Don had an article to print in The Desert Sun today:
When Don Henley read what the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' MusiCares Foundation had to say about him, he cringed.
Selected as the organization's 2007 Person of the Year, he thought, "If that don't say you're old... ," he says with a laugh from his recording studio in Malibu. But the reason for the award, to raise money for musicians who need medical care and can't afford it, touches a nerve.
"A lot of these guys have nothing," he says. On Feb. 9, he'll headline the MusiCares gala in Los Angeles.
But Henley has worked hard for his success since he was a kid growing up in Texas. If he wanted to, he could certainly rest on his past accomplishments.
Every album he's ever recorded, either as a member of The Eagles or as a solo artist, has gone multi-platinum. Since The Eagles re-grouped in 1994, he's either hit the road with the band (they played at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in 2005) or toured solo. On Saturday he'll perform at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio.
As part of the American front charged with breaking the British Invasion stranglehold over the Billboard charts, The Eagles were labeled "country rock" when they made it big. But as a true Texan, Henley resents being pigeonholed.
"They had to smack a label on us," he says of record company execs and music writers who still like to put musicians in a box.
But Henley and his bandmates fooled 'em. And as The Eagles' music evolved and matured, so did the strain on the band of having to put out the mandatory album per year and the accompanying tour to promote the record, not to mention the growing personnel differences between them.
By the early '80s, The Eagles imploded and Henley struck out on his own. Freedom. The freedom to write and record his own music and to collaborate with other musicians.
As for the future, Henley and the other Eagles are working on a new disc to be released (hopefully) in late spring. And there's his own next solo album. But that may not hit the stores for a while.
"My contract says I owe Warner Bros. two more records," he says.
"Let's just say I'm just glad I started in this business when I did."