Why Don Henley hated playing drums: “It twisted my whole body”
Being a multi-instrumentalist is never the easiest thing to pull off. Some artists can spend their entire career trying to master one instrument, but when you look at someone like Geddy Lee, who played keyboards, bass guitar, and bass pedals all the same time, it’s easy for that to devolve into a circus act rather than a concert whenever a band gets onstage. Although there was nothing flashy about the way that Don Henley played in Eagles, he admitted that it was never the easiest thing in the world, either.
Then again, a singing drummer was always going to be a hard sell for the public. The Dave Clark Five may have mastered it fine, and Ringo Starr was loveable whenever he took the lead vocal on a Beatles song, but looking back at the track record, the drummer coming out from behind the kit still felt like a novelty by the time that Henley started working as a backup vocalist for Linda Ronstadt.
When he opened his mouth to sing in Eagles, though, there was no one else who could touch him. Glenn Frey had a certain drawl to his voice whenever he strapped on his acoustic guitar, but whereas he sounded like any other folk-tinged singer, Henley had a certain magic in his vocal cords that had the perfect balance of Rod Stewart-esque grit and vocal precision whenever he performed.
But for someone who spends 95% of their time in the back of the stage, how was anyone supposed to see him hog the spotlight? Granted, there were times when he would come to the front of the stage when everyone was playing acoustic guitars, but the band always sounded at home with Henley behind the kit, usually having a master over how to control his breath as he was battering the life out of his drums.
And for as laidback as Eagles’ music seemed, that’s no easy feat. The whole point behind any great rock and roll outfit is to have a balance of rhythm and melody, and since Henley had to cover both, he learned how to work both parts of his brain like that without thinking. That kind of practice could take anyone else years to match after a while, but even if he played well, that didn’t mean that Henley was the most comfortable frontman in the world.
When talking about his job later on in his career, Henley remembered that he was often in a lot of pain trying to get the right take for a song, saying, “Playing the drums hurts my back. I used to have to hold my body in such a position that my spine got out of alignment. Between playing the drums and keeping my mouth in front of the microphone, it really twisted my whole body.”
Considering how much Henley had to move his body out of whack to make every song sound right, it’s almost impossible to see their excess on The Long Run as the result of all that wear and tear. The band’s swan song before the 1980s may have seemed uninspired at the time, but maybe the clinical angle was done intentionally, both to give Henley a way to ease the tension in his back and also for him to numb the pain, given that every other member of the band was off their face on cocaine.
It might not have been the healthiest cure in the world, but it does help put things into perspective a little bit more. Henley will forever be known as the Eagles member with the golden voice, but he knows there’s a certain challenge that comes with having to keep the time and push his vocal cords.
