Eagles and Band Leadership

[UndertheWire]

Here's some 1980s quotes from Musician:

Don Henley:

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.

link.


and Glenn's response:

MUSICIAN: Don Henley did an interview with us last year in which he .... (Frey snatches the copies of the interview and reads underlined passages, then pronounces, "absolutely true... that one's absolutely true...... He hands the pages back) So is it true, as Henley says, that the Eagles drove you and him crazy because everyone wanted to be quarterback, that you got tired of being the boss and being hated for it, that you were a great coach who had put this team together and didn't get to express yourself enough?
FREY, (deliberately) The thing is, when you're in a band, it's suppose to be equal. And when people emerge as having strengths in certain areas, other people are so resentful of having that strength,. Everybody makes this big thing about Don Henley and I being the reason for the split in the Eagles, but I'm here to tell you right now that Joe Walsh and Don Felder-and others-created as much turbulence for our band as everybody else did, just because they're frustrated quarterbacks. All I'm saying is that in a band, it's a fake democracy. The roles are not so defined.
The thing is, in the Eagles, everybody brought things to Henley, he was the lyrical genius, the English Literature major who could help us put tense stories together. So I wasn't encouraging anybody to do anything in the Eagles that I wasn't doing, just giving my music to him heard....
MUSICIAN: He calls you "The glue."
FREY: I was. I guess so. That's very nice. That's another reason why I couldn't understand all these disturbances from the other players in the band, because I was subordinating myself. And why couldn't somebody else see their way to take a step backward and do what they do the best, 'cause that's really what grated on me. They didn't make subordinating myself a worthwhile job anymore. Besides being the glue, I was also the guy who said, "You sing this, I'll play lead on this-not me, I'd love to but.. ." The bass players never gave us any trouble, though. It was the guitar players.

link

[Delilah]

Wow, great articles. I don't think I've read those before, although a couple of quotes sound familiar. Thanks!

[Funk 50]

Thanks UndertheWire, that's great reading

[UndertheWire]

In the last few weeks, I've read an old interview from around 1975 in which either Don or Glenn said they didn't have a leader. It may have been a scan from a newspaper or magazine. Does anyone else remember this?

This is an interview with Glenn from 1992 in which he acknowledges that drugs were part of the problem:

Plus, both Henley and I had developed drug habits, which didn't help matters.
...
'When I gave up snorting I found I didn't need to drink any more and started to behave like a human- being again.'

There's a lot more as well as an explanation of why they weren't going to get back together. link

[Annoying Twit]

I think these recent articles show the problem in attributing the amount of leadership different members have. The articles conflict with each other.

I don't think we really have an exact view of the leadership dynamics in Eagles. Not because anyone's lying, but more likely because people's memories of even the same events differ. Particularly when drugs are being consumed.

[New Kid In Town]

Thank You UTW - I have seen that interview numerous times.

[Brooke]

UtW, thanks for all of these!

I think AT is right about everyone's memories of certain things differing. Sometimes, and I find myself doing this, you remember how something happened, but over time, you think, "did that really happen or was it wishful thinking that somehow became truth?". KWIM?

[Dawn]

We, Don in particular, said a mouthful on Hotel California and a big part of the problem was 'What do we talk about now?' Then, because of what we were as members of The Eagles, we had far fewer real-life experiences to draw on. - Glenn Frey

This is very insightful ... fewer real life experiences to draw upon ... The price of success left them with little to want for except the kind of experiences fame and fortune can't buy.

[Delilah]

In the last few weeks, I've read an old interview from around 1975 in which either Don or Glenn said they didn't have a leader. It may have been a scan from a newspaper or magazine. Does anyone else remember this?

Could this be it? I posted it on this thread. The UCR article itself is from 2016.

“The important thing to remember with this group is that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts,” Henley told Hit Parader. “The Eagles and what we’ve created is bigger than all five of us put together. It’s hard when five guys want to do everything. You see, there’s no leader in the Eagles, because everybody is an egomaniac. X can be leader for one day before someone rises up and says ‘F— you.’ It’s so hard, but that’s what keeps things getting better.”

Read More: "How the Eagles Steered From Country to Rock With 'On the Border'" http://ultimateclassicrock.com/eagle...ckback=tsmclip

[UndertheWire]

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. Presumably the interview with Hit Parader was around 1975.