(Credits: Far Out / Don Henley)
Tue 27 January 2026 20:27, UK
For all of the work that Don Henley put into the Eagles, there’s a lot that could get lost in the shuffle.
It’s easy for anyone to turn their brain off and listen to some of the greatest harmonies that the rock world has ever come up with whenever they play a show, but for as laid-back as they sound, there’s a reason why a song like ‘Hotel California’ has gone down in history with tunes like ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. They were far more interested in making tunes that would last, but Henley felt that some of his contemporaries made him seem inferior even when hitting their snare drum once.
Then again, Henley was never applauded for having the most advanced drumming chops in the world. He may have done exactly what was needed for the tune, but no one was going to see him fly off the handle like Keith Moon. And given what the band played, it’s not like they needed that, either. Henley wanted laid-back tunes, but there’s a lot more that goes into making everything sound so simple.
The members of AC/DC didn’t get into the business to make songs that came easy, and the biggest part of the Eagles was also in their sense of groove. They weren’t an R&B group with syncopated hits by any stretch, but when listening to them perform together, Henley was the glue keeping that steady pulse the same way that Ringo Starr used to do on all of those early Beatles tracks. It was about giving everything a firm bed, but that didn’t mean those drum tracks aged too well.
The songs themselves are classic, but when Henley first began working with Glyn Johns, he had to be put through his paces a little bit. After all, this was the same producer who had worked magic for bands like The Who and The Rolling Stones a few times, so there was no way that anyone was going to argue with how he recorded everything.
But when Henley had a problem finding the right sound for his drums, he realised that he was never going to match the kind of intensity that Johns was used to when engineering Led Zeppelin’s greatest albums, saying, “As opposed to putting one mic on every drum, he would just put a few microphones around the drumkit. He was used to recording John Bonham from Led Zeppelin. I would say that I want my snare drum louder, and he said, ‘If you want it louder hit it harder.’ And I hit it as hard as I could, but I couldn’t hit it as hard as John Bonham.”
Granted, there aren’t many humans on this Earth who could match the intensity of Bonzo if they tried. He was a once-in-a-lifetime drummer, and even when he didn’t have any sticks in his hands like at the ending of the song ‘Moby Dick’, hearing him play with his hands made the whole song sound like a parade of wildebeests stampeding across the headphones for a few minutes.
Which is probably why Jimmy Page was always particular when Zeppelin reunited for a few shows. No one could properly replace Bonham, and if he was having trouble with a powerhouse like Phil Collins when they played Live Aid, Henley probably didn’t have a prayer when he was on the other side of the glass as Johns waited for something that sounded the same as his old mates.
Turning down Johns on their third album to work with Bill Szymczyk may have been insane for many people, but it was all about being practical for Henley. There was no way that anyone could eclipse Bonzo, so it was best to work with someone that could meet them on their level instead of reaching towards an impossible goal.
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