The bandmate Don Henley called the best leader of Eagles
There was no sense in claiming that the Eagles were a democracy whenever Don Henley sang.
Their voices sounded absolutely perfect when playing off each other, but when you look at all of them standing in a row onstage, there’s no doubt that Henley will forever be the one member of the group that had the golden set of pipes. It may have been a bitter pill for everyone else to swallow, but Henley was the first to admit that he was far from the dictator of the group whenever the band first started.
In fact, the band felt like more of a united front when they started out as a four-piece. They had already turned in time working with some of the greatest bands on the country-rock circuit, and while Henley wasn’t yet ready to become the massive frontman that he would morph into, David Geffen knew what he had on his hands. Henley was one of the finest singers on his roster, so it was no surprise that he ended up being rushed back into the studio to sing another song for their debut album.
But the real partnership in the group always came from how Henley worked off of Glenn Frey. Every iconic band usually has that infamous rub between two musical forces, and Henley was definitely in a Lennon/McCartney-style relationship with his guitar-playing friend. And when looking at the way that the band carried themselves, Frey was one of the best cheerleaders for the group since he was at the front of the stage.
And that’s all thanks to what his first record label had told him back in the day. Frey wanted to become a star by any means necessary, and while his higher-ups said that he needed a band behind him, Henley was the greatest thing that could have happened to him. Here was a drummer that could write some of the best tunes and with a voice as smooth as anything, and all Frey needed to do was rely on his musical intuition to get him through everything.
It’s not like he didn’t work to get to where he needed to go, but when you listen to some of his best songs in the band, he was the one tying most of their tunes together. ‘Lyin’ Eyes’ was the kind of off-the-cuff remark that fell out of him one day when they were taking a break from recording, and he also happened to be in the right place at the right time when a drug dealer told him about living life in the fast lane.
So while many people think of Henley as the kind of malevolent dictator of the band most of the time, he was quick to say that he is only carrying on what Frey had started, saying, “It’s a myth to think that a band can be a complete democracy. Glenn started the band. And he’s the one that had the vision. He’s the one who named the band. He’s the one who found the first hit single and sang it. And, you know, it’s basically his band.”
And their final album Long Road Out of Eden seemed to reflect that as well. It was always going to be up to Frey as to whether or not the band was ever going to make any new music, and when you look at the message behind a lot of his songs on the record, he was putting out his thoughts for what would have been his final original record, especially when leaving the band off on the final notes of a song like ‘It’s Your World Now’.
Frey’s death did end up becoming a major body blow for the rest of the group, but when they got out on tour these days, it’s never about trying to prop someone up as a replacement for their leader. They are trying to celebrate the music that they had made back in the day, and every time that Vince Gill or Glenn’s song Deacon plays, they’re reminded of the eagle-eyed dreamer that helped start everything back in Los Angeles.
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