Don Henley once crowned the “ringleader” behind Eagles
The biggest problem in any band is trying to get anywhere between three to five people to agree on the right sound for an album.
Anyone can follow their muse when left to their own devices, but once everyone has to compromise when talking about one song, it can get tiresome trying to figure out how everyone is going to get an equal amount of time in front of the microphone. Although Don Henley was never in any competition in the singing department with Eagles, he knew that there were some instances where things could start coming apart a bit too quickly.
Whenever talking about the core of the band, though, it always circles back to Henley’s relationship with Glenn Frey. Almost everyone who has ever been in the band or earned the status of an honourary Eagle can be considered important, but even with all of the guitar licks from Joe Walsh or Randy Meisner’s massive high voice, it’s the dynamic duo at the helm who made sure everything went off without a hitch.
Even when tensions boiled over behind the scenes, Henley and Frey always seemed to understand the bigger picture of what Eagles were supposed to sound like. Their creative partnership acted as the group’s centre of gravity, helping hold together a band filled with strong personalities and competing ambitions.
But the minute everyone started wanting a little bit more of the action on Hotel California, they couldn’t help but burn themselves out way too quickly. No one even bothered to care when making half the songs on The Long Run, and by the time they all moved onto their solo careers, it may as well have been a blessing in disguise, given the fact that Henley would be riding the wave of adult contemporary for the next few years.
By that point, the exhaustion inside the band had become impossible to disguise. Years of perfectionism, relentless touring and internal power struggles had slowly chipped away at the camaraderie that once made Eagles feel effortless.
As soon as calls for a reunion started, though, people were already waiting to hear what a new album would sound like. They’d be getting a taste of it when the band made Hell Freezes Over with a handful of new tunes, but having to wait for decades before getting Long Road Out of Eden was more about reining everyone in.
They already had to go through sacking Don Felder again once the tour started going, and while ‘Hole in the World’ was almost a necessity for Americans after 9/11, Henley and Frey had become two very different writers. They had their moments where they could come together and write like in the old days, but if they were going to get everything right, they needed to make sure they brought in Bill Szymczyk to give some authenticity to everything.
Szymczyk had already been around to helm some of their final records, but for Henley, his presence was more about trying to wrangle everyone around an idea, saying, “We actually began the recording of the Long Road Out of Eden album with our former producer Bill Szymczyk at the helm. I saw his function as more of a mediator, a consigliere, a ringmaster, if you will. Glenn and I, by that time, had learned how to produce records. In fact, everybody in the band knew what to do, and once we got into the process, it turned out that we didn’t really need an overseer.”
While the producer wouldn’t have dared tell them what to do the same way that someone like George Martin would have with The Beatles, it did result in an album that felt genuinely authentic as an Eagles record. There were always going to be a handful of tunes that sounded like leftovers from Henley’s solo career, but there was no mistaking their voices when ‘No More Walks in the Wood’ opened the record.
Although Henley looks back on the record as being a little bit bloated compared to their other records, that shouldn’t deter anyone from picking their favourites. Because now that Frey is gone, this is officially how it ends, and listening to each song, they seemed to have gone out on their own terms.
