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Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Warner Bros<\/p>\n
Sun 19 July 2026 19:15, UK <\/p>\n
Across a few short but dizzying years, Don Henley<\/a> went from top of the soft rock world to the biggest crisis of doubt in his career.<\/p>\n As the 1980s arrived, the Eagles were still heavyweights. Hotel California\u2019s mammoth selling success was still carrying them some way, and The Long Run follow-up topped the album charts, but touring fatigue began to take its toll on the band and exacerbate the simmering tensions, especially between co-founder Glenn Frey and guitarist Don Felder, after a perceived slight at Californian Senator Alan Cranston\u2019s wife backstage of a benefit show triggered such fury from Frey he made several threats of violence to Felder during their tense July 31st 1980 show at Long Beach Arena.<\/p>\n They wouldn\u2019t take the stage again for another 14 years, and an embittered hiatus kick-started Henley\u2019s solo career, whether he wanted it or not. \u201cI never planned on being a solo artist; I just didn\u2019t think about it,\u201d he recently confessed to Buddy magazine. \u201c\u2026I\u2019m a band guy \u2014 I\u2019d always been in bands \u2014 and I was sort of forced into that position by the breakup of the Eagles, and I was pretty lost for a while. I was just adrift, rudderless, and depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n Henley\u2019s wayward drift would finally find the solo spark he needed in the chance meeting with Danny Kortchmar. Crossing paths at one of publicist Betsy Asher\u2019s July parties, the session man and songwriter seemed the perfect foil for Henley\u2019s solo chops and proved an essential creative partner for the rest of the decade.<\/p>\n Yet, it was a new dawn in both the music industry and the wider American culture. In between calling it a day with the Eagles and the release of Henley\u2019s solo debut, I Can\u2019t Stand Still, in 1982, MTV upended the pop landscape with a new demand for shiny visual promos<\/a> in its cable maw, and a vastly different cultural terrain had materialised wrought from cable channel\u2019s flashy aesthetic and chiming with a renewed, cartoon patriotism surging up and down the States during President Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n Times were changing fast, and the Woodstock generation suddenly found themselves wading through a commercial gloop they hadn\u2019t wagered for, potentially stumbling into confused videos while the day\u2019s Madonnas and Princes steamrolled over them.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026that whole transition period in the beginning of the \u201880s was pretty tough,\u201d Henley confessed. \u201cI didn\u2019t really get my footing until 1984, 1985 \u2014 Danny was a big part of it, and Greg Ladanyi, the great engineer.\u201d<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n His old Eagle pal Frey managed to embrace pop\u2019s great shift, releasing \u2018The Heat Is On\u2019 for 1984\u2019s Beverly Hills Cop<\/a> and fashioning himself as a star in the vein of Huey Lewis. Henley, too, found Billboard wins with that year\u2019s Building the Perfect Beast and the mega \u2018The Boys of Summer\u2019, but was able to still tethered to a soft rock realm in closer orbit to the Eagles\u2019 LA heyday.<\/p>\n Through the decade\u2019s low ebb, Henley made it through, 1989\u2019s The End of the Innocence breaking the top ten and standing the old Eagle as one of the 1980s\u2019 biggest names, despite his crisis of confidence only several years earlier.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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