A man with a briefcase can steal millions more than any man with a gun.
Actually, my mother and father were both musical people, not in a professional sense, by my mother played gospel piano and my father could sing pretty well.
After the Eagles got successful I stopped playing drums on other people's records unless they were really good friends of mine.
And I think I made a pretty respectable first album. I don't think it did as well as it should have, because I think the people at Elektra records saw me as a dinosaur, and really didn't have much faith in my future.
At one point during the making of your first solo album, I considered chucking the whole thing, selling my house in LA, moving to Colorado, and buying some head of cattle and retiring.
Because I had already played so many clubs an gigs that by the time I got to California, I knew that I could probably play with the best of them at least with the kind of people who did the music I liked.
Because, to tell you the truth, what I care about is the song as a while. I care about the drum sound. I'm very critical when it comes to the sound of the drums that will go into a song.
Between each album I try to gain a new insight that I didn't have before and perhaps write a song about something that I've written about before, but from a fresh viewpoint.
I always take a long time to make a record.
I come from the school of thinking that believes that the customer is always right.
I could have played more complex stuff. I could have been a busier player. But that's not what I wanted to do. I played what I wanted to play.
I could stand out front and sing Eagles songs that I sing in my set, but I think people enjoy watching me sing and play the drums. It seems to fascinate people. I don't know why.
I don't care what anybody says about Ringo. I cut my rock-n-roll teeth listening to him.
I don't mind doing two or three Eagles songs and playing the drums. I'm not one of those artists who's going to sit here and deny the past.
I even learned to read drum music pretty well for a while, although I don't know if I could now.
I felt like I had paid my dies in Texas and that I really didn't owe any dues in California.
I generally like to call an album by one of the song's titles, one that's probably going to be the single.
I have a bad back partially from playing the drums and singing. I used to have to hold my body in such a position that my spine got out of alignment.
I have a certain pool of subject matter that I like to write about, things that interest me: politics, religion, ecology, and relationships between men and women. And that's usually what I focus on.
I have things that I am interested in, and that's usually what comes out on the album.
I picked up licks from all the records I ever heard, as I guess all drummers do.
I played drums on Keith Carradine's first record.
I started looking around for another partner, because I'm a collaborator. I can't do it all by myself; I need that other half.
I still find it more difficult to sing and play guitar at the same time than I do to sing and play the drums.
I think my first instrument was a ukulele that they gave me. I used to know how to play that pretty well.
I try to write conversationally; I try to write like people speak and put the emphasis on the right syllable.
I was either standing in your shadow, or blocking your light; Though I kept on trying I could not get it right; For you, girl There's just not enough love in the world.
I would rather take a long time and make a record with eight or ten good songs on it than to rush one out with only one or two good songs on it, which is what I find to be the case most of the time.
I'm always jotting things down on pieces of paper. I've got pieces of paper all over my house.
I'm blessed with a pretty good voice. So just sitting back there banging on the tubs wasn't enough.
I'm certainly not thrilled with everything the Eagles did, but there are some things I'm quite proud of.
I'm fortunate that I've been in this business long enough that I've earned the right to be left alone by my record company.
I'm not on any crusade.
I've got a college education. I was an English literature major.
In the spring of '85 I put together a band to go out on the road. I toured that whole summer and got home in October. So that whole year was shot.
It was pretty frightening because as we all know, when large, famous groups breakup, a lot of the members don't survive in solo careers.
Lawsuits should not be used to destroy a viable and independent distribution system. The solution lies in the marketplace and not the courtroom.
Let hope inspire you, but let not idealism blind you. Don't look back, you can never look back.
Mick Jagger can't even make a successful solo album, and the Stones are the biggest rock group that ever was.
My first band was an instrumental band. This was in the early '60s.
Playing the drums hurts my back.
Playing the drums is not my first love anymore and hasn't been for a long time.
Selling eight million copies of your first album will mess you up.
So it works both ways. I will have a concept or a song title that I want to write a song about, and I'll go to Danny and tell him I want to do this kind of song.
Some records with drum machines on them sound phony and plastic. It all depends on how you use the tools.
Sometimes songwriters and singers forget that. They get a melody in their head and the notes will take precedence, so that they wind up forcing a word onto a melody. It doesn't ring true.
Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge.
Sometimes, though, Danny will give me a track, and I'll either come up with a whole new set of lyrics to graft onto that track, or it will fit some idea that I already had for a song, and I'll graft that on and then fill in the blanks.
The Eagles and the critics were not the best of friends.
The Eagles ended on a rather abrupt note, although in retrospect I realize now that it had been ending for quite some time.
The only thing it means in the context of the album is that the song is kind of like an umbrella that you could apply to a lot of the other songs. A lot of the songs are about an end of an innocence, the loss of innocence, and about fallen heroes.
We have tried several times to replace drum machines with real drums.
We used Ian in the studio for my first solo album. That's the first time I met him. He's a hell of a nice guy and a hell of a drummer. That's why I wanted him in my touring band.
When a group gets successful, people are more hesitant to ask you to come and play sessions.
Don Henley's 1989 album The End of the Innocence was ranked #389 on Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Don Henley's music video "The Boys of Summer" was ranked #67 on MTV's 100 Greatest Videos Ever Made.
Don has three children.
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