Don in the Press/Blogs/etc.

[DonFan]

Don's latest interview, from today's Houston Chronicle:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/5992391.html

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Two corrections--he was born in Linden, and that is where his mother's home is.

Two comments: One-Love the line about his Grammys sitting in his mom's curio cabinet beside the ceramic chickens--that sounds just like my mother's curio cabinets! It must be a prerequisite for all Southern mothers.

Two--I also hope CDs don't disappear completely in favor of downloads. I, too, used to turn those album covers over and over, savoring every word, every photo, and daydreaming about faraway places, other kinds of lives. Now many of those albums are framed on my wall, and now I read the booklets and info that come with CDs. I hope they continue.

[Freypower]

To my knowledge, although Don grew up in Linden he was in fact born in Gilmer as the article states.

[sodascouts]

Interesting read - thanks for posting. For some reason, Don seems a little more negative in this Q&A than he has been in others recently. I hope all is well.

I didn't realize his mother had passed away, but it's sweet that he still keeps her house.

[DonFan]

I know he tries to go back to his hometown of Linden, especially to see his buddy Richard Bowden, as often as he can; he just went back to go to Richard's theater, Music City Texas, to see Merle Haggard. I suppose he stays in his mother's house. She passed away about six years ago.

[glenneaglesfan]

Interesting interview. Thanks for posting that, DF, and I am completely with you and Don on the album covers. Many a night was spent in our student rooms listening to music and studying the album art in depth!

I just wish Don would lay off the double album and egos must be fed aspect. I'd like to see him display a little more solidarity with Glenn's decision - after all it has made him a great deal of money.

The infamous tales of backstage bickering have been greatly exaggerated, both by the press and by disgruntled ex-band members trying to peddle their sour-grapes garbage.

This is the nearest any of the current band members has been to slinging a bit of mud back at Felder. Good on you Don!

[TimothyBFan]

Nice interview-love the part about his grammys. I agree completely with him, I hope cds don't disappear completely. I miss vinyl and the great album covers and artwork.

[Ive always been a dreamer]

I agree that this was an interesting interview. I can also totally relate to what Don is saying. Back 'in the day', the album covers were just about all we had. There just wasn't nearly the exposure in all the different type of media that there is today. I would take every album cover and read every word and study it intensely. I have to admit I have also done the same thing with all of the CD/DVD booklets and concert programs that have come out since the HFO resumption.

[Brooke]

Great interview! Thanks!

As far as this line

"I want to read the credits, liner notes. Those things used to be almost as important as the music itself."

Yes, Don. But they sure don't say much on LROOE. Why have you left so much out?

[sodascouts]

Great interview! Thanks!

As far as this line

"I want to read the credits, liner notes. Those things used to be almost as important as the music itself."

Yes, Don. But they sure don't say much on LROOE. Why have you left so much out?

ZING! Good point!

[lyin' eyes]

So i dont know if this has been posted or not but im gunna take a chance and post it. It's called "Straight talk with Don" Its from the Fort Worth newpaper on Fri, Sep 12th. Enjoy!




Don Henley had a virtual chat with Star-Telegram pop music critic Preston Jones. What follows is the complete and uncut transcript of the interview:
STAR-TELEGRAM: With Long Road Out of Eden, the band seems to be aiming more explicitly at country listeners than rock, although the album doesn’t feel as though it’s deviating from that distinctive, SoCal country-rock template found on Desperado or Eagles. Does it speak more to the incredibly striated nature of music today, with its many splintered genres and seeming public need for easy classification, or is the shift attributed to the Eagles more fully embracing the country genre and literally going back to their roots?

HENLEY: We weren’t aiming at anyone in particular. There was some brief discussion about returning to our early style, but not for the entire album. In terms of style and content, the album has a pretty wide range. How Long, the first single from the album, was definitely a nod to our beginnings, but even that came about somewhat by accident. Glenn’s kids were surfing around on YouTube and found an old clip of us doing How Long on a Dutch TV show in 1973. That was only about a year after the song debuted on J.D. Souther’s first solo album. We’d forgotten that we used to sometimes include it in our set. Glenn thought it would be a good idea to record it for the Long Road Out of Eden album, so we did.

In this election year, the second half of Long Road Out of Eden stands out (particularly the title track) which is far more overtly politically charged than most of the Eagles’ catalog. Was injecting potentially divisive lyrical material into songs a point of debate within the band? Does the band share your feelings of urgency about speaking out on such issues as the war or the environment?

