THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Don Henley’s Long Run
At 68, Don Henley of the Eagles talks about his new album ‘Cass County’
By JOHN JURGENSEN
Don Henley lives in a canyon off the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif. Down the hill from his house he has an office in a small red barn, on property he bought in the 1970s, the decade that brought the Eagles their biggest hits.
Almost a half-century later, the Eagles are still prospering. The band recently wrapped up a retrospective History of the Eagles tour, which spanned 146 concerts and grossed $253 million in ticket sales. On a hot, windy day in August, Mr. Henley seemed relieved that the run was over, as he sat at a picnic table before a platter heaped with cherry tomatoes from his garden. “I’ve been a human jukebox for a long time now,” he said, suggesting that the Eagles might be done touring for good—though that’s been said before.
To move forward, he has gone back, using a different setting—his hometown of Linden, Texas, 1,600 miles from Malibu—as the musical jumping-off point for his first solo album in 15 years. “Cass County,” due Sept. 25, mixes country and other roots styles, echoing the blend of music that poured through his northeastern corner of the state. Much of “Cass County” was recorded in Nashville, and the album’s guest vocalists include Miranda Lambert, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton and Mick Jagger. Some songs are oaky, others twangy, but lyrically most have a long-game perspective that comes with age. “I’m making one last victory lap and then I’ll take a bow,” Mr. Henley sings on the closing track “Where I Am Now,” written with frequent collaborator Stan Lynch.
Musically, Mr. Henley straddles a generational divide. As a kid he soaked up the music of the Louisiana Hayride, a radio show that launched Hank Williams and Elvis Presley, blasting from Shreveport, La. Seeing the Beatles on TV helped put him on the path to the Eagles, and a sound that defined Los Angeles in the 1970s.
To Mr. Henley, 68, some more recent generational shifts rankle, such as smartphones at concerts and the free flow of music on the Internet. With help from longtime manager Irving Azoff, the band safeguards Eagles-related copyrights, suing people who cover, sample or post their songs online. Edited from an interview.
Growing up, did you love the music around you, or was it just part of the environment?
The first memory of music I have is my mother singing around the house while she did housework. My grandmother lived with us, and she would sit in her rocking chair and sing hymns and Stephen Foster songs, like “My Old Kentucky Home.” My dad was an auto-parts dealer, and as a kid I’d drive with him the 21 miles to his store, and we’d listen to the station in Shreveport, called KWKH, a big 50,000-watt station. That part of Texas was sort of a cultural crossroads, with musical influences coming in from all different directions: bluegrass from the Ozarks, the stuff from New Orleans was from its own planet. From the West we had Bob Wills. Scott Joplin and T-Bone Walker were born in my hometown.
Is songwriting a grueling process for you?
It’s different for every song. We usually start with the title. It’s easy to write choruses. It’s the verse part that’s difficult–what does it mean, and what is the narrative that connects the choruses? Stan [Lynch] and I will get in a room with acoustic guitars and pace around and talk. You have to be really comfortable with your partner, because you have to discuss what you believe about all the great questions in life. Life, love, relationships, politics sometimes. Sometimes we’ll put the instrumentals on and listen to the track over and over, and the colors and the textures of the music will help tell you what to say.
Don Henley’s ‘That Old Flame’
Tell me about the song “That Old Flame.” There are some songs with twists of phrase that are very honky-tonk, like the chorus: “You only have yourself to blame if you get burned when you try to rekindle that old flame.”
That was one of the last things written on the album and primarily because we needed more up-tempo stuff. There are six waltzes on the album, because I’m a sucker for them. “That Old Flame” started with a title, and something like that actually happened to me. An old girlfriend from the ‘80s looked me up through another person. I said hi and we reconnected, but that was it. You need to keep moving forward. I’m working really hard to live in the moment, and Lord knows that it’s difficult to do these days. When we get on the concert stage and look out in the audience, very few people are in the moment. They’re all doing this [he bends over his smartphone] which has caused us and several other groups to institute new rules about cellphones. We got a lot of flak for that in the beginning, but now everyone’s adopting that because if you’re going to do that you might as well stay home.
How does the need to write music strike? Do you feel restless? Excited?
I wake up with music in my head everyday. The difficulty is getting rid of the clutter. The business part of the music. Every day I’m involved with every minute decision from the management company: logistics, what hotels we’re going to stay in, when and where we’re going to rehearse. Do you want to do this TV or show or not? How much is it going to cost? It gets in the way. Plus I have a wife and three teenagers, and they are the best and most important things in my life. So it’s hard to make that space for the muse to move in. When I go back to my hometown I get a feeling of space and freedom that is a holdover from my childhood.
Do you write at your place in Linden?
I’ve got a farm of about 200 acres where I can’t see the neighbors. I make a campfire and I can do whatever I want, drive around the dirt roads like when I was young. A lot of the album was written there, or driving there from Dallas. I almost called the album “I-30.” Between Interstate 30 and the Pacific Coast Highway, I’ve written a lot of music. Those are my two power spots, if you will, when there’s silence in the car or a CD on repeat with the instrumental track we’re working on.
Don Henley’s ‘Take A Picture Of This’
In the past you’ve been pretty frank about the insecurities of being a songwriter. Do you still have confidence issues about your work?
No. I’ve pretty much outgrown that, which is another thing that made this album more enjoyable. There’s a paralyzation that occurs when you’re too hard on yourself. The great becomes the enemy of the good. I just decided to lighten up. There’s a magical middle ground that if you hit it, you can write and you can write well. I’m never going to be Paul Simon or Randy Newman, but I’m going to be me and I always aspire to do better work.
