The one musician Don Henley said needed to leave Eagles: “It doesn’t work”
There wasn’t a day that went by that Don Henley wasn’t grateful for every member of the Eagles.
Whenever he picked up a drumstick and got in front of the microphone, he was taking a chance on whether or not the audience would like it, but when he had his singing brothers next to him, he didn’t need to worry about anything sounding terrible. He knew that they were going to be just fine once that opening guitar in ‘Take it Easy’ started or the piano figure in ‘Desperado’, but after one too many times, Henley realised that some band members needed to leave, whether they wanted to or not.
Granted, it’s not like every member of the band left diplomatically every time they decided to quit. Randy Meisner was already fed up with the band by the time he decided to pull the plug, and Bernie Leadon wasn’t exactly a gentleman by pouring an entire beer over Glenn Frey’s head during his final shows with the band, but Don Felder was always going to be the one member who rubbed the band the wrong way.
Felder had already been part of the reason why the band broke up in the first place after his onstage fight with Frey, but when things started building themselves back up in the 1990s, everything seemed completely cordial. Everyone was there to remember the good times, and even though Hell Freezes Over didn’t offer too many new songs, it at least got them on the right foot to start working together again.
And then Eagles fans started getting used to their new favourite habit: waiting. The band were touring around the country and giving their greatest hits to the people, but the chances of them making any new music were virtually slim to none. They were having too much fun on the road, but when it came time for them to be creative, Henley felt everything was getting derailed whenever Felder started talking about where everyone’s money was going.
He had already begun complaining about how the deal that he signed for the reunion wasn’t fair and how the rest of the band was trying to cut him out of some of his earnings, but it’s not like they didn’t have a point. Frey and Henley were keeping the spirit of the band alive through all those years, and since Felder didn’t have the most engaging solo presence or anything, it made sense to only give him a more modest salary.
So when they were trying to get back on the same page and make a few new songs, Henley didn’t want to go through the same headache again if it meant disrupting the feeling that he had on the road, saying, “The daily business of touring and recording is hard enough without all of the personal drama. We got tired of it. It was killing the creativity. Glenn decided that we had to make a change, and I agreed. Let’s be honest: the band can’t be a democracy. It doesn’t work. All the great bands in history had one or two people at the helm.”
Then again, it’s hard to really sell Felder short when you look at all the great contributions that he made. Had he not been there during their peak years, ‘Hotel California’ would have probably never existed, but it was Henley and Frey that put the breath into every one of their songs, and that was worth a lot more to them than some of the finest guitar riffs that anyone has ever come up with.
They were still appreciative of what Felder gave to the band, but if they were going to survive, they needed to go in a different direction. The guitar maestro was absolutely perfect for that time, but since there have been so many guitar legends around to take his place, Henley wasn’t exactly losing sleep when he knew that he had someone like Vince Gill in the group to make a few guitar duels sound that much better.
