“It came from that mysterious place”: The one lyric Don Henley called a musical gift
Do you know what Prince’s aquarium is? I only found out about it after reading one of Questlove’s interviews. He was talking about the series Soul Train, how much he loved it and how much he used it to inspire creativity. When justifying his adoration for the show, he called it his “aquarium” and then clarified what he meant.
“Here’s the deal. Since 1997, Soul Train has been my ‘aquarium’. That’s a Prince term,” he said, “When he was alive, whenever you’d go to Prince’s house, two things were always on TV: [the 2003 animated film] Finding Nemo and Black Orpheus, this beautiful Brazilian film from 1959. He would have those on a constant loop: ‘Yeah, it’s my aquarium’.”
Why am I telling you this? The point is to highlight the subjective nature of creativity. No matter which of the greats you are talking about, from Prince to Questlove to Paul McCartney to Don Henley, they all have different environments in which they can create. They vary from person to person, and there is no right way to make a good song.
Don Henley can attest to this more than ever. There are plenty of songs he wrote for the Eagles which had very specific influences, and as a result, the lyrics came from a really specific place. Consider a track like ‘Life in the Fast Lane’, which was a song dedicated to the band’s newfound hatred of Los Angeles and those who inhabit it; those who are driven by material possessions rather than looking for something more meaningful.
On other songs, though, Henley had to let lyrics come to him. It was as simple as having a theme to write about, and instead, when he had songs in the works, while living his everyday life, he would come across different observations, which subsequently influenced what he wrote. This happened on the track ‘The Boys of Summer’, a solo effort written after the Eagles had split. The melody and rhythm came to Henley relatively simply, but the words took a bit more time. It wasn’t until he was driving that he came across something which helped him finish the track.
“It was a gift,” said Henley when discussing the song, “It came from that mysterious place that lyrics sometimes come from. I had been stuck on the bridge section—couldn’t get the words, the melody. One afternoon, I was driving on Interstate 405, somewhere south of Sunset [Boulevard], the cassette of the track blaring through the sound system. I looked to my left and there it was: a 1979 Cadillac Seville with a ‘Deadhead’ sticker on the back. It just struck me as ironic, paradoxical, with a little touch of nostalgia, and it went right into the song.”
The line that this inspired was: “Out on the road today, I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.” While it might be on the nose, it did two things: The first was, it helped Henley finish the song, only using a mere observation that he came across in the real world. The second was, it summed up the contradictions that existed in a generation of people who called themselves “hippies”. Henley is a great example of how inspiration can strike from various places.
