The “beautiful” singer Don Henley wanted everyone to know
Don Henley didn’t get into the music industry just to be a side player.
He loved the idea of playing music in any way, shape or form, but there was always going to be room for him to work on something new if he managed to get the microphone behind the drum kit and open up that mouth of his to sing. And while there was a lot of great music to be found in the Eagles’ catalogue, Henley would tell you that it all came from him listening to the greatest American artists that the country ever spat out.
That’s not to say that Henley had a bias towards American music as a whole. The Beatles left an indelible impact on him when he first saw them play on The Ed Sullivan Show, and while the rest of the world felt the exact same way, he had a greater respect for what the biggest names in country music had been doing. He had grown up listening to those songs, and he felt that the American South represented a classic piece of musical history.
Stephen Foster was one of his first idols of songwriting before he even knew what that was, and when he first listened to rock and roll, some of his favourite acts had the same kind of country angle to a lot of their songs. There wasn’t a moment Elvis Presley performed where he didn’t throw in a few country-sounding ad-libs in his salad days, and there were more than a few times when people like Ray Charles and Roy Orbison would take their chances at singing Americana material.
But the biggest names in music aren’t usually the ones that need to announce their presence. Ray Charles was more than happy to just sit behind the piano and prove to everyone why he was one of the greatest singers that had ever lived, and while Henley did have a great respect for that, he felt that some of the best musicians of all time came from the session scene long before they decided to take a stab at their own career.
Some of the most accomplished musicians in their field, like Leon Russell, had cut their teeth playing in sessions throughout California, but Glen Campbell was a special exception for Henley. Here was someone who seemed to be every single ingredient for becoming a rock and roll legend, and he wanted to see him get his flowers just like the other originators of country rock that came before him.
Everyone might know a song like ‘Wichita Lineman’, but Henley was convinced that Campbell’s voice was something that everyone needed to hear, saying, “He played on a lot of very famous records that people probably aren’t aware of. He did a lot of session work for The Beach Boys, played and sang harmony on some of the early Beach Boys records. If I’m not mistaken, he even toured with The Beach Boys at one point. He had his own television show at one point. He has recorded some beautiful, beautiful records.”
It’s not like the other legends in Henley’s field have forgotten about him, though. Billy Joel and Bob Dylan have each called ‘Wichita Lineman’ a perfect song from top to bottom, and even The Beach Boys seemed to know what they had on their hands when they had him take over for Brian Wilson when they went on the road, so it’s not like he was going to be written out of the history books for good or anything.
But when it comes to the sounds of Americana music and especially heartland rock, Campbell tends to get forgotten, when really he should be given as much attention as someone like Johnny Cash in terms of influence. A lot of his impact is not as obvious as everyone else’s, but there’s a lot more that he has to offer other than some of the most pristine vocals California has ever heard.
