“A couple songs don’t hold up”: the Don Henley solo album he thought was flawed
Every artist can normally find some pieces of their back catalogue that could have used a bit of work behind the scenes. There’s no such thing as objectively good and bad art, but when someone is thrown into the studio kicking and screaming, it’s not exactly a surprise when they come up with something subpar compared to their old work. And while Don Henley usually had a great track record whenever he walked into the studio, he wasn’t afraid to admit some pieces of his career that were far from perfect.
Before he even saw Eagles implode, Henley was already highly critical when he thought some of their records weren’t up to their standards. Every one of their albums has its fair share of highlights and is more than worthy of being featured on any classic rock playlist, but Henley could normally look at them overreaching on albums like Desperado while also celebrating the massive milestone they reached with Hotel California.
When the band finished with The Long Run, though, it was clear that something was very wrong. The tension that had been building up for years at this point came to a head when Glenn Frey and Don Felder threatened to kill each other while playing onstage. By the time the 1980s truly began, all of their hopes for becoming one of the biggest bands of that decade officially fell through.
If any of the members were going to have a successful solo career, though, it would be Henley. He had the golden voice and had been their de facto lead singer by the time of The Long Run alongside Frey, and once ‘Boys of Summer’ took off in the 1980s, every single fan found out that Henley could adapt to the times, even if he wasn’t the biggest fan of making music videos.
“I think it was a decent first effort.”
Don Henley
Despite the entire world being blindsided by MTV, many people don’t seem to acknowledge that Henley’s first record, I Can’t Stand Still, was already blowing up. ‘Dirty Laundry’ was already a massive hit after the paparazzi tried to rear their ugly heads into Henley’s personal life, but looking back on the record as a whole, Henley felt that there were pieces that needed to be fine-tuned if he was reaching for another blockbuster release.
Compared to the benchmarks he had hit in his old band, Henley knew that he needed to aim a little bit higher before reaching ‘Boys of Summer’, saying, “I think it was a decent first effort. In retrospect, a couple of the songs don’t hold up, but that’s true of all my albums.” And looking at the record as a whole, it’s easy to see what he’s getting at in some respects.
Even the debut Eagles album had tunes like ‘Earlybird’ that didn’t sit well over time, and listening back to I Can’t Stand Still in full, it’s clear that some pieces aren’t as fleshed out as they could have been or get tampered down by the sounds of the time, or including the traditional tune midway through the record that doesn’t offer the smoothest of transitions in its latter half.
While it’s still a fine album, it’s safe to say that Henley learned his lesson by the time he started working on records like Building the Perfect Beast or The End of the Innocence. The songs may have been at the same standard that he always set for himself, but now that he had time to work on them a bit more, people got to see Henley as his own entity rather than the band’s ‘Golden Throat’ looking for his own hits.
