The “spiritual” moment Don Henley first heard The Beatles
Growing up in the small northeast Texan town of Linden, there was little for Don Henley and his friends to do. It was the post-war era, and while technological advancements were starting to pierce this unassuming corner of the Lone Star state, outside of his love of football, books, and the traditional music around him, the world was still small. Yet, thanks to the radio, rock ‘n’ roll was starting to spread, and after he first heard Elvis Presley’s cover of Big Mama Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’ in the late 1950s, his dreams started to stretch far away from his hometown. Without this, there would be no Eagles or ‘The Boys of Summer’.
Henley was around music from the get-go. His father had fought in the war and loved big band records from genre heroes such as Glenn Miller, and his mother played piano, with him also receiving piano lessons because of it. Furthermore, due to Linden being at a crossroads of cultures, he was exposed early on to the music of The Ozarks, the expressionist sound of New Orleans, Western swing from Texas, and, of course, the blues. Even the great blues pioneer T-Bone Walker and ragtime innovator Scott Joplin hailed from Linden, with their fathers both sharecroppers, pointing clearly to the ugly racial history of the Deep South but also giving Henley a sense that there truly was something magical in the soil of his hometown.
Despite his deep connection to music from the onset, Linden was still a small place, and it didn’t have a record store, meaning what was on offer was dictated by the older generation, but that would soon change. Once a month, Henley’s mother would trek to a bigger settlement nearby and bring back 45s for the house. As her son was still young, though, she often returned with children’s records and more traditional ones for her and her husband to listen to. However, after Henley requested that she bring back Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’, his trajectory shifted, and he saw the world differently.
This was a significant moment for Henley. After being rapt by Presley’s swaggering rock ‘n’ roll, he delved further into the blossoming genre. He would amass his own collection of 45s, which would quickly come to feature other significant pioneers such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, and Little Richard.
While rock ‘n’ roll was the first taste of the imminent new epoch, another later moment was more important for Henley and his generation: when they first heard and saw The Beatles. The Fab Four had been making waves in Europe for some time before they hit America and debuted on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, and after that consequential few minutes, there was no going back. The future had arrived; a cultural boom would emerge, changing the direction of society forever.
Speaking to Charlie Rose in 2001, Henley revealed that first watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show as a teenager changed his life and made him realise that music was the career for him. It was a wholly “spiritual” experience that he still holds dear. He recalled: “When I really decided that this was what I wanted to do was when I saw The Beatles when I heard and saw The Beatles.”
The Eagles songwriter continued: “It just struck me. I mean, I loved rock ‘n’ roll before that time, but there was something on a more, the only word I can think of is a more spiritual level, something more deep-rooted. And I said, ‘This is for me. This is what I want to do.'”
Unsurprisingly, after Henley had been through the wringer of fame in the 1970s, an era which saw many of its brightest lights succumb to misadventure, it was the assassination of The Beatles leader John Lennon in 1980 that had the most profound impact on him. Not only was he his musical hero, with his group’s music one of the catalysts of his life, but the senseless nature of the killing, far removed from the common tales of drink or drugs, really drove the nature of the tragedy home. He still wonders what could have been if Lennon would have survived.