I think that all the members of the band are pretty much aligned in that regard. There was no debate. I think the other guys expect me to make occasional forays into territory that might be controversial. They’re fine with it as long as it doesn’t get too polemical. It adds another color to the work.

What continues to push you creatively?

Oh, a few things, I guess, but primarily a longing for community. That may sound sentimental or mawkishly idealistic, but I believe that a great many artists come from that same place, whether consciously or subconsciously. And when I say community, I mean it in both the most intimate and the most public sense of the word. The majority of our songs are about personal relationships but they are also about how those relationships are part of a much larger picture and how they are influenced by it. For example, in the middle of the album’s title song, the speaking role suddenly switches from the detached narrator to the protagonist and we see things from his very personal point of view — a young man who is caught up in a conflict that is more complex and terrible than he ever imagined. He is speaking, either in a letter or a phone call, to a loved one back home. He’s confused, frightened and homesick, but he’s just another cog in the machinery of war. We try to put the listener in this young man’s place for a just a moment, with the bombs, mines, mortars and gunfire going off all around him.
Creating, for me, is therapeutic. It’s a way of trying to make sense of a world that often doesn’t make any sense at all. The process can be painful and scary, but the end result is usually worth it. It’s a survival mechanism. It keeps me off the shrink’s couch; keeps me from climbing a tower with a rifle. Creating is a spiritual act, as well — a kind of meditation. A part of my mind is always writing, always processing what I see and hear and feel, even when I seem to be fully engaged in something else. It’s what some philosophers have called “invisible work.” I can’t keep from doing it. I believe that every human being has the creative impulse within them, but if it isn’t recognized and developed, then dysfunction and unhappiness is the result. I was lucky. I had great parents who encouraged me and helped my pursue my passion, even though it wasn’t exactly what they’d expected.

Are the inter-band relationships more easily sustained these days? Does it feel as though the Eagles are in a fragile place?

The band as a whole is in a pretty good place, right now, but things can still get volatile if we’ve been on the road for an extended time. When we’re traveling, there are all kinds of variables that we have to deal with. As professional and consistent as our operation is, every day requires some kind of adjustment. If all the band members don’t make a real and consistent effort to take care of themselves; if somebody, for one reason or another, isn’t getting enough sleep; if there’s an issue at home with one of our kids; if one of us is having voice trouble, then it becomes difficult to maintain a balanced perspective and moods can swing. Lately, things have been better, overall, but I’d say that there’s still room for improvement.

By choosing to initially release Eden through Wal-Mart outlets, the Eagles bypassed the troubled music industry. What’s your take on the state of the music industry and the near-constant mess they seem to be in? Is this the last throes or can the record business possibly get going in the right direction? Additionally, had the Eagles been able at the beginning of their career, would they have forged their own path from the first album?

The music industry, as we have known it, is almost extinct. The digital revolution changed everything and not all for the better. Of course, some parts of the business needed to change. I don’t think too many of us mourn the collapse of the major record labels. They did help to build the careers of many artists, including us, but they also took advantage of us in the process. And they took advantage of their customers. They got away with it for about 60 years, but things are changing now, thanks in no small measure to the digitization of music and to the Internet. The other side of the coin, though, is piracy. The record labels have always stolen from artists; now, music consumers are doing it, too. The only way for a musician to make a living anymore is on the road, because the Internet has just about succeeded in killing copyright. Writers and publishers are just out of luck. Since our last recording contract with a major label had expired, we were free to do whatever we wanted in terms of making and marketing an album. We gave the matter a lot of thought and ultimately decided to go with Wal-Mart. It turned out to be a sound, business decision — a “win-win” for us and our fans. We didn’t get screwed by some big record label and our fans got 20 new Eagles songs for twelve bucks. What we did has apparently created a new paradigm in the business. Scores of artists are now attempting to do the same thing. Had we been able to do something like this at the beginning of our career, I suppose we would have, but, like most young artists, we were pretty naïve and there was a steep learning curve. The music business is complex and it takes a number of years to figure it out. It’s a “Catch 22” — you can’t really call the shots until you’ve had a significant degree of success and, to obtain that success, you usually have to give away the store to a major label. Since we still have a large and loyal following, and since we really don’t have to heavily depend on radio exposure anymore, we were able to make the Wal-Mart thing work, but it will not necessarily work for new or unestablished artists.

