The Eagle has landed
It hasn’t always been plain sailing for The Eagles, despite being America’s biggest selling band. On the eve of a NZ solo tour with his own band, former lead singer Don Henley talks to Grant Smithies.
On a balmy autumn evening in Dallas, Texas, a former Eagle considers an incoming hawk.
The election of Donald Trump was ‘‘catastrophic’’, he tells me. Don Henley considers himself a pretty laid-back dude, but he does not have a peaceful, easy feeling about this one.
‘‘A lot of people here are extremely worried, and there’s been huge crowds marching in the streets,’’ offers the co-leader of The Eagles, the biggest-selling American band in history.
‘‘And let’s be clear: this man did not win the popular vote. Clinton got more votes, yet he got in, and I’m very concerned about that. And the guy might not even get to finish out his term, because there are already about a dozen civil lawsuits pending against him. Really, this feels like America’s Brexit. Who knows that will happen?’’
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in what’s left of his hair, Henley is now 69 years old, a multi-millionaire rock star survivor, happily married and raising his three kids in the heart of Texas, the state where he was born.
He’s had quite a life, dodged a few scandals. There was a time when this man was considered the epitome of coked-out, groupie shagging, 70s rock star excess.
The press never really took to the guy, and vice versa. The Eagles may have sold terrifying numbers of records, but the music magazines often dismissed them as opportunists who took the more nuanced country-rock sound of The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, filed off the rough edges, repackaged it for the mainstream, then laughed all the way to the bank.
‘‘Yeah, but that was largely because most of the rock’n’roll media was in New York City and we lived in Los Angeles, and there was an intense cultural rivalry between the two cities.
‘‘The people in New York looked down on LA as being shallow and hedonistic, but now they’re all movin’ out there. Now the bastards are all clogging the highways and honkin’ their horns at everybody like they do in New York. And the ironic thing is, most of our band was from outside California. We moved there because Los Angeles represented the leading edge of America to us, with both the best and the worst of the whole nation on display. It was a place where you could watch the so-called American Dream go wrong, and it was obvious that dream wasn’t really available to everybody.’’
The Eagles had a reputation as a very fractious band. In assorted bitter court disputes with other members, Henley and co-leader Glenn Frey were portrayed as tyrants, but today, he seems calm, thoughtful, articulate.
Henley’s conversation ranges widely, and he seems in a hurry to get the obligatory sales plug out of the way early so we can move on to more interesting things.
‘‘The Eagles played New Zealand in 2015, and now I’m coming back in March with my own band, covering four decades of music I’ve made, both solo and with The Eagles. There’s a horn section, two violinists, three incredible backing singers – it’s quite something. People ask why I still bother touring, given that The Eagles made so much money. But playing music is what gives me a feeling of fulfilment, and money’s got nothing to do with it. And besides, when you’re touring with a 15-piece band, you don’t even really make money!’’
Is Henley suggesting his upcoming tour is, in effect, a charitable donation to the good people of New Zealand?
‘‘Ha, yeah. That’s right. Pretty much. But I love the people down in your part of the world, and the scenery, too. New Zealand’s one of the most beautiful places in the world.’’
For once, this feels like more than the usual flattery visiting rock stars spit out on cue. Henley is a long-time environmentalist, pouring vast amounts of his time and money into two non-profit wilderness organisations he founded in Texas and Massachusetts.
‘‘We focus on what wild places mean to people, and the importance of mankind living in harmony with nature. One organisation uses the philosophy of the great American nature writer Henry David Theroux to help educate teachers and students, and the other is a 27,000-acre [10,926 hectare] wetland in Texas. These places are very important to me, and to the world. And now they’re under great threat. With Trump in power, the next four years could be very rough on the environment.’’
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Henley’s had the most successful career outside the band, scoring solo hits with glossy 80s pop nuggets such as Boys Of Summer and Dirty Laundry, but once an Eagle, always an Eagle.
He will be forever defined by this band, whose impact of popular culture has been substantial. Formed by Henley and Frey in 1971, The Eagles sold more than 150 million albums, mostly in their first golden run before an acrimonious split in 1980, and then a whole heap more after reforming in 1994.
They were the archetypal babyboomer band: catchy, unthreatening, gifted and egotistical, their heart-on-sleeve liberal politics undercut by fairly conservative ideas about women and money, their music a mellow synthesis of rock, folk, pop and country.
It was country-rock with a cocaine sheen: smooth, carefully constructed, and perfectly tailored for radio play.
‘‘We spent a lot of care and attention on our records, and tried to tell universal stories about the things we cared about and our audience cared about as well. We also came along at an experimental time when there was a lot of cross pollination between musical styles, and the baby boomer generation was coming of age. There was a lot of cultural upheaval, and music was right at the centre of that. People used music as a tool for bonding and communication back then.’’
It was a time when people would go around to each other’s houses to listen to significant new albums, he says. Music’s more like wallpaper now.
‘‘It’s portable, it’s convenient, it’s everywhere, coming out of your little mobile phone and sounding like crap. We live in a more novelty obsessed, throwaway society now, but with The Eagles, we built our career one block at a time over a period of years and years. Sure, we got criticised when we reformed, but you have to have money when you get older, and this is what we do for a living. As James Brown once said, the music business is 25 per cent music and 75 per cent business. It’s a strange combination of art and commerce, and that’s always been an uncomfortable pairing.’’
The Eagles were above all superb harmony singers, with a nice line in weary, broken ballads, many of which had a strong country undercurrent that betrayed Henley’s Texan roots.
Many of these songs will get people of a certain age singing along every time, even cynical old journalists like me.
I tell Henley about my good mate Frigyes, a thrifty soul who likes nothing better than to find old CDs at the Nelson Recycling Centre that only cost a dollar.
Imagine his delight on finding a copy of The Eagles’ Greatest Hits amid the piles of dusty trash! And imagine my delight when he gave it a thrashing one day when driving me out into the countryside.
Henley’s amused to hear that the last time I heard The Eagles was via a chucked-out CD my mate had rescued from the dump. He’s even more amused to to hear about the bad harmony singing we attempted in that car when Desperado came on.
‘‘Oh, man, I’m so glad you mentioned that song! I love Desperado, too. That’s the first song I ever wrote with Glenn, so it’s very emotional when I sing it now. The audience always sings along. It’s a healing thing for me when I sing it now. It’s cathartic.’’
‘We were like brothers ... [Glenn Frey and I] were extremely close, so his loss was an enormous blow. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it a year later. To be honest, goin’ off on this solo tour with my own band has been part of the healing process...’