The 1982 song Don Henley wished he never released: “Didn’t work”
The entire breakup of the Eagles felt like Don Henley was losing his best friends.
He didn’t ever want the group to split up, but by the time that they had resorted to settling their differences by fighting onstage, it was about time that they at least took a break from each other, but compared to every other member of the band, Henley seemed like the one person who was destined to become one of the biggest solo artists in the world… That is, if he actually wanted to release music at all.
Because when you look at Henley’s manner of working, he didn’t think he was cut out to be a solo artist. Glenn Frey was already told that he needed a band behind him if he wanted to reach the top of the rock and roll world, and even if Henley was blessed with a voice made of solid gold, it was going to take a while before he settled into his new life as a solo artist. All he really needed was the right thing to kick him into high gear, and he sure got it when he heard Frey’s first solo album.
His partner knew how to pump out the tunes as fast as he could, and while No Fun Aloud wasn’t meant to set the world on fire, Henley wanted to show the world that he could make catchy tunes as well. But when looking at the way that he put together I Can’t Stand Still, he was still working out the bugs of his old band as well. Nothing was bad, but half the record did feel a little bit clunky for him.
Then again, you wouldn’t think that listening to the song ‘Dirty Laundry’. Henley was always great at making these condemnation songs about the scum of the earth, and after going through his own legal troubles after the band disbanded, making a song about how vicious the paparazzi could be was the perfect tone setter for what he would be doing on his other message songs later down the line.
The tune was a perfect first single, so why the hell wasn’t it actually the first single? Sure, everyone remembers this song as being Henley’s proper introduction to the world, but when looking through the original chart records, Henley felt that he was going to make his fortune by putting out the song ‘Johnny Can’t Read’. And since the song is a more jaunty number about someone who was illiterate, Henley knew he dropped the ball in a major way when he first saw the charts.
The song was catchy enough, but the subject matter wasn’t exactly what he wanted to be remembered for, saying, “We released ‘Johnny Can’t Read’ first. In retrospect, I was trying to follow the New Wave trend; that song was meant to be kind of a New Wave pop hit. Didn’t work. I even recorded that song in French and Spanish! And trying to have an international audience in it didn’t work.”
Adding, “Then some program director or DJ – I can’t remember who – heard ‘Dirty Laundry’, called [Eagles manager] Irving Azoff and said ‘That ‘kick ‘em when they’re up, kick ‘em when they’re down’ thing? That’s hit material. You should release that.’”
That’s not to say that ‘Johnny Can’t Read’ is all bad, though. The song does have a decent groove to it, and the idea of Henley making a New Wave song could have been interesting for a few songs, but when you hear those biting guitars on ‘Dirty Laundry’, you can hear everywhere that Henley would be going next, whether it’s the moody guitars of ‘The Boys of Summer’ or what he would do when he returned to the Eagles, like on ‘Get Over It’.
His career didn’t exactly get off to the best start, but getting ‘Dirty Laundry’ onto the charts is proof that one flop hit doesn’t mean anything. Any band can have their off moments from time to time, but all it takes is the right track to help turn everything back around again. And if Henley could royally screw his own single up from time to time and still walk away clean, who’s to say any other artist couldn’t do the same thing?
