“It was like a secret”: The one person Linda Ronstadt said made Eagles stars
It was going to take a lot for Linda Ronstadt to even attempt to complement her own records.
As much as she loved singing for whoever would have her, she was always interested in performing rather than poring over one song over and over again whenever she walked into the studio. For her, it was all about how she felt whenever she performed, but even when looking at some of her best friends in the industry, the devil was in the details when it came to getting a song exactly right.
And it’s not like Ronstadt didn’t have the right kind of people to bounce ideas off of. Throughout her career, she may have taken gigantic leaps at every opportunity, but working with Nelson Riddle helped give her more perspective on how she was singing. It was more about delivering the song with conviction, a lot of the time, and while she could hit every note with pinpoint accuracy, she could also respect the kind of artists who were looking to capture a performance instead of worrying about singing one note wrong on the final recording.
That’s half the reason why Ronstadt loved the authenticity of someone like Neil Young, but it turned out that she was already building the perfect band behind her without even noticing. Glenn Frey and Don Henley had already been journeymen in California when they found themselves performing with Ronstadt, but when they began putting a band together, Ronstadt was the one who suggested bringing in Bernie Leadon. He was the best country player they could have asked for, but the Eagles were about more than the sum of their parts.
After all, those harmonies are still some of the finest that the 1970s ever spat out, and listening to Randy Meisner soar on their early tracks is one of the most neglected sides of their early tunes. But considering Henley was only singing lead on a handful of tunes on their first record, Ronstadt was one of the few who were convinced that they were watching someone slowly turning into a frontman from behind the drum kit.
Henley may have been a bit timid when first stepping up, but Ronstadt figured that he was going to be the star of the band, saying, “Glenn found out that [Don] could sing. It was like a secret. They called him the secret weapon. No one had heard him sing. He was very shy. Don’s incredibly shy. He was so cute.” If Henley was going to be the leader of the band, though, he was going to make sure that they never put out anything that wasn’t the best thing they could have put out.
In all fairness, there isn’t any album in the world that’s spotless, but Henley knew how to push him and the rest of the band far enough to the point where they got the take they were looking for. There was no reason to think that they couldn’t be as big as their heroes, and even when looking at the Crosby, Stills, and Nash harmonies, hearing Henley work his way through ‘Desperado’ with the other vocal harmonies behind him was absolutely perfect.
Even though Frey was technically the leader of the band in many respects, it’s not like he could ignore the fact that Henley was at the top of the musical food chain. That “secret weapon” tag wasn’t so secret anymore, and if you look at how the band’s trajectory played out, it wasn’t an accident that the majority of the songs on Hotel California and The Long Run were sung by Henley.
There was still some wiggle room where the band wanted it, but it makes sense why Don Felder was put to the side whenever he tried to sing one of his tunes. He was a great guitarist, but if you were to put any of the other band members in competition with Henley’s voice, everyone else was going to be competing for second place.
