Don Henley Refuses to Sing 1 Eagles Song in Certain Places
Some classic rock stars loved courting controversy — but The Eagles’ Don Henley wasn’t one of them. He wrote a song about heavy issues that he knows will not play well to all audiences. For that reason, he deliberately refrains from singing the song in certain locations.
The Eagles’ Don Henley wrote a song about a part of history that inspired several 1970s hits
The Eagles weren’t much for political commentary. Despite this, they wrote a ballad called “The Last Resort” that deals with many important topics. It’s a lament for the treatment of Native Americans and the way that their land was stolen and exploited for financial gain, all in the name of Christianity. The idea that white settlers were entitled to this land is known as Manifest Destiny.
The song was part of a series of popular songs from the 1970s that portrayed Native Americans in a sympathetic light. Some of the others were Cher’s “Half-Breed” and “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)” by Paul Revere & the Raiders. All these tracks have their issues, but they collectively showed that pop culture was becoming more concerned with the rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples in the 1970s than in previous decades.
“The Last Resort” is not specifically about California. However, its inclusion in the album Hotel California feels pointed. It underlies the fact that the Golden State has a disturbing history.
During a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone, Henley discussed “The Last Resort.” “We’d been doing ‘The Last Resort’ [from Hotel California] in the set,” the “Boys of Summer” singer said. “It goes over like gangbusters in some parts of the country, because it really is a song about Manifest Destiny. But we pick and choose where to do it. We have too many ballads in the set anyway.”
Don Henley wants to shut up and sing
Henley isn’t as interested in getting overtly political as some of his classic rock peers. “We don’t speak about politics onstage,” the star revealed. “We let the music do the talking. People have their own interpretations of these songs.
“They may connect them to current events,” he added. “A lot of people connect them to the past. And the past is always bathed in a golden light. It always looks better than it really was.
“I said something onstage last night: ‘This song is from 1974. You thought things were crazy then,'” he recalled. “But that’s as far as I was gonna go. People can infer from that what they want.”
How the public reacted to The Eagles’ ‘The Last Resort’
“The Last Resort” was not a single and it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the B-side of The Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane.” The latter song reached No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and lasted on the chart for 14 weeks.
Both “The Last Resort” and “Life in the Fast Lane” both appeared on the album Hotel California. That record topped the Billboard 200 for eight weeks and remained on the chart for 158 weeks in total. Hotel California remains the band’s most popular studio album in the United States.
“The Last Resort” is one of The Eagles’ most socially conscious songs — and some listeners don’t want to hear its message.
