Don Henley’s big issue with country rock: “I can’t shake the stereotype”
If you boil down the music of the Eagles to its essentials, it tends to just be American music. Although there might be a few more acoustic guitars than usual, the band have run the gamut of styles no matter what period of time they found themselves in, all being held together with Don Henley singing with the voice of an angel. Henley did have a bone to pick once artists started calling them “country rock”.
When you break down the band’s signature hits, though, there’s no alternative title to call it. The band have always had traces of country coating their classic songs, and making a western theme concept album like Desperado did nothing to shake their reputation for being the rock band that the cowboy sort could listen to.
It’s not like the band didn’t wear their influences on their sleeve. As much as they may have pulled from the biggest names in rock, like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, there were still heavy influences of everyone from Kenny Rogers to Gram Parsons, especially in the way that Henley and Glenn Frey managed to put together stories in their songs.
For Henley, that was just a small piece of the puzzle, saying in The Very Best of the Eagles, “Even now, the Eagles are thought of as a country-rock band. The music industry and the media saddled us with that label at the very beginning, and no matter how diverse our musical palate, it has been impossible to shake that stereotype. At the end of the day, we’re an American band. We’re a musical mutt with influences from every genre of American popular music”.
While it’s hard to see any of the band’s alternative influences all the time, Henley does have a fair point. Compared to the early iteration of the group with Bernie Leadon in the fold, Frey had always thought of the band as a hybrid between traditional country music and rock and roll. This is a guy who started off playing songs like ‘Satisfaction’, and he wasn’t about to let go of his dreams.
Once Joe Walsh arrived, it was easier to tell when the band could kick out the jams. As much as it might sound dated these days, the lick to a song like ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ is still badass as hell, especially coming from the band whose heaviest song up to that point may have been ‘Witchy Woman’.
If you look at their back catalogue, there are also a few flirtations with the sounds of R&B as well. The backing vocals on the song ‘One Of These Nights’ may as well be hammered out like a horn section, and when listening to a song like ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’, the heavy use of keyboards and the minimalist arrangement feels like the same thing that you would hear out of a modern soul ballad.
At the same time, it’s never a bad thing for a band to have a signature sound, and when you hear a song like ‘Take it Easy’ or ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’, it’s easy to picture rolling down the highway in the heart of America with the wind in your hair. Henley may have been lenient about being typecast, but sometimes when you rely on what you know, you can make something that resonates with millions of people.
