(Credits: Far Out / Alan Light)
Sat 6 December 2025 20:15, UK
Not content with dominating the 1970s Billboard charts with the Eagles, drummer and co-frontman Don Henley also sought to take a stab at solo stardom for the next decade.
The Los Angeles soft rock outfit found mammoth success across the blockbuster album era. Titans of the sunny yacht sound beloved by the day’s FM radio, the Eagles couldn’t stop selling units during the lull between the counterculture and new wave, 1976’s Hotel California, and the best of the package, Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), both respectively standing as the fifth and fourth biggest-selling albums of all time.
Once the Eagles had hit their first hiatus, Henley kick-started his solo career in earnest. Embracing the MTV revolution, Henley was happy to croon in front of the camera, propelling the former folk and country dabbler to a bona fide pop star of the day.
His sound was given an updated boost, too. While fellow Eagle and former writing pal Glenn Frey was scoring big with Beverly Hills Cop theme ‘The Heat Is On’, Henley added a digital wash of keyboards and glossy pop sheen to bring the LA sound to a new audience, the same year’s ‘The Boys of Summer’, another much-loved hit for the former Eagle.
He’d grabbed the solo career he set out for in spades, but for many of his longtime fans, his best was yet to come. Dialling down the synths, relatively, and reverting toward a more soft rock sonic offering, 1989’s The End of the Innocence was hailed as a return to form.
Penning further lyrical muses on adulthood and the ruminative whir wrought from the passage of time, Henley’s third solo effort seized the global charts with even greater commercial success, his closing LP of the decade a six-times Platinum seller.
There were plenty invited to the studio. Splitting sessions between LA’s The Complex and A&M in Hollywood, a whole host of former comrades and newcomers lent their backing vocals to The End of the Innocence. In addition to the session artists playing on the record, old pal JD Souther was invited to support ‘If Dirt Were Dollars’, the Take 6 group lent their caramel harmonies to a couple of numbers, and, perhaps a surprise to longtime fans, Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose made a cameo on the charged-up ‘I Will Not Go Quietly’, both sharing Geffen as their labels.
Who provided the female backing vocals on End of Innocence?
Plenty. A much sought-after vocalist as well as a celebrated artist in her own right, Valerie Carter joins former Scandal frontwoman Patty Smyth on ‘How Bad Do You Want It?’, and ‘Gimme What You Got’ counts the likes of New Bohemians’ Edie Brickell plus Melissa Etheridge for the number’s rootsy kick.
Long before her Tuesday Night Music Club fame, Sheryl Crow teams up with Souther on ‘If Dirt Were Dollars’, and session veterans Carmen Twillie, Julia Waters Tillman, and Maxine Waters Willard form a backing trio for the album’s ‘The Heart of the Matter’ finale.
Related Topics