{"id":607697,"date":"2026-05-28T02:25:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T02:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/607697\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T02:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T02:25:12","slug":"the-1965-song-don-henley-singled-out-as-paul-mccartneys-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/607697\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1965 song Don Henley singled out as Paul McCartney\u2019s best"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit: Alamy<\/p>\n

Wed 27 May 2026 20:16, UK <\/p>\n

Few bands can compete with The Beatles in any capacity, but when it comes to record sales and staying power, the Eagles<\/a> are up there as rare contenders for the heavyweight crown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don Henley formed the band near enough at the same time that The Beatles folded. A gap had been sprung in the market at that time, and the easy appeal of his band swooped right in to the \u2018executive parking\u2019 space. Now, the Eagles are the only band with two albums in the ten best-selling records of all time list.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, their angle as a band examined the death of counterculture quite closely. Leonard Cohen said that writers have only one theme that they refine for the rest of their lives, with the Eagles, that was the death of counterculture and the myth of the American Dream. The time that they arose surely had a lot to do with that. <\/p>\n

Although the Fab Four were not American, in some ways, they typified the American Dream and their demise and the pitfalls that brought it about were indicative of the same changes in society. This is the basis of perhaps the Eagles\u2019 best-known, and yet most misunderstood song, \u2018Hotel California\u2019. It was a lament that the spirit of 1969 was still held as an ideal, but it was no longer being served.<\/p>\n

It was a profound theme and the band, who\u2019d been floating around the industry for a while, knew it. So, Henley wouldn\u2019t have been too surprised that the song became a global hit on a scale almost incomparable in alternative music. Because, in his view, all the best songs are laments. \u201cI think the best songs are sad songs,\u201d he said at a Q&A<\/a> event in Dallas in 2017. \u201cI don\u2019t enjoy happy little songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then paraphrased his music hero on the matter \u2013 the songwriter Henley called \u201ca national treasure\u201d \u2013 when he explained, \u201cRandy Newman said something, that happy songs are actually harder to write. Because you have to keep it funny, you have to start funny, there has to be a middle funny part and then you have to end funny, and that is really difficult to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, just because sadder songs might be easier to write, that doesn\u2019t make them less valid; on the contrary, in fact, as the Eagles continually proved, the seamlessness and emotive nature of melancholic tracks can make them more immediate, beloved, and in that sense, superior. \u201cSad songs, all the great romantic songs throughout history, from Frank Sinatra to Paul McCartney, every great songwriter does his best work writing sad songs,\u201d Henley confidently asserted.<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

What is The Beatles\u2019 best \u201csad song\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can only hear \u2018You Are My Sunshine\u2019 so many times. On the other hand, I could listen to \u2018Yesterday\u2019 by Paul McCartney<\/a> over and over and over again,\u201d Henley commented. For the singing drummer, the song was the pinnacle of the Fab Four\u2019s timlessness.<\/p>\n

It is a track that has remained with him since he first heard it. He studied it closely, endlessly dipping into its emotive balm. Even the upbeat Chuck Berry studied it to the point that he called it the song he wished he had written, too. Like Henley, he figured it would live on through the ages.<\/p>\n

For McCartney, the sadness he spoke of in the \u00a320m anthem wasn\u2019t immediate. The melody simply came to him in a dream, and he kept humming \u2018Scrambled Eggs\u2019 in order to retain it, later formulating the song after he realised the syllables of \u2018Yesterday\u2019 fit perfectly while on a long drive on a Portuguese holiday when he couldn\u2019t sleep in the backseat.<\/p>\n

Thus, we can assume that the sorrow in the song is a sort of distant encapsulation, which is ratified by Henley\u2019s own view of how his saddest tracks come about. \u201cI think we\u2019ve all been hurt at one time or another,\u201d he explained, \u201cEspecially when I was a kid in high school, in junior high, you get beat up, you get bullied. And I\u2019ve had a lot of girlfriends. It\u2019s like Joni Mitchell said, you take all your pain and you turn it into art. That\u2019s what you do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that sense, \u2018Yesterday\u2019 might not be the most complex tune, but is perhaps The Beatles at their purest. As Henley concluded: \u201cMost great art has some tragic element to it. Paintings, songs, films, it\u2019s just part of the process.\u201d <\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cAnd it\u2019s so much easier to work from tragedy than it is from\u2026\u201d at this notable juncture, Henley, the wasped-faced man who is yet to find a bandmate he couldn\u2019t fight, trailed off, comically adding, \u201cI can\u2019t even think of any happy songs that I like.\u201d <\/p>\n

Maybe he could start with \u2018You\u2019ve Got a Friend in Me\u2019 by his old buddy. But if that doesn\u2019t work, \u2018Yesterday\u2019, it seems, will be around to comfort the downcast for eternity; it has entered the canon, and earned Macca an absolute mint in the process, so even the saddest clouds can have a silver lining.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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