Credit: Far Out / Don Henley
The key to any good Eagles song usually starts with Don Henley singing.
Even though the band prided themselves on being some of the finest singers to ever come out of California, there was a lot more they had to offer when they let Henley sing the lion’s share of the music whenever they were looking for a hit. He was the one who had a voice made of solid gold, but Henley could be more than a little bit frank when he was talking about some of his bandmates not having what it took to do some of their songs justice.
Because while Henley and Glenn Frey helped form the band, everyone had their part to play in the group in his mind. He wasn’t about to insist that he play the guitar solo on ‘Hotel California’ or anything, so what was the point of anyone else trying to argue with their vocals against his? He clearly had those bases covered, but all bets were off once the band broke up. They could do whatever they wanted, and that normally meant having more than a few questionable versions of their songs out there in the wild.
But there was no rule saying that the rest of the band couldn’t do a handful of Eagles tunes. Randy Meisner was probably still asked to sing tunes like ‘Take it To the Limit’ throughout his solo career, and Frey wasn’t going to ignore the fact that he wrote a song like ‘Take it Easy’, but the idea of Joe Walsh singing ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ felt like a step too far for Henley when he first heard his version.
Granted, Walsh wasn’t out of line by any stretch when he sang the song. He was the one who had written the damn guitar riff when he first got into the band, and there was no way that the rest of the group was going to do justice to his riff the same way he could. But given how many hits he already had on his own, Henley felt that Walsh didn’t need to be reminding everyone of the heights that they had set with the Eagles.
And he also couldn’t resist getting a few jabs in about Walsh’s singing voice as well, saying, “That`s not his song to do. Glenn Frey and I wrote 90 per cent of that song, and I sang it on the record. Joe wrote the opening guitar riff. Joe had his own solo career before he joined the Eagles, so I don`t understand why he doesn`t do a song that`s more his, instead of doing that one. Besides, he sounds like he`s got a clothespin on his nose.”
That might have some truth to it, but Walsh didn’t need to worry about making his voice sound absolutely perfect. His personality was half the reason why people loved him so much, and when he was first asked to join the band, even Frey admitted that it was about the band’s ability to kick some ass whenever they played onstage rather than worrying about if every harmony sounded great.
Henley definitely comes off as a little bit bitter in that quote, but there were more than a few times where he could have been protecting his solo career as well. He had wanted to distance himself from the band for a few years, and since he was already beginning to become a star in his own right on tunes like ‘The Boys of Summer’, there was no reason for everyone to be reminded of why the Eagles were so good.
It was a bit too early for Henley to start getting nostalgic for the days when he was soaring with his bandmates, but the sad fact is that he didn’t really have a say in the matter. Classic rock stations had already begun playing the Eagles soon after their breakup, and while Henley could have kept going as a solo artist, no one was going to forget those massive songs that everyone fell in love with a decade before.
