(Credits: Far Out / Derek Russell)
Fri 10 October 2025 3:00, UK
Like all great artists, Don Henley never liked staying in one position whenever he went into the studio.
Eagles definitely had a distinctive look about them whenever they started playing, but it wasn’t like they were bound to be the soundtrack of California forever. They could do a lot of different things when they walked into the studio, but Henley felt that there were moments where they became a bit stuck in one sound.
It’s not like he and Glenn Frey didn’t have a good idea for what they wanted the California rockers to be, though. There was no room for merely average players in the band, and when they began talking about their vision, they set their sights high. They wanted to be on the same level as artists like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, but for all of the majesty that those English acts had, what Eagles came out with was pure Americana.
And that’s not in the traditional sense of the word. Whenever most people see the word ‘Americana’ on a record sleeve, it’s normally a code word for country-tinged tunes with fiddles and traditional folk instruments. That wasn’t what excited Eagles, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t find a way to creep into their sound every now and again. After all, Bernie Leadon was a country player first, and hearing his banjo on ‘Take it Easy’ gave them a connection to the country community.
By the band’s standards, ‘Take It Easy’ could probably be called ‘pure Eagles’. They still had a lot of groundwork to cover before they were true legends, but Frey’s reworkings of a Jackson Browne sketch turned into one of the biggest hits of their career simply because of how good it sounds. Everyone has had moments where they needed to roll down the windows and feel the breeze in their hair, but Henley knew that it wasn’t the best thing in the world to be lumped into that category.
They could make easygoing music if they wanted to, but hearing that as their first single did end up backfiring in Henley’s mind, saying, “A lot of those early writers who said we were laid-back, mellow, ‘the LA cowboys’, yada yada, all that crap – there was nothing mellow about us. But that stuff stuck like glue. We did everything we could to shake it.”
That also came with Henley having to deal with an audience that he didn’t always identify with. Although the average Eagles fan might have had a much different view of the world that he did, he also didn’t mind the idea of having a conversation with them that didn’t have to devolve into a screaming match, saying, “I can get along with good old boys – as long as we don’t talk about politics or religion.”
All press may be good press at the beginning, but for those actually willing to peel back the layers of their sound, they would get pieces of every type of American music ever made. There are a few soulful moments reminiscent of the days of Motown, the occasional rock and roll juggernaut, and even when they started cutting loose later on The Long Run, there were moments where they tried to tap into the zeitgeist by making advances towards new wave music.
It’s never a good thing for an audience to expect only one thing out of an artist, but by the time that Henley actually reached the big time, he knew he didn’t want to stay in that one lane for long. Country music would always be a special part of their catalogue, but it also wasn’t a position that Henley wanted to live in his entire life.
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