The one musician Don Henley felt never belonged in Eagles: “Never messed with rock”
Glenn Frey and Don Henley had their work cut out for them the minute that they formed Eagles.
They had the idea of putting together the kind of band that could make the most beautiful music California had ever heard, and a lot of what they kept going back to was the kind of musicians who could make their songs soar higher than anything else. Hotel California proved that their instincts were right, but there was a little bit of weight that they needed to lose before getting to that musical level.
But when the band was still a four-piece, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong on their first album. Henley and Frey hadn’t turned into the great songwriters that they would become just yet, but you can hear each of them trying to figure out a different way of looking at country music. At the same time, Desperado was what happens when the band decides to take things a little bit too far when working on any of their albums.
The record wasn’t poor by any means, but it made sense why no one would have wanted to go down that musical road all that often. The band didn’t need to claim to be cowboys to be respected by their peers, but once they shed that kind of skin, it was a lot harder for them to get the same punch out of their sound as a quartet. Joe Walsh hadn’t entered the picture, but Don Felder was the best they could have hoped for when they first began making tunes like ‘Already Gone’.
Felder had the chops that they really needed to become a great rock and roll band, but Bernie Leadon was the one constantly out of step with the rest of the group. He had envisioned the band as being a great country rock outfit, so when he was being asked to hang in the background and maybe leave the banjo in the background of the song, he didn’t necessarily feel as satisfied as he used to be.
He wanted the opportunity to make something beautiful on his own, but that kind of music didn’t fit well with the band anymore. Henley knew that there was a lot more that they had to offer other than just songs about the simple pleasures in life, and if they were going to be able to reach the next level after One of These Nights, they were going to need someone like Walsh to come in in Leadon’s place.
Leadon didn’t exactly leave gracefully after he poured a beer over Frey’s head, but Henley felt that the whole thing was about finding someone who clicked better with what they were used to hearing, saying, “Bernie had bluegrass roots. He’d never really messed with rock and roll guitar, and he never really understood how to get that dirty rock and roll sound. He was just not schooled or programmed in that area. We also knew that Joe was so controlled that he could play the ballads with no problem at all, and a lot of people doubted that. Also, Felder can play the banjo and a mean mandolin, so we didn’t lose anything in that area when Bernie left.”
That’s not to say that Taupin couldn’t play some great licks, though. Some of his ballads during his time with the group are some of the greatest that the band ever made, but it’s not like everyone couldn’t see what those songs were really all about. Those were country tunes through and through, and with Walsh in the band, everyone had the chance to move around a little bit more without being tied to country music.
They still had an undying respect for what country music was all about, but they didn’t want to be defined by it for the rest of their lives, either. Any artist would want the opportunity to stretch, and while it took Leadon’s dismissal to make it happen, there was a lot more freedom for them to work with when they started to have some more grit behind their delivery.
