The band Don Henley claimed “changed [my] life forever”
As the 1970s started to come into view, the entire landscape of California rock started to change. Gone were the days of psychedelic flower power of the 1960s, instead replaced with the roaring sounds of mellow rock and roll, with everyone from Gram Parsons to Linda Ronstadt channelling pieces of country music into their sound. While the Eagles would become known as one of the founding members of the country rock movement, Don Henley traced his musical lineage back to one of the founders of American rock and roll.
For all of the great rock and roll music that came out of America during the days of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, it would be England that turned the music scene inside out. After The Beatles crashlanded on American soil with songs like ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ on The Ed Sullivan Show, teenagers were glued to their televisions, wondering if they could ever have a job like that.
While Henley remembered how much of a cultural shock it was seeing The Beatles perform for the first time, it would take a few years for the rest of America to respond in kind. Although the British Invasion may have brought exciting acts like The Rolling Stones and The Animals to living rooms worldwide, Roger McGuinn had the idea of making an Americanised version of that sound with The Byrds.
Although the group were primarily known as folk musicians before they had heard rock and roll, their transition into the world of rock birthed an exciting new sound for the time, with McGuinn’s chiming 12-string guitar sending shockwaves across the music scene. Even though The Beatles would become friendly with The Byrds as the years went on, Henley was awestruck when he saw them perform for the first time.
Tearing through their renditions of songs like Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, Henley was in a trance listening to the band playing, showcasing their fantastic sense of lyrical phrasing and delicate approach to harmony. It wouldn’t be a sensation that would last long, though, as the band would be dragged off the stage after a handful of songs because of the chaotic crowd breaking out in front of them.
Then again, it didn’t matter how long it took Henley to see them perform. By the time he heard the first few bars of their first songs, Henley knew that he had found his calling as a musician and songwriter, wanting to write something that could measure to The Byrds’ sense of folk-tinged rock and roll.
When inducting the band into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Henley remembered the impact The Byrds had on him, saying, “[My] life had been changed forever. [I] wore out two copies of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ that year…It was a wake-up call for a new generation and a new era of rock and roll. The Byrds not only pioneered folk-rock, but they also pioneered something called country-rock”.
As Henley went on to bigger things with the Eagles, that same harmonic structure from The Byrds was still intact, down to the soaring harmonies and chiming guitar playing. While many classic rock bands admit to taking cues from artists as varied as Bob Dylan and The Beatles, Henley knew that The Byrds fit in the mix of the transcendent artists of the 1960s.
