“Intolerable”: Don Henley on the one Eagle who was a nightmare to work with
The main issue in any great rock and roll normally comes from how someone divides up their work. As much as some people may love the idea of being a band of brothers, it doesn’t always work out that way when someone is trying to make the best music and please everyone at the exact same time. Although Eagles were more than willing to soar as far as they could, Don Henley knew that there was some dead weight every now and again when making some of their best material.
Then again, any piece of Eagles normally came back to the partnership between Glenn Frey and Don Henley. The pair were the ones that started everything when they finally decided to leave Linda Ronstadt’s band, and when they finally found a way to function on their own, they knew how to finish each other’s sentences as a songwriting team, often putting together the right line for tunes like ‘Desperado’ or ‘Tequila Sunrise’.
But even when they started, there was already a lot of trouble coming their way. Bernie Leadon had already been a veteran of the country-rock scene by the time he got started working with the band, but when he began woodshedding his tunes for the group, it became clear that he had a much different outlook on everything. He was a country rock purist, and the minute he saw them becoming more accessible to the mainstream, he knew it was time for him to jump off the bandwagon.
That was hardly a major issue, though. Frey and Henley had already been eyeing up Joe Walsh ever since he started working with them during the tour for One of These Nights, and when he teamed up with Don Felder, they became the kind of guitar team that most artists only dream of when working on ‘Hotel California’. However, Felder was always going to have problems with the way that work was divided.
He could play some of the greatest lead lines of all time, but it didn’t matter when he didn’t have a song to his name. He had co-written a handful of their greatest tunes, but since he couldn’t sing anything, he felt that he was always treated as a second-class musician, even calling his contract into question during their reunion when he found out the rest of the band were getting paid more than he was.
While Henley understood the hurt that can come with not getting the same amount of attention, he knew that there was no way he could have possibly continued with Felder after they cut ties with him, saying, “I’ll say this: it’s something that’s been coming for quite a long time. There has been unrest for many years now, and it finally got to the point where it was intolerable. And the new Eagles – I think the band will be more creative.”
It’s up to interpretation whether the band sounded better or worse without Felder, but Long Road Out of Eden was a step in the right direction for them afterwards. It may have been overly long from Henley’s perspective, but it kept the same spirit that came from the band’s final albums in the late 1970s, only with a bit more depth this time around.
Felder may not have been able to make up with Henley or Frey before his death in 2016, but maybe there’s a chance that he can soar with the band once again. Even if it’s only for a one-off performance, the idea of hearing ‘Hotel California’ being played by the two people who sculpted that solo would be one of the greatest reunions classic rock fans could ask for.
