(Credits: Far Out / TIDAL)
Sat 11 October 2025 14:08, UK
Every artist grows up with posters of their hero on their wall, who they dream of one day emulating, even greats like Don Henley.
Henley’s musical life truly began when he was 16 in the early 1960s while at high school. At this stage, it was an excuse to hang out with friends while practising a hobby until the early hours of the morning in a garage. However, at this stage, Henley didn’t foster ambitions of it becoming his livelihood.
His friendship with classmate Richard Bowden proved to be vital for Henley as Bowden’s father was a musician, and encouraged them to play at his house. Henley somehow managed to assemble himself a makeshift drum kit using leftover equipment from school, and when he wasn’t at Bowden’s house, he would spend his evenings on his porch trying to emulate Ringo Starr.
During a Q&A event in Dallas in 2017, Henley recalled, “My Mom, sometime in ’63, recognising that I had some talent, bought me a drum kit. And I would also practice at home on my parents’ porch down at the end of the house. And I would play along to Beatles records, play along with Ringo.”
While Starr was responsible for Henley learning his craft as a drummer and teaching him the principles of the instrument, he wasn’t the most influential member of the Fab Four on him. Instead, that accolade belongs to John Lennon, who, in the eyes of a teenage Henley, walked on water and was the one musician that he admired most.
Henley, born in 1947, is a generation below The Beatles, meaning he was the perfect age to enjoy their rise to superstardom. In the same year, the Liverpudlians made their television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1963, Henley began performing with his first band at high school and let his newfound love become an obsession.
When he finally decided to take the plunge and sing in front of the general public, Henley unsurprisingly chose to raid The Beatles’ back catalogue. Due to his love of Lennon, the Eagles drummer decided to sing one of his numbers and elected to cover ‘She’s A Woman’, the B-side to ‘I Feel Fine’. From that moment, he was hooked on performing, and the role of Lennon in creating this infatuation has never been lost on Henley.
“John Lennon is still a great influence on my life and my career,” Henley said in a conversation with Uncle Joe Benson. “The first song I ever tried to sing in public was one of his songs; it was called ‘She’s a Woman’. He was my biggest hero, even bigger than Elvis.”
John Lennon greatly inspired Don Henley. (Credits: Far Out / Yoko Ono / Album Covers)
He then detailed the attributes that made Lennon his biggest hero, sharing, “I admired John Lennon more than anybody in the music industry. I loved his voice, I loved his sense of humour — his dry wit. I loved the songs he wrote, the lyrics he wrote. I loved what he stood for, what he believed in, everything about him, really. He was a great influence on me.”
In another interview with Forbes, Henley explained how Lennon was a shared point of reference for the Eagles, who all took parts of his artistry into their work. “John Lennon was great at it because he put it on such a human level, and he’s certainly been one of our role models,” he said.
While Lennon is on a pedestal for Henley, he is also in awe of Starr and believes his work goes under the radar. When he acted as a guest presenter on Sirius XM in 2017, he told listeners that “George Harrison got the credit he deserved toward the end of The Beatles’ career” before stating, “Starr is one of the best rock ‘n’ roll drummers ever in the history of popular music.”
Henley added, “He played great drums and great percussion on so many of those great Beatles tracks. He made them rock, he made them swing and made some of the great noises that pulled those tracks together. So here’s to you, Ringo, a great influence on me.”
Without Starr as the beating heart behind him, Lennon would never have reached such great heights musically, a fact which Henley appreciates. However, the mercurial touch that Lennon exuded and the inherent coolness that reverberated from his work were unlike anything that a teenage Henley had ever seen before, which is why he will always be his number one idol.
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