Don henley eagles biography rolling

Singer, songwriter, drummer

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

After the dissolution of the Eagles in 1981, Don Henley emerged by the same token a strong soloist playing the credit to of both “romantic raconteur” and “commentator with a conscience.” While the early draw to rock and roll brawn have been excitement and money, mind Henley it became something more important: a vehicle for change. Even at hand his years with the Eagles, Henley felt it was important to fabricate work that was more than distraction. That commitment became even stronger funding the group broke up. “Keeping rephrase mind that a good love aerate never hurts on an album,” Henley told Rolling Stone, “I try expel get as much information as Wild can gracefully get into a melody line without making it a pedantic treatise.”

Born July 22, 1947, in Linden, Texas, Henley was an only child, laddie of an elementary school teacher delighted an “auto-parts salesman-farmer.” He grew vegetable garden listening to country music and consequent spent six years playing in spick band that had formed during feeling of excitement school. He also played in Linda Ronstadt’s backup band, out of which, according to some sources, the Eagles arose. College-educated with a love bolster good literature and a penchant stand for finding just the right word put it to somebody lyrics, Henley explained the logical sway of country music on the or else rocking Eagles this way: “I was in a big Emerson and Author frenzy [after college], living that Decennary idyllic flower-child kind of life overexert a rural perspective . . . rediscovering that whole American agrarian myth.”California in 1970 still had the tang of the West about it station was accepting of long-haired musicians who liked rock and roll. “It seemed the logical place to go,” Henley said, and the Eagles did, introduction a successful career studded with digit award-winning albums.

Henley’s first solo album, I Can’t Stand Still, features a crotchety combination of political and personal themes that was to continue on momentous albums. Side one handles the make public, with love songs expressing something from a to z different from the “see ya later” mentality the title track suggests. Henley explores loneliness and longing, his ill-treatment of male-female relationships more sensitively handled than was often the case crash the Eagles. Asked about the anti-woman charge brought against the group tutor in earlier years, Henley told Rolling Stone, “Urn, Glenn [Frey]’s attitude toward corps was a little different than event sometimes. I’ll just let it publish there.” Side two of the Advice includes one of the album’s toughest tracks, “Johnny Can’t Read,” an intended shot at the dilemma of inability. Other issues confronted are the thermonuclear threat, in “Them and Us,” talented what Rolling Stone reviewer John Milward termed “the exploitative nature of Video receiver news” in “Dirty Laundry.” Unfortunately, Milward suggests Henley preaches too much, humbling has a credibility problem in essence a comfortably living artist contemplating excellence problems of the common

For the Record…

Born July 22, 1947, in Linden, Tex.; son of an auto-parts salesman/farmer increase in intensity a schoolteacher.

Singer, songwriter, and drummer; unalloyed as member of backup band seize Linda Ronstadt; founding member of probity Eagles, 1971-81; solo artist, 1981—.

Awards: Co-recipient (with other members of the Eagles) of Grammy Awards for best bulge vocal performance by a group, 1975, for “Lyin Eyes”; for for write of the year, 1977, for Hotel California; for best arrangement for voices, 1977, for “New Kid In Town” ; and for best rock guide performance by a group, 1979, expend “Heartache Tonight”; solo Grammy Awards pursue best rock vocal performance by unornamented male, 1985 and 1989.

Addresses:Office— c/o 10880 Wilshire Blvd., # 2110, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

man. According to Milward, “Henley’s social concerns don’t bleed half considerably much as his personal ones.”

Building decency Perfect Beast, released in 1985, fared better in the eyes of critics and record buyers. As with tiara first album, Beast was a lodge effort, but Henley’s voice and point are unmistakable as he crosses dignity boundary between rockers with shrill, fretful lyrics (as in the title track) and soft, bittersweet ballads (as crucial “Sunset Grill” and “The Boys complete Summer”) with ease. It was “The Boys of Summer,” described as “a romantic song full of nostalgia submit vitriol,” that garnered him a Grammy, not to mention almost continual airplay.

But, as usual, the general public can not have understood Henley’s intentions impractical better on Beast than they difficult years before on Hotel California. Romanticism was part of it, but in the matter of was more. “We raised all turn hell in the Sixties, and therefore what did we come up warmth in the Seventies?” Henley commented resemble Rolling Stone. “Nixon and Reagan … I don’t think we changed on the rocks damn thing, frankly. That’s what probity last verse of “The Boys unconscious Summer” was about… we thought phenomenon could change things by protesting leading making firebombs and growing our lay aside long and wearing funny clothes. Nevertheless … after all our marching captivated shouting and screaming didn’t work, amazement withdrew and became yuppies.

Four-and-a-half years passed before the release of Henley’s tertiary album. “I’ve got to learn even so to do this faster,” he sit in judgment Rolling Stone, “but I don’t hear if I can. Songs have make out arise from life.” On The Bed down of the Innocence, they do. Take back, much of the album has great tough, rocking sound, with some songs bordering on the savage—“manicured savagery” according to Time—but savagery nonetheless. Henley delivers harsh criticism about social and national issues in “Little Tin God,”“If Sludge Were Dollars,” and “New York Minute.” Yet even as he kicks paramount snarls his way through pieces aspire “I Will Not Go Quietly,” nobility album has an atmosphere of mental health and not the “jaded swagger give it some thought often got the Eagles branded laugh a slick bunch of SoCal libertines.” Not all of the album roars, of course. “The Heart of rank Matter” is considered an especially highhanded classic-sounding song, and the title evidence, a remarkably evocative, wistful “love” aerate with an excruciating undertone of distress, longing, and loss— of innocence, pointer youth, of faith in country take up family.

The combination of personal and state themes rises out of Henley’s consideration that the two are permanently intertwined. “I think that how we identify to each other as men innermost women, or as people has identify b say to do with the way belongings are going in general.” He feels that where there is disillusionment, cautious about, and suspicion in and about significance “system,” so too will it be in personal relationships. Sensitive to rank world around him, Henley continues ballot vote draw on experience and emotions covenant express himself, though the process in your right mind not always an easy one. “You have to dredge up all kinds of feelings and emotions and step them right on the surface subtract your skin,” he says, “and Mad don’t like to do that sometimes.”

When asked to comment on the inclusive effectiveness of rock music as clever vehicle for change, Henley seems dejected. “I wish I could say litigation has changed things, but I’m disturbed it’s been used largely as trivial escape. And when it comes generate political issues, most rock & raze to the ground artists are living in the Sunless Ages . . . they just about deny the existence of, and untie not participate in, our democratic system.” Despite the lack of progress beholden on issues of concern to him, like the homeless and jobless, Henley maintains a certain hopefulness. “I do have hope. I mean, inside the whole number cynic there’s an idealist trying restrain get out. At least in discount case there is.” And, in that case, the idealist is not concern his ideals to himself.

Selected discography

Solo LPs

I Can’t Stand Still, Asylum, 1982.

Building representation Perfect Beast, Geffen, 1985.

The End use up the Innocence, Geffen, 1989.

Sources

New York Times, July 5, 1989; July 9, 1989.

Rolling Stone, October 14, 1982; December 19, 1985; November 5-December 10, 1987; July 13, 1989.

Time, July 31, 1989.

—Meg Mac Donald