Do you think the Eagles would have had success in a sound-bite-driven world, an era dominated by illegal downloads and YouTube?

We came up in an era when bands actually tried to avoid publicity except for what was absolutely necessary. Our generation of musicians also considered the visual media as something to be avoided in most instances. We tried to maintain an air of mystery, a little aloofness. We would hole up and write our songs, record them, reluctantly do a photo session, give a couple of interviews and then hit the road. The live performance was the thing and FM radio was king. There wasn’t all this silly celebrity culture, all these tabloid TV shows and rabid packs of paparazzi roaming the streets. There was no YouTube, no MySpace, no TMZ. In the ‘60s and early ‘70s, most artists weren’t willing to “ho” to get their fifteen minutes of fame. Peoples’ lives were not an open book, their foibles not public property. We did our fair share of debauchery, but there was nobody there trying to film it. Back in the day, there was no MTV or VH-1. That was the beginning of the end, I think — MTV. It forcibly turned an aural medium into a visual medium and, in doing so, killed the opportunity for the listener to use his imagination. Bob Pittman, the inventor of MTV, said: "Young Americans are TV babies. If you got their emotions going, forget their logic, you've got 'em." He went on to convince the struggling, major labels that MTV was the ultimate promotional tool — and, for a time, it was, enabling the majors to sell trainloads of absolute crap. During the MTV era, the number of one-hit wonders grew exponentially, and the music business has never recovered. As the song says, “Video killed the radio star,” and now the Internet is finishing the job.
I don’t know if we would have made it in today’s climate. I’m not sure that we would have wanted to.

Of all that you’re involved with (music, charity, family), what brings you the most satisfaction?

My family, without a doubt. I still get a great deal of satisfaction from the music, as well as the conservation and preservation work, and I’m extremely grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had. But none of that is quite as fulfilling as parenting — or as challenging.

Ultimately, what do you hope people get out of the Eagles’ music?

Oh, I don’t know — joy, comfort, a feeling of connection, food for thought. Something good for road trips.

Are there any plans for you to record and/or tour again as a solo artist?

I have several, diverse album projects that have been simmering in my head for a few years, now. The trick is finding the time to do them without shortchanging my family. Soon, I’ll be setting up a recording studio in or near my home in Texas, so I’ll be able to go home after work.

Is it possible to sum up the Eagles’ legacy, the band’s impact over the decades?

You’d need to ask somebody other than me. I don’t think about that legacy stuff. It is satisfying, though, to know that we have created a durable body of work and that it’s still growing. The odds in this business have never been good, and they’re even longer these days. One album is a career now. It’s rough out there. But, at the end of the day, I care much more about my legacy as a father than I do about the legacy of the band. I have my priorities straight.

Will the Eagles continue beyond this album and this tour? You’ve said previously that Eden is probably the last Eagles album you’ll ever make but is there a possibility or determining factors still being weighed? Does it matter to you whether the band continues to sustain itself or would you be perfectly happy ending things here?

I really don’t know what will happen after this touring cycle ends. I think it will probably take us another year or more to cover the remainder of the globe, and there is nothing planned after that. The band operates on a yearly cycle. Right now, we’re scheduled to work up until the day before Thanksgiving and then we’ll be off for the holidays. Come January, we’ll take stock and decide what we want to do in 2009. There has been no discussion about making another album. I’m not ruling that out, but it’s not something that I contemplate with any degree of enthusiasm, at least this point. I would, in fact, be perfectly happy to stay home, take care of my wife and kids and work on solo projects in my spare time. I own a hell-of-a-lot of books that I haven’t read. Some fishing and gardening would be nice, too. These past 37 years have been amazing and wonderful beyond my wildest dreams, and I am as thankful as I can be. But, I’m tired of packing and unpacking. I’m tired of airplanes and hotel rooms. I’m weary of the constant ringing in my ears. I wouldn’t miss the chronic, lower back pain that I’ve been living with since 1975. And I certainly wouldn’t miss the limelight. That part of the deal has morphed into something that is now, in many instances, more of a liability than an asset or an honor. I’m ready for a quieter, simpler life. Of course, I’ve been saying that for 30 years.

Linkage for anyone who wants it: http://www.star-telegram.com/388/story/903408.html