Salty Sunshine: Five musicians that Don Henley hates

Posted On July 1, 2024July 1, 2024

The Eagles’ music often feels like the least confrontational tunes ever put to tape. They have their moments of heaviness, but you wouldn’t throw on a song like ‘Take It Easy’ or ‘Tequila Sunrise’ and worry about the party getting out of hand. That’s largely in part to Don Henley having a great gift for melody, but behind the scenes, he does have a bone to pick with more than a few artists.

Throughout the Eagles’ career, Henley usually found himself grappling with more than a few artists that he thought weren’t carrying their weight as musicians. Whether it was not being able to entertain a crowd or not doing their job properly, these artists didn’t constitute what rock and roll should be or were making a mockery of what took the Eagles years of hard work to maintain.

But this is a much different world than the one Henley grew up in, and the biggest names in modern music also aren’t off the hook when it comes to ‘Golden Throat’. As much as people want to live their lives and deconstruct music, Henley is not going to let anyone touch his songs, even if they try to put their own spin on every single note that he wrote.

The music industry is already known to be fairly sleazy when it comes to how artists are treated, so it’s at least understandable that Henley would have his guard up when it comes to a handful of groups. Still, there are a few cheapshots among the pack that have made people look at Henley the same way that ‘The Dude’ probably looks at him.

Five artists Don Henley hates

5. Okkervil River

Starting out in the industry is much different than what went down in Henley’s prime. Artists are taking to the internet to get whatever semblance of attention might either attract a label or get the public on their side for at least a minute. That sometimes means having to take a dip into sampling now and again, but when Henley heard Okkervil River make their own version of ‘End of the Innocence’, he was absolutely livid.

It’s one thing for Henley to take issue with someone using the copyright for his song without getting permission, but the fact that they changed the lyrics to their own viewpoint led to Henley ordering the song taken down. This might be a common practice nowadays for people who don’t get samples cleared, but just to rub salt into the wound, Henley took the group to court for their actions.

During his statement, Henley had said that what Okkervil River did with the song “wasn’t an improvement. We were not impressed. So we simply had our legal team tell them to take it down, and they got all huffy about it.” Completely understandable if they didn’t ask for permission, but we have a long way to go when it comes to Henley keeping artists in the courtroom rather than on the road.

4. Frank Ocean

Out of all the modern R&B acts working right now, Frank Ocean might be one of the most quietly brilliant. Most of that comes down to how little he puts out, but when he does take a swing on projects like Blonde, it results in the greatest emotional exorcisms any artist has ever done. Henley has done his fair share of bleeding for his audience too, but that wasn’t enough for him to forgive and forget Ocean for the song ‘American Wedding’.

When Ocean was first coming up in the music scene, Nostalgia, Ultra gave us our first look at a legend in the making, but sampling ‘Hotel California’ may as well have put a target on his back immediately. Although Ocean arguably takes it in a completely different direction, Henley needed to make sure that none of his songs got to the ears of the public if he wasn’t making a buck off it.

Once things got heated over the sample, Henley eventually made his peace with the song, but not before saying that Ocean was “a talentless little prick” when going through the proceedings. Getting called out by a music legend is bound to hurt, but when you eventually hop on tracks with Jay-Z and have Beyonce sing backup on one of your songs, you’re still living pretty well.

3. The Ataris

Cover songs can often be considered the sincerest form of flattery. Every musician gets their ideas from somewhere, and it’s nice to usually give a tip of the hat to someone who helped define those teenage years when artists were first picking up guitars. The Ataris may have looked up to Henley when they thought to cover ‘Boys of Summer’, but once Henley said his peace, all of that nostalgia probably faded pretty quickly.

While the pop-punk version of the tune is a fairly decent recreation of the 1980s classic, there was one little change in the final verse. The disaffected kid looking at a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac probably wouldn’t resonate with the modern age, but Henley thought that their replacing of the Grateful Dead with Black Flag was one step too far over the line.

It might have just been a generational divide, but Henley wasn’t thrilled that a new generation of fans were hearing this version of the song, saying that there was little reason for it and that there’s also a reason why The Ataris have been left by the wayside these days. Then again, what would you expect from a musician who had already been taken out by Tom Waits when he covered his song ‘Ol’ 55’?

2. Rush

The Eagles were often considered one of the furthest things from progressive music in the 1970s. They had their more ambitious moments that everyone remembers, but in terms of audience, prog outfits were getting a lot more fans who respected the music than the California rock fans who wanted to sip wine coolers and listen to rock and roll. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with either mindset, but Henley wasn’t exactly picking his battles wisely when tearing through Canadian icons Rush.

As the Eagles staged their massive comeback in the 1990s with the announcement of Hell Freezes Over, Henley often cited Rush as one of the few acts that seemed to reunite over and over again to make a new renaissance album. There’s only one problem with his reasoning: Rush never broke up until the end of the 2010s.

After his remarks, frontman Geddy Lee retaliated by saying that every supposed comeback they had was just a case of releasing a new album. Henley could have just been trying to drum up press for the group’s latest album, but if anyone is coming to fight, it might not be the best idea to pick a battle with one of the most revered progressive rock groups of the 1970s.

1. His former bandmates

Bands are always a bit of a tough relationship for anyone to soldier through. Henley often likened being a part of a group was a lot like being in a marriage if you had four different partners to worry about at once. Henley could get along fine with Glenn Frey, but the disagreements with many of his former bandmates became too much to overlook during their prime.

While the first iteration of the Eagles showed promise, Henley eventually sided with Frey over creative direction, leading to Bernie Leadon leaving the group after feeling creatively spent. Even when they started to reach the biggest heights of their career, it didn’t take long for Randy Meisner to realise it was time to step off, eventually getting into a fight with Frey and Henley over singing the last note in ‘Take it To The Limit’.

The ugliest expulsion had to be from Don Felder, who had to weather through Henley stealing vocal duties on ‘Victim of Love’, getting into a massive argument at a benefit gig that broke up the group, and then being fired again during the reunion after not getting paid enough. The beginnings of the Eagles normally came down to Frey’s final decision, but with the band still touring today, there’s nothing that the Eagles will ever do in the future that doesn’t get Henley’s seal of approval.

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