(Credits: Far Out / Don Henley)
Sun 22 March 2026 18:00, UK
Don Henley didn’t want to claim that he was ever a better songwriter than the next guy.
He was obviously extremely well-read by rock and roll standards, but when looking at his music compared to the likes of Bob Dylan or even Bob Seger, he was still only trying to give everyone his own lived-in experience of what America was like through his eyes. It could get a little bit more bleak than most when looking at his songs, but he admitted that there were some writers who left him stunned by their gifts when they came out with that one magical chord or classic opening line.
Because when you’re talking about Henley’s music, that also means going through a wealth of American music that existed well before the days of the Eagles. Ray Charles was already one of the finest singers in the world in his mind, and even when he was venturing back into the world of country, it wasn’t hard to find the right tune that could melt his heart with every single noise emanating from a pedal steel guitar. But there were a lot more songwriting styles awaiting him in Los Angeles.
The Byrds had already begun to show everyone what rock and roll could sound like if you added a little bit of twang to it, but that was only a drop in the bucket of what the rest of the world was doing. Henley was floored listening to Linda Ronstadt sing tunes by everyone from Randy Newman to JD Souther, and there wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t have a great deal of respect for what people like Gram Parsons and Jackson Browne were bringing to the table.
If he was looking to be in one of the biggest bands in the world, it wasn’t something that he was going to do on his own. A voice that is perfect can only get you so far, and even if Henley had a fantastic handle on melody, it took him a few years before he started to realise the potential that he had as part of a songwriting team once Glenn Frey joined Ronstadt’s band. That first Eagles album was piecemeal assembled from donated songs here and there, but tunes like ‘Desperado’ and ‘Tequila Sunrise’ opened things up a lot more.
Frey may come from the streets of Detroit, but you would have sworn that he knew about the wonder of California like the back of his hand. His way of capturing America in his lyrics was evident from the minute he filled in a line on ‘Take It Easy’ for Jackson Browne, but through his wealth of chords and his way of coming up with a perfect phrase, Henley was dumbfounded at some of the tunes he was coming up with.
Henley was no slouch as a songwriter by any means, but he felt that Frey was working with that kind of musical magic that he would have never imagined, saying, “He wrote some of the best parts of ‘Hotel California’ and ‘Desperado’ too. I get credit for a lot of that, but the fact is that he wrote some of the pivotal lines that I wouldn’t have thought of in a million years. He’s also great at arranging, too. His nickname is ‘The Lone Arranger’.”
While we’ll never fully know which songs belong to Henley and Frey specifically, there are certain tunes that seem to have a lot more of the other’s personality if you’re willing to look for them. Henley could be almost clinical in the words he was writing, but whereas ‘The Last Resort’ was perfect for the time, there’s no doubt that Frey was the one behind the title ‘Lyin’ Eyes’ or the slightly romanticised look at Hollywood on ‘New Kid in Town’.
Both of them were responsible for making Eagles what they were, but there was no chance that anyone was ever going to beat Frey when it came to having those brilliant turns of phrase. Henley was definitely the engine that helped drive every one of their songs forward, but the reason why the band have never recorded a tune without Frey goes beyond human respect. It was because no one could have accurately put as much heart into any Eagles song as much as he did.
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