The singer who put Don Henley to shame: “My voice doesn’t stand up”
There was never any sense for anyone to argue with what Don Henley was singing in the Eagles.
Even if Don Felder has had moments where he regretted not getting to sing nearly as much for the band, was there anyone who was seriously entertaining the idea of having anyone else sing on any of their tunes when they had one of the most gifted singers to ever live sitting behind the drum kit? Henley was the kind of person who could turn anything into gold, but he wasn’t afraid to get schooled every now and again when he had the right person to show him the ropes behind the microphone.
But by the time Eagles broke up, Henley had grown into a far more competent singer than anyone had imagined. There were a lot more moments of the band roughing each other up before gigs during the One of These Nights tour, but if Henley could manage to get onstage and still function and deliver some of the greatest tunes that he could, there’s a good chance that nothing would ever slow him down. At the same time, there’s a difference between his style of singing and the proper way of approaching his favourite tunes.
His turn as an adult contemporary artist during his solo career was a lot more comfortable for him, but when you look at his later years, he was more content to learn from what his heroes had done. A lot of the greatest resources in American music had been slipping away by the time that he had worked on Cass County, and he felt that it was only right for him to make the kinds of tunes that people like Dolly Parton would have been proud to sing.
He didn’t forget about his rock and roll roots when he decided to bring Mick Jagger onto the record, but getting someone as seasoned as Merle Haggard on the song ‘The Cost of Living’ was what really stood out to him. Haggard had been through every single part of American history that Henley had wanted to hear, but getting the right vocal out of him had to have made Henley shake in his boots when he came up to sing.
Henley wasn’t afraid to put some grit into his delivery, but when you’re standing next to one of the most famous country singers in the world, anyone would have been a touch insecure about their own voice, with the Eagle recalling, “It was the best work he’d done in a while. We computer-ed it together and I’m proud of that. My voice doesn’t stand up to his. He said at one point, ‘You want me to sing softer because you’re singing softer?’ And I said, ‘If I could sing like you, sir, I would; but this is my voice. I want you to sing like you; I don’t want you to try to match me.’”
And you can really hear that kind of grit in full force across the entire song. Sure, there may have been some help from Pro Tools cutting and pasting different parts of Haggard’s voice from different takes, but the important thing was hearing him being able to make a tune that reminded everyone why he should have been so revered. Because for Henley, that level of respect was slipping away more than a few times.
The music that he grew up with had started to sound more dated to modern ears, and since the modern Nashville sound was about bringing in modern influences, Henley knew that what he loved was going to become a relic of the past if he didn’t work for it. He needed to make an album that was true to himself, and even if the rest of the world wasn’t head over heels for it, all that mattered was that he could find something in it that reminded him of his roots.
So while most people might not have the time of day for artists who whine about how music was so much better in their day, there’s a reason why no modern artist would be able to match what Haggard did. He was singing from the heart every single time he got up to the microphone, and even if he was singing about where all the music went during his generation, he was still going to sound more hardened than any other troubadour that came through Nashville.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Classic Rock Newsletter
All the latest Classic Rock content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.