“It made us ill”: The one Eagles album Don Henley said made him sick
The whole point behind making it in the music industry is being able to keep up the momentum. No matter how many times that someone has tried to put their best foot forward on every single album, the public is only bound to pay attention for as long as the tunes last, and it only takes one lacklustre album for everything to come crashing down. While the Eagles were determined not to lose any of that momentum, Don Henley admitted that one particular album made him physically sick when they were working on it.
Then again, the entire road to stardom in Los Angeles was already going to be tough for the band after various shakeups. Their insistence on becoming closer to a rock and roll band never sat well with Bernie Leadon when he left, but the fact that they got superstar Joe Walsh in his place should have meant that everything jumped up a notch.
And for a brief moment, it worked. Even if they had to work themselves ragged to get it to sound perfect, Hotel California is still as immaculate a record as the country-rock icons ever put out, complete with the title track’s duelling guitar solos and the more introspective material like ‘New Kid in Town’ and ‘The Last Resort’.
Once someone has put themselves through the wringer like that, the last thing they want to do is go back into the studio and do it again. But after coming off one of the biggest tours they had ever gone on, they were ragged, addicted to cocaine, and somehow were expected to take everything that they did before and go bigger.
Despite The Long Run still being a great album, though, you can hear that fatigue setting in as well. There are still some knockouts like ‘Heartache Tonight’ and the title track, but while it’s meant to draw a picture of the character in the song, it’s hard to listen to a track like ‘King of Hollywood’ and not hear the hours in Henley’s voice as everyone keeps waiting for that one magical take.
Even though the album marked the end of their recording career for a while, Henley thought that he didn’t want to get to that kind of desperation when making any material, recalling in 2001, “It made us ill. Well, we made ourselves ill. Hopefully, we won’t have to think about [a new album] that way.”
Then again, that care and attention may have worked out in their favour when making Long Road Out of Eden. Despite having some of the greatest songs that fans had heard in a while, the idea of making it into a double record did seem like too much too late, especially when songs start to blend together in the back half of the record or sound like leftovers from Henley’s solo career.
Still, it’s better that the band made the record they wanted rather than settle for a record that sounds like it was laboured over for years. Because as much as the Eagles have been known for carefree music, one of their biggest accomplishments was making some of their greatest hardships look like a walk in the park.
