‘After the Thrill is Gone’: Don Henley’s examination of the Eagles
During the rock and roll peak of the 1970s, it seemed as if success only caused more difficulties. If you look at the most popular rock bands of that era, particularly in the United States, their histories are usually illustrated by severe arguments, conflict, and often violence. That is certainly true when it comes to California outfit the Eagles, who succeeded in creating one of the most successful American bands of all time despite often being at odds with each other.
When the Eagles first came together in 1971, after Linda Ronstadt recruited Don Henley and Glenn Frey to her touring band, the pair were the best of friends. Their band name reportedly arose from a night of bonding the pair spent in the Mojave desert, fueled by tequila, peyote, and musical friendship. Pretty quickly, though, the inter-band relationships broke down, and the intense level of in-fighting would become synonymous with the group itself.
The Eagles might just take the title for the most tumultuous band lineup of all time – which is no small feat when considering the fact that Fleetwood Mac exists. Seemingly, tensions began to arise quite early on in the band’s recording career for the same reasons that bands always fall out: ego battles and musical differences. Everybody seemed to have their own views on what the Eagles should sound like, and ultimately, it was producer Glyn Johns who chose the sonic path for the band on those early records.
Ironically, the very fact that nobody within the band was getting along with one another did provide a certain level of songwriting inspiration. Like we have witnessed with so many other groups, the intense conflicts and in-fighting within the band seemed to inspire some incredibly successful loved-up rock songs. However, these tracks would rarely look introspectively into the band’s inner-workings.
This all changed with the release of the 1975 track ‘After the Thrill is Gone’, which largely dealt with the struggles of being in a group as contentious as the Eagles. On a surface level, the song – written by Frey and Henley – is meant to act as a kind of sequel or epilogue to the B.B. King classic ‘The Thrill Is Gone’, dealing with the aftermath of the thrill’s departure. However, the lyrics and atmosphere of the track were much closer to home.
“As exciting as the whole Eagles thing was at times,” Henley said of the song, within the liner notes to The Very Best Of The Eagles, “some of the lustre was beginning to wear off. We were combining our personal and professional lives in song.” In essence, then, the song appears to tackle the fact that the Eagles had become less about musical friendships and desert peyote sessions and more about arguments, commercialism, and all the admin that arrives with being in a successful pop-rock outfit.
Although ‘After the Thrill is Gone’ already suggested that Henley was growing tired of the experience of being in the Eagles, it was this song and the album One of These Nights which provided the band with their first significant commercial success.
The album was the band’s first-ever to reach number one in the Billboard album charts, setting them on a path to success which would eventually see the Eagles become one of the most commercially successful rock bands in American history. Conversely, this newfound success and global acclaim also brought with it an increased level of in-fighting within the band, too.
