“He showed up”: The artist Don Henley was honoured to work with
Amidst the swirling storms of the Eagles stood Don Henley. He was a fiercely defiant voice in the inter-band squabbles and as stubborn as his counterparts, but ultimately, an artist with the relative softness to sprinkle some folk sensibilities to the band’s signature country-rock sound.
Country music was at the very kernel of Henley’s formative music years, and before he became the aviator-wearing prince of West Coast rock, he wandered around the dusty streets of his native Texas, looking for a break before it came from a legend of the genre. As Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler’ rang through American speakers, Henley spotted him and approached, raising the possibility of potentially getting him to watch his new group.
Rogers recalled the story in the History of the Eagles, claiming he did have hesitations about such an offer, saying, “He said, ‘Mr Rogers, my name’s Don Henley and I’m with this group called Felicity. We’re playing tonight, and we would love to have you come and see us.’ I said, ‘Thank you very much, but I really don’t do that. I don’t go to bars and watch groups’. But he said, ‘I really think you’d like us’, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I did.”
When an impressed Rogers moved Henley and his band out to LA, it began a path that would eventually lead him to Glenn Frey, and the rest, as they say, is history. The band would go on to have a prolific career, and along with Frey, Henley’s voice would be part of an iconic three-part harmony that would define an era of soft classic rock.
When the fractious Eagles came to a dramatic and inevitable end, Henley’s solo career was given room to explore the country sensibilities he grew up on and lean into the tenderness of his own voice. On his 2015 album Cass County, Henley covered legendary folk artist Jesse Winchester and his song ‘The Brand New Tennessee Waltz’. It’s a tender finger-picked ballad that showcases the hearty qualities of Henley’s voice, which once soundtracked the opulence of Americana and now muses on the modest landscape of America’s deep south.
But on the lead single of that album, Henley revisited his collaborative ways to duet with one of Winchester’s long-time songwriting partners, Merle Haggard, on the song ‘The Cost of Living’. The two sing over the top of a similarly jangly 12-string guitar to ‘Hotel California’ but one more appropriate for the motels of Tennessee as the pair contemplate the timelines of life.
It’s a heartfelt song that acted as a bucket list moment for the country-loving Henley, who said, “I’m very proud of that song, and I wrote it with Merle Haggard in mind. It was a trip getting him to come and sing it, cos he’s a little old and cantankerous now, but he did it, bless his heart… he showed up.”
I’m sure at this point, Henley can’t help but ponder about the nature of his own creativity that pits him with music’s most cantankerous souls. Whether he likes it or not, it’s when the furrowed brow of a moody old musician looks back at him, and his finest recorded moments are laid down.
