Henley-Grammy-Award-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cGo on, show us your Grammy, Don!\u201d (Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n