‘King of Hollywood’: the Eagles song about Don Henley losing out on a movie role
In the entertainment industry, sometimes, being a rock star isn’t quite enough. The whole appeal of travelling the world and going to exotic locations to deliver music might sound like a nonstop party, but there’s always been the unspoken belief that most musicians want to be actors whenever they’re off the stage. And while Don Henley was never one to say ‘no’ to the silver screen, sometimes the best inspiration can come when someone puts you in your place behind the scenes.
By the start of the 1980s, though, there weren’t many bands that were much bigger than Eagles. Henley may have been at the back of the stage, but the minute he opened his mouth, everyone got the chance to hear one of the purest smokey voices to come out of California, and Hotel California may as well have been their key to every single excessive pleasure they could get their hands on.
While Henley always had his head screwed on, he did have an eye for what was going on in Hollywood. The entire movie industry had been turning a corner towards new kinds of cinema, and since ‘Golden Throat’ was already a glorified rock and roll cowboy, he could have done wonders on the big screen had he received the right script. When he tried out for a part in a western movie, though, everything fell through before any cameras started rolling.
Not every dream is meant to work out as it should, but Henley’s distaste for Hollywood might have come out on the next record. Despite The Long Run being looked at as the moment where everything started crashing down on the band, ‘King of Hollywood’ was as venomous as any of their early songs, with Henley and Glenn Frey singing from the perspective of some hotshot movie producer who promises to give his clients the world.
Compared to the Twilight Zone scenario in Hotel California, Henley talks from the perspective of someone working on the inside. Whether or not the inspiration came from the movie role directly, Henley had seen parts of how the sausage got made in the film world, and this is the result of him not liking what he saw, with actors being glorified prostitutes for their work.
While all of them appear to be glamorous walking the red carpet, Henley paints the picture of every major power player in Hollywood pulling the strings of certain actors and making them behave a certain way. It might be a lot closer to reality than people want to believe, but that was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to Henley’s dissatisfaction with every side of the entertainment business.
He would eventually pour out his distaste for the tabloids on ‘Dirty Laundry’, and when Eagles finally got back together, ‘Get Over It’ was Henley’s rebuttal back at celebrities who claimed that everything going wrong in their lives was someone else’s fault and how they would never take accountability for their actions. Then again, not every band member was as cynical, with Frey starring in episodes of Miami Vice and playing a secondary role in Jerry Maguire.
But from Henley’s perspective, one rejection was enough for him to see the darkness of Hollywood, and whether or not people believe everything that ‘King of Hollywood’ says, it’s good food for thought before anyone signs a major contract. There’s a lot to gain out of life in Tinseltown, but you have to be willing to sacrifice a piece of your soul in order to get there half the time.
