(Credits: Far Out / Derek Russell)
Sat 24 May 2025 19:30, UK
Every era of rock and roll moves in waves. As much as people like the idea of making the best music imaginable, there are moments where the genre either isn’t as fashionable as it once was or is going through a tailspin where nothing seems to be working out. And while Don Henley has been able to weather the musical storm no matter what era he found himself in, he knew those precious moments when it felt like nothing could go wrong.
Then again, it’s easy to look at a year like 1976 as the moment when Eagles had finally arrived. Since they had a blockbuster record behind them in Hotel California and were moving into stadiums around the world, it was easy to think that every musician was living in limousines and buying expensive cars between the countless shows they were playing. If anyone took a closer look, though, they were ready to collapse.
Not every band member was happy to have their name in lights, and while Henley hogged most of the singing throughout the show, it did nothing to endear him to someone like Don Felder, who had his own songs swiped out from under him when recording the record. So when working on what should have been the next classic, every single band member was absolutely exhausted by the time they got to work on albums like The Long Run.
From day one, the Eagles had been interested in writing about real-life experiences, and now that they were the biggest names in music, it was getting a lot trickier to relate to the common man. ‘New Kid In Town’ may have been one of the finest lyrics they have ever written, but it was hard not to look at the next album as the moment when the new kids of the new wave made them look like pampered rock stars.
Compared to where they started at the Troubadour, though, Henley seemed to be in another world. The entire appeal of the band in the early days was indebted to those days where all they wanted to do was sing their hearts out and have a good time, and looking back on that period still working with Linda Ronstadt’s band, Henley felt it couldn’t have been better for him.
Despite eventually turning in a stellar solo career, Henley felt that nothing would eclipse his salad days in Los Angeles, saying, “It was a great scene going on. It spawned a lot of people that are still on the radio today. I thought I was in heaven. I was thrilled to death to be here. It all fizzled out around 1973, 1974, but it was really something.”
And when listening to the band’s later material, it’s hard not to hear the nostalgia in Henley’s voice. Since ‘The Sad Cafe’ was the last official Eagles song that fans would hear for a while after their breakup, Henley’s lines about fortune shining on only a few people may as well be a tribute to the people still lost in those bar gigs and wondering whether their calling will ever come.
Even though everyone hopes that era of their lives will go on forever, it’s always important to move on once your moment passes. A whole lot can change within the span of a few weeks, let alone a few years, and while Los Angeles started shifting towards hair metal in the 1980s, no one would forget how they felt listening to everyone from Gram Parsons to Linda Ronstadt in the 1970s.
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