How much of that has to do with cutting loose concerns about charts and sales?
I don’t sit there and think, ‘Well, is this going to be commercial?’ Because, let’s face it, at age 68, there’s no point in worrying about that. But there are other outlets for me, and I don’t have to depend on radio.
But that’s a double-edged sword—those other outlets you’re talking about, like the Web, make it easy to get lost. Albums come out one week and get forgotten the next.
Everything is ephemeral and disposable. Careers are short and music is background noise. You don’t see 20, 30, 40 year careers like we’ve had.I’ve made my mark, so I can relax and enjoy the process and write and record exactly what I want, and let the record company figure out how to market it. It’d be great to pick up younger fans, but I don’t expect it. I think there’s an audience for this record, and I’m not afraid or worried about the judgment that is surely going to be passed. This period, when the record is about to come out, used to be fraught with a lot of worry for me. It’s like sending little Billy off to school to get his ass whipped. But now it’s OK. I’m enjoying being this age and not sweating the small stuff.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the comma in the song title “No, Thank You.”
And I put it there. The people who were doing the artwork and the documentation for the publishing had left it out. No, no, no.
How do you feel about the reputation you have for being extremely litigious?
I don’t care about it, because I’m right. Intellectual property is in grave danger, and somebody has to stand up and say, enough. I don’t like it when my songs are treated like some kind of interactive toy. You don’t go into museums and paint mustaches on paintings. I’m old enough to understand how copyright works, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the safe harbor clause in it that gets abused daily by people like Google and their subsidiary YouTube. I also protect my work from politicians. And I’m not alone—Springsteen, Jackson Browne—they do the same thing. You can’t co-opt my work for some kind of endorsement for your political views, whether I agree with you or not.
Don Henley’s ‘When I Stop Dreaming,’ featuring Dolly Parton
But there’s been a cultural shift, because now when you go after people for using your music, you’re perceived as greedy.
That’s a mind-set that grew up with the Internet, that everything should be free for the taking. That piece of music employed a lot of people. This album [“Cass County”] cost well over a million dollars to make. There’s a whole chain of jobs out there that these kids don’t think about—all the people who are employed at recording studios, record labels, companies that make microphones and guitars and recording equipment. I’ve made my money, but there’s a whole industry at stake. I don’t care what anyone thinks about what I’m doing. Those people are naive and ignorant.
What’s an example of an Eagles cover you liked?
Hmm, very few. There have been some really bad versions of “Desperado.” Some of the covers on “Common Thread” [an Eagles tribute album] were great. Covering someone else’s songs is a tricky business. I was hesitant to do it on my album, but I picked obscure songs. When I hear my songs coming out of someone else’s mouth, it’s strange.
When guest stars like Mick Jagger sing on your album, do they get paid for it?
It’s a professional courtesy usually. The musicians union stipulates that you have to pay union fees, which isn’t worth pretty much the cost of gas to get to the studio. I’ve never asked for anything to sing on someone’s record, and if you have enough respect for someone to do that, you don’t expect to get paid for it
You have a two-part documentary out, “History of the Eagles.” What did you cut from the movie, or hesitate to include?
I think the documentary is great, but I didn’t like the process. I’m a very private person. I don’t understand this culture oversharing and putting it all on YouTube or Twitter. We were able to remove most of the cringe-worthy stuff. We didn’t want it to be just another movie about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Joe [Walsh] talked more about addiction in the film than we did, but we were all as bad as him—we just didn’t want to talk about it. I started putting that stuff behind me in the late ‘80s. Took me a few years, but I got there. But the movie had an incredibly positive effect on the old career. As our manager is fond of saying, it did more for our career than putting out a new album would have.
On the new album, it doesn’t sound like your voice has faded. Does it sound that way to you?
You suffer some natural deterioration. That’s another reason I stopped drinking. I don’t know if it’s an allergic reaction or the fermentation, but it swells my vocal cords. In the old days we were drinking on stage, doing drugs on stage sometimes. Now, one sip of red wine and my voice is f—-ed up for two weeks. It’s just not fair. But customer satisfaction is important to me. I ride a stationary bike in my dressing room, 8 miles until I’m soaking wet. The other guys are in their dressing room going “me me me me,” but voice exercises never worked for me. I sing better when I’m hot and sweaty. I’m good for about seven or eight gigs on an Eagles tour, so the last ones are an exercise in diminishing returns. But being in a band is like being on a football team. If someone’s having a bad night, another guy can come in and pick up the slack.
How’s your wife’s health? [ Sharon Summerall, whom Mr. Henley married in 1995, has multiple sclerosis.]
It’s OK. We’re fortunate in that she has the relapsing/remitting form of MS, not the kind where you go straight downhill. So she’s holding her own. There are about 80 new drugs in the pipeline at the moment, so we feel hopeful about the future. She can still drive and get around. She’s not getting better, but she’s not getting worse.
With the line about taking a “victory lap,” the song “Where I Am Now” sounds like it was written by someone at the end of his career.
This last Eagles tour may have been that victory lap. So I’m speaking semi-literally. I’ve already won. This is all just gravy now. The fact that I have a record contract at 68 is a victory. Even if I don’t tour anymore, I’d like to write and record songs. The process has kept me off the psychiatrist’s couch for a lot of years.
Does your contract with the label obligate you to make more albums?
No, it’s one at a time. And I own the content, not them. It’s a distribution deal, which is a beautiful thing. So I can make another record or I could not. But I’ve got a lot of records in my head to make. I just have to live long enough to do them.