The one singer Don Henley always wanted to work with: “Her voice was incredible”
Don Henley doesn’t really have too much else that he would need to cross off of the rockstar bucket list.
Every single band hopes to make even a fraction of the impact Eagles did, and every single solo record that Henley ever made always gave people some food for thought every time he made a new song. He’s one of the few artists that didn’t have a ton of moments where he embarrassed himself on record, but there were still a few singers that seemed to slip past his radar from time to time whenever he made some new tunes.
Granted, it’s not like Henley hasn’t been able to hang out with some pretty cool musicians along the way. Discounting every single member of Eagles, the fact that he managed to have Kenny Rogers as his mentor, sing duets with Stevie Nicks, and even have Stevie Wonder playing on one of his tunes would have been like heaven for any other singer, but what Henley was after didn’t always have to do with traditional rock and roll.
He still had a great love for bands like The Beatles and The Stones, but even after getting Mick Jagger on the album Cass County, Henley was going for a much different tone in his later years. There was no way that he was going to make a teenage anthem or anything once he reached past his 50s, and when he did end up making some new tracks, a lot of his favourite artists seemed to be coming from the world of country music.
Eagles had never been that far away from country music, and while Henley emphasised that the band was more than just some harmonising cowboys, there was always a foot dragging back into that world on songs like ‘Desperado’. Getting people like Merle Haggard and Dolly Parton on one of his records would have been like a dream come true for any other singer but Henley felt there Reba McEntire was one of the few artists that he could make some great tunes with every now and again.
He had kept his eye on plenty of other modern country legends like Miranda Lambert, but McEntire had the kind of voice that seemed to live every single song that she sang. Her versions of ‘Fancy’ and ‘The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia’ are still some of the best tunes to come out of country’s golden age, and if Henley could appreciate a good story when writing tunes like ‘The Last Resort’ and ‘A Month of Sundays’, he knew that McEntire would fit perfectly with his voice.
And while there’s certainly still time for Henley to work on something with McEntire, he is still waiting for the phone to ring, saying, “I tried to get in touch with her. I wanted to sing with her; I had a song that I thought would’ve been perfect for us, and I loved her — I thought her voice was just incredible. I met some guy who claimed he was her business manager, and he said, ‘Oh, I can put you in touch with her.’ So I think he gave me an email address or something… crickets, nothing.”
If Henley is looking to make more country-leaning music these days, why even stop at McEntire? Don’t get me wrong, she’s a great choice, but given how the new school of country sounds, it would be interesting to see him working with everyone from Kacey Musgraves to Chris Stapleton on some of his tunes. Hell, Orville Peck is one of the closest things to classic country that the world has right now, and that kind of baritone would be very interesting offsetting Henley’s golden growl.
Who knows what’s going to end up playing out in the next few years of Henley’s life, but if he ever does release another solo album, most people know he cares about quality over quantity. He wasn’t going to put out any old record because he felt like it, and if he was working with someone like McEntire, he wanted to make sure that they had the right song that they could be proud of years down the road.
