The guitar riff Don Henley said was too good to sing over: “We couldn’t”
Every great rock and roll band knows the meaning behind any great guitar riff. It can be a great song on its own merits with only a handful of chords and a great story, but there are some moments where the perfect guitar hook or horn break comes in and leaves everyone dumbfounded when they play the track over again. And since Eagles were deadset on perfection every time they played, Don Henley knew his job was about preserving those magic moments whenever he could.
Throughout Eagles’ career, though, they were never exactly known as the heaviest band in the world. Everyone from Led Zeppelin to The Who wiped the floor with them from a rock and roll perspective, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have their own unique identity, either. Henley and Glenn Frey were two of the finest songwriters in the business, and when they harmonised with each other, there was no one in the world who could come close to what they did.
But that’s not to say there weren’t some impressive licks in their songs. From the first seconds of ‘Desperado’, that opening piano line is enough to bring someone to their knees, and listening to the opening of ‘One of These Nights’, that bass line that leads everyone into the song is one of few times where rock collided with disco textures and managed to sound pretty damn good.
It was fine while it lasted, but there was no way Bernie Leadon would go the distance with them playing rock and roll. They would have still been stuck at Chuck Berry licks until the day they died, and once Joe Walsh entered the mix, they not only got a new guitarist. They got a wild animal that happened to play an instrument, and Walsh made every note count when he played songs like ‘Life in the Fast Lane’.
The riff itself is a monster and a staple of 1970s rock at this point, but when Henley was first writing to it, he felt that there was no way for them to sing over the top of it without screwing it up, saying, “Joe busted out that crazy riff and I said, ‘We’ve got to figure out some way to make a song out of that!’ But we really couldn’t sing over that riff, so Glenn came up with the idea of what is a traditional blues and R&B staple – the one-chord song. It was a real bitch for me to learn how to do that syncopated bass-drum part and sing the melody at the same time.”
It may have been a mental workout, but that was always how Walsh envisioned it. The whole point of the lick was for him to warm up his fingers and test out his coordination, but as it turns out, practice can often sound pretty good if it’s based on the blues. But given Walsh’s other contributions to the record, it’s strange to think his solo spot was a ballad.
Compared to ‘Life in the Fast Lane’, ‘Pretty Maids All in A Row’ almost doesn’t sound like it’s written by the same person, but it’s no less beautiful because of it. After all, Walsh knew he had to come up with great melodies to work alongside Henley and Frey, and by pairing his vocals with his beautiful slide guitar part, he gave the band the best of both worlds in terms of rock and roll and danger.
The habits of trashing hotel rooms and getting thrown out of fancy restaurants were something they all had to get used to, but if it was worth getting great licks, it hardly mattered. The band had become country-rock’s Knights of the Round Table, and there’s nothing wrong with having a jester in the court every now and again.
