The movie star Don Henley never understood: “I missed the whole icon thing”
Most of the Eagles’ greatest work comes from how indebted they are to American culture. Considering how long it’s been since Hotel California hit shelves, the way Don Henley constructed melodies and his knack for social commentary have made them as much a part of the US as apple pie to some fans. There’s more to America than just good music, though. It’s about the theatre, but when it came to rebellion, Henley never could understand what made James Dean so cool.
For anyone with functioning eyeballs, it’s not that hard to find out why Dean was such a fantastic figure in his time. Outside of being one of the smoothest-looking people on the planet, his starring roles in Rebel Without a Cause almost overnight put him in the conversation of the greatest male actors of his generation.
Granted, the best parts of Dean’s career were when he opened himself up beyond just the typical teenage outlaw. To this day, one of the best scenes of any teenage drama involves Dean breaking down in front of his parents, crying about how they are tearing him apart by making him exactly what they want him to be.
It’s not hard to see why that kind of mentality wouldn’t have worked with rock and rollers. Even though the genre was still in its infancy, every frontman that came out after had tried to strut their stuff and pull off the eagle-eyed stare that Dean could do. Glenn Frey was no exception to the rule, but Henley couldn’t understand it from behind the drumkit.
Although the band eventually gave the actor his namesake track on the album On the Border, Henley figured Dean’s influence passed him by, telling The Very Best of the Eagles, “I sat there and listened to the guys talk about James Dean. They had evidently studied him and knew much more about him than I did. I had seen most of Dean’s movies, but I somehow missed the whole icon thing. The mythology never quite reached my part of East Texas.”
If Henley didn’t understand Dean’s mythology, that didn’t stop him from creating a mythology of his own. Throughout the Eagles’ career, his way of blending social commentary, poetry and melody under one roof made for tracks that toed the line between singer-songwriter territory and the kind of rock and roll that you could listen to no matter what the occasion.
There are even a few times when the Eagles could match Dean’s effortless cool. Despite being relegated to being a dad band throughout most of their career, some of their greatest hits, like ‘Life in the Fast Lane’, tap into that same bad-boy attitude that Dean had, with a guitar lick that gives you the feeling of an engine being revved up.
Since most of the songs are still being celebrated years later, Henley may have found a way to match what Dean had first started doing before rock and roll had been born. He may have been the original icon, but a look at Dean’s suave demeanour is as much a part of America as the opening piano notes of ‘Desperado’.
