Don Henley talks Eagles ahead of band's UBS Arena show

The unique harmonious vocal blend in the Eagles’ catalog has put the band on the Mount Rushmore of rock music. Singer-drummer Don Henley is the backbone of that sound, which has garnered the band insurmountable success including record sales that have surpassed 200 million.

On this tour, the band is celebrating “Hotel California,” its fifth and best-selling studio album, which has been certified 26 times platinum spawning hits “Life in the Fast Lane,” “New Kid in Town” as well as the title track. The current show features the record played in its entirety followed by a second set of greatest hits.

Prior to the Eagles’ April 23 gig at UBS Arena, Henley, 74, spoke with Newsday's David J. Criblez via email about  “Hotel California,” coming clean in the 2013 documentary, “History of the Eagles” and what keeps them flying. 

“Hotel California” is now known as one of the greatest albums of all time. When you were making it, did it feel like you were crafting your finest work?

Our goal, from the beginning, was to try to make each successive album, better, more consistent, in terms of songwriting and execution, than the previous album. Constant touring made it difficult to get into a creative state of mind.  But, in 1976, I think that we all had a feeling that we were onto something bigger and better, though we rarely acknowledged it; we didn’t go around high-fiving each other in the studio. We just followed our instincts, kept our shoulders to the wheel. The record executives were growing impatient, and we spent some long days and nights in the studio, trying to meet deadlines. But, we never handed over any work that we didn’t think was our best effort. 

Old data I’ve seen recently shows that we played several of the songs on the "Hotel California" album while we were on tour, months before any of those songs were released. That was an unusual move, so we must have felt like we had some good material.

The lyrical content in the song, "Hotel California" has a haunting quality to it. Where did the idea come from?
Ideas and themes for that song came from many places. Glenn [Frey, Eagles late vocalist/guitarist/co-founder] and I did months of research, as if we were writing a dissertation. Even though we grew up in towns that are almost a thousand miles apart, we were both fans of three TV series that were popular in the 1960s: “The Twilight Zone,” “Route 66” and “The Wild Wild West.” These shows, in combination, contained elements of surrealism, science fiction, intrigue, adventure, romance, set largely against the backdrop of the American West. Memories of these shows gave us some ideas about imagery and helped us find a starting point, which is, of course, in a car, in a desert. Deserts have long been among the favored allegorical symbols for physical and spiritual journeys - wandering, searching; a place where mirages are common. We came to see Los Angeles as such a place – a kind of ‘Dream Factory,’ where illusions are created, manufactured and monetized – the film industry, the music industry, television, and by extension, America, itself.
We researched the Spanish explorers, the expeditions of the Franciscan friars who established the California Mission System between 1769 and 1833 (this included the oppression of Native Peoples). We studied the California Gold Rush of 1849. We took a good long look at the growth of the film industry, which took root in the early 1900s. It’s interesting to note that Hollywood began as a subdivision, laid out in 1887 by a prohibitionist from Kansas. By the turn of the century, Hollywood had more churches than any small town in America.  But, all that changed as the movie industry grew and Hollywood, for lack of water and sewage, was forced, into becoming part of the City of Los Angeles, in 1910.  What began as the pious, utopian, agrarian dream of Midwesterners then morphed into something else, entirely. Today, Hollywood is still just as much an idea as it is a real place, and the old utopian dream is under threat from earthquakes, wildfires, prolonged drought, and escalating violence. Beneath all those palm-lined streets and sun-soaked beaches, there is a pervading sense that something is ending, and something fearsome is taking its place.

[Former Eagles guitarist Don] Felder’s minor-major chord progression gave us a scaffolding on which to hang all this imagery.
 

What keeps you going in terms of touring? What do you get out of it beyond the compensation?

Even in our advanced years, we are not the kind of people who can sit around and do nothing. I’ve seen how retired persons can go into a steep decline. Humans need purpose; they need to feel useful. Touring gives us structure and purpose. We have the privilege of going out there and making thousands of people happy; we provide them with a three-hour break from all the chaos and discord that dominates the headlines, today. In the midst of all the mind-numbing news and the avalanche of information, we give them a chance to feel. If we’re serving up nostalgia, then so be it. There’s no sin in that. Every generation has its own music, some of which transcends its time and lasts well into the future. I’ve read, recently, that there’s now a wave of nostalgia for the ‘90s. What we’re doing is curating the catalog.  The songs are no less relevant because they were written and recorded in the 70s.  As the old French axiom goes, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

In 2013, the Eagles released a very frank, cards-on-the-table documentary about the inner workings of the band called “History of the Eagles.” What made you decide to put it all out there for the world to see?

There has always been a lot of conjecture about the inner workings of this band – rumor, tall tales -- so-called “music journalists” exaggerating or outright fabricating things that never happened. Now, there’s Wikipedia, which is curated by oddballs who consider themselves to be authorities, but they don’t adhere to professional journalistic standards. They adhere to the standards of "Internet Journalism," which, as we have all seen in recent years, are very low. They’re a gaggle of amateurs who just keep circulating the same old fallacious [bull]. They never speak to us or any of our representatives to "fact-check" - a practice that has, for the most part, gone the way of the dinosaurs. We made the documentary in order to be able to tell our own story, instead of other people – strangers, mostly – just making things up. 

The band made its triumphant return in 1994. Now it’s 28 years later, did you ever think the reunion would go on this long?

No, but then, in retrospect, I’m also surprised that the first round went on for as long as it did. It seemed like the band was breaking up, every month. There just weren’t a lot of stable, secure moments. I’m amazed that we somehow managed to get so much work done in the midst of all that turmoil. On this tour, I sometimes mention that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the band, in terms of being on the airwaves.  “Take It Easy” was released on May 1, 1972, entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 79, on June 3rd, and peaked at number 12, on my 25th birthday, in July. None of us would have ever dreamed that we’d still be selling out arenas and stadiums, 50 years later.  Although we weren’t fully aware of it, we were writing songs that would age well. The challenge, these last couple of decades, has been for us to age as well as the songs. These months of touring and doing these three-hour shows is a real challenge, for guys our age. But, we still love doing it.

By David J. Criblez

david.criblez@newsday.comDavidJCriblez

David J. Criblez is a reporter for Newsday's exploreLI, covering entertainment-related events from local music to stand-up comedy to festivals.