“Terrible”: Don Henley on the Eagles lyrics no one understands
No artist has control over what their music is going to become later down the road. Everything might depend on those few days in the studio churning out the hits, but what meant something back in the 1960s was bound to mean something different when it’s heard in the 21st century. Although Don Henley set out to write timeless songs in Eagles, he admitted that most people didn’t take the lessons of this track to heart back in the day.
Then again, there was no real reason to read all that deeply into Eagles songs, even when they were at their peak. Sure, they may have put some food for thought into everything they made. Still, listening back to the way they played, most people would be forgiven if they only wanted to turn on ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ when they’re going on a road trip rather than looking at anything specific underneath the surface.
By the time that Hotel California rolled around, though, there was no time for messing around with mindless songs about good times. Those days certainly weren’t over behind the scenes, but Glenn Frey and Henley set out to make a story about the darker side of Hollywood like the man bound for self-destruction on ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ or ‘The Last Resort’ talking about treating the planet better than we are.
After going through the rock machine as a young man, Henley was a seasoned veteran when approaching Long Road Out of Eden. The signs of age had started to wear on the group, but you’d hardly notice it if you were listening on your own, especially when they started returning to their roots on ‘How Long’ or turning the title track into another modern epic.
But ‘Waiting in the Weeds’ was a bit of a different beast. Compared to the other ballads on the record, this paints a beautiful picture of small-town America, talking about going to county fairs and seeing the person that you love at the end of the night. However, one line in the tune may have been a bit too authentic to American slang to pass the lyrical test.
When talking about the lyrics, Henley thought that no one understood that the phrase “egg and dart of small gray” came from architecture, saying, “You know those lyric sites, they’re always wrong. A to Z Lyrics? They’re terrible. The egg and dart is an architectural term. It’s a design that’s used for a moulding, usually up along the ceiling, it’s a little round thing that looks like an egg shape and then between the little egg shapes is a little pointy thing, which is the dart. And it symbolises life and death. The egg is life and the dart, which is an arrow in ancient times, means death.”
Considering where the band was at this stage, it’s interesting to see Henley get so introspective about his place in the world. There are still visions of the past that he wants to preserve, but he knows that nothing is certain and that he could easily find himself on the wrong end of mortality in an instant if he doesn’t play his cards right.
Even if the fans didn’t see the same kind of beauty in the lyrics that Henley did, that doesn’t detract from it being a great song. Despite being a bit too cerebral for some to take in, the measure of any good track comes from someone singing along to it and not caring about what the grand statement is supposed to be.
