HENLEY: We tried to be a democracy and we weren't because that never really works for very long. Everybody got to say their piece, but ultimately Glenn Frey and I would have the last say.
...
Glenn was always the first guy'to rebel, and so he'd been checking out American producers. He listened to some of Bill Szymczyk's stuff with J. Geils and "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter and liked the way that stuff sounded. So he said, "I think we should go with this guy Szymczyk."
...
I don't know how we stayed together as long as we did. I mean, you have to subordinate your ego to the songs; the song is the most important thing and if the albums aren't good, then we all lose. It drove Glenn and me completely
crazy and gave us grey hairs and ulcers, because everybody wants to be quarterback, everybody wants to be the guy who sings and writes the songs. The quarterback is the guy who gets all the glory and the credit and the girls. And the guys who block are the unsung heroes. But we all managed to do it for ten years, before this "Eagle" thing started to get in the way.
...
I think it started right after
Hotel California. That's when Glenn and I started growing in opposite directions.
MUSICIAN: Up to that point you had been friends.
HENLEY: We were like brothers; we lived together And then we had sown all our wild oats and we each wanted a steady girlfriend. There would be times when he would have a girlfriend and I wouldn't. Or I'd have a girlfriend and he wouldn't, and it just sort of separated us. You get so close that you can't stand each other sometimes, you know each other so well. And I wanted to write all about all these social issues and he didn't necessarily and we just grew apart musically and philosophically. A lot of things happened during
The Long Run.
MUSICIAN: To force it in a way?
HENLEY: Yes. Glenn and Felder were at odds. Glenn just got tired of being the boss and being hated for it. With the king's life comes the king's work. If you're a leader, people are going to respect you and follow you, butthey're going to hate you at the same time. So that just got to be too much.
We just got tired. It's as simple as that-we just got tired. We ran out of inspiration, and to
follow Hotel California was such a monumental task that it just scared us. Glenn felt like he was a great coach who put this team together and then didn't get to express himself enough. Due to fatigue and craziness and nervousness, some verbal exchanges went down during the making of
The Long Run that didn't heal. We used to get in a room and just fight it out and talk it out, but it got to the point after awhile that we stopped communicating-and that's death.