(Credits: Far Out / Don Henley)
Sat 29 November 2025 18:23, UK
Don Henley found fame and fortune in the 1970s, and unlike most, he had never been looking for it.
For as long as they could, the Eagles kept their faces from album covers, tried to keep interviews borderline anonymous, and shirked the usual trappings of fame. Their goal was simply to catch a snatch of original Americana, putting the grand notion of the nation’s fabled ‘Dream’ to the sword with a searing brand of innovative country rock.
One of the follies that Henley and his bandmates identified in this ‘Dream’, capitalised as a strange collective noun, was that it often held the wrong people in lofted esteem – folks like Frank Ocean, whom he thought of as a “talentless little prick”. Plenty of people would readily agree with him on that take, but he’d find far fewer fellows in the know who would debate his picks for the “underappreciated” nearly-stars who deserved more praise from the American public.
While Henley hailed Randy Newman as “a national treasure,” the Pixar-scoring star has himself said that he has never really had more than “200,000 fans” worldwide. Perhaps the ‘Short People’ songwriter didn’t help that matter when he said that those 200,000 were never the most attractive bunch, but that’s exactly where Henley thinks America has gone wrong with its subdued judgment of the master of his craft.
Newman is wry and sarcastic, and he’s always for the song rather than commercialism. Take, for instance, ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’: Tom Jones scored a huge hit covering the song by making it a sordidly sexual jaunt. This was a complete misreading of a song that was actually about meek sexual ineptitude, but the public didn’t notice. So, while Newman’s original version was a fantastic, faithful portrayal of how the protagonist was an odd, comic mix of commanding and mild, his stuttering rendition never had the same radio appeal. Newman knew this, and he also knew it was all the better for it.
“Go on, show us your Grammy, Don!” (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
That’s what makes him a master, or in the former Eagles man’s book, a “genius”. As Henley told the Los Angeles Times. “He’s a songwriter’s songwriter; a musician’s musician. He’s also probably the most misunderstood and underappreciated recording artist alive.”
But there’s another in America’s midst who he also sees as sorely overlooked. Henley knows a thing or two about blending genres, and perhaps that’s been the downfall of this next fellow, too. But in the clear light of day, he’s just a legend who wrote bloody good songs, and could do it all, so he did do it all.
“This gentleman, I had the pleasure of meeting only once,” Henley said in a speech honouring Glen Campbell. “We had a wonderful evening together talking about music and the recording industry many, many years ago. He has one of the greatest voices in music. He is also a very underappreciated musician. One of the best guitar players ever to emerge on the American music scene.”
Newman and Campbell are both married by this uncanny for truly realising a song to the nth degree. In Newman’s satire, you sense the whole of America is encapsulated, not just the subject he is skewering. And the same can be said when Campbell sings something like ‘Wichita Lineman’ and conjures up something that seems to capture the very essence of the workaday existence of the working classes.
These are the stars Henley thinks America ought to appreciate more than the next winner of The Voice, because they surely say a hell of a lot more about the state of the States and its quirky array of hardy citizens.
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