The musical giant Don Henley grew to hate with a passion
Anyone who’s been in the business for as long as Don Henley knows that the industry is a tricky beast.
Everything that comes with having massive hits comes with a price, and there are more than a few times where people have to sacrifice what they love if they want to sell the amount of records that they want to. Eagles usually didn’t need to worry about that, but Henley knew that after a few years of his solo career, he needed to cut a few people out of his life.
Then again, Henley wasn’t one to go for a solo career immediately after breaking up the group. Glenn Frey had released his own record that got him riled up to make his own in response, but the idea of being a solo star was never where he fit. He wanted to share his musical offspring with the rest of his bandmates, and once he struck out on his own, there was always going to be a burden on his shoulder that didn’t really need to be there.
But it’s not like he wasn’t in safe hands at the time, either. Anyone and their mother would have paid anything to have a singer of Henley’s calibre on their team, and yet Henley found himself back at Geffen Records after initially trying his best to get away from David Geffen when working at Asylum Records.
After defeating that battle, though, Henley figured that there would have been a bit more support than he ultimately got. It’s not like he was struggling by any metric, but considering the kind of numbers that he could have been raking in for singles like ‘The Boys of Summer’ or even the massive album statement of The End of the Innocence, he felt he was only being given pennies compared to what the rest of his contemporaries were getting.
And it’s not like he was exactly subtle about it, either. By the time that The End of the Innocence press tour began, Henley had no problem badmouthing Geffen for stifling him for years on end, saying, “I guaran-fucking-tee you I’ll be on the market after the next two albums. I want out. They’re nickel and diming me to death. [David] Geffen has one set of rules that apply to him and one set of rules that apply to everyone else.”
Once Henley had had enough, though, it’s not like Geffen wasn’t prepared for it, either. Since the singer still had a commitment to him, his decision to leave meant spending some time in court with Geffen’s lawyers, who ultimately sued Henley for millions of dollars for all of his issues.
Even if Henley was being a bit pedantic about his time on the label, it’s not like Geffen was coming off of this issue completely spotless. He wanted to do everything he could to make sure Henley suffered in some way, but it really was a new low for him to motion bringing in Henley’s ailing wife to sit on the stand and be asked questions about his record contract that she knew absolutely nothing about.
Although Henley did at least find a small piece of his heart for Geffen by thanking him during his speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s not like he was willing to forgive and forget. From that point on, he wanted to make records the way he wanted to make them and not have to worry about whatever one of the label’s heads thinks about the promotional cycle or how much support he gets for his records.
