The Eagles Hit "Rolling Stone" Cover

The Eagles are (l-r): Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh, Glenn Frey, Don Henley. Photo by Andrew Macpherson.

May 16, 2008 — The Eagles are featured on the cover of the next edition of "Rolling Stone" magazine, where Don Henley admits to some frustrations with musicians. He’s had plenty of battles with fellow artists — some over creative issues, others over politics.

The latter got quite a bit of press earlier this decade when he was a leading force in the Recording Artists Coalition, which fought to rescind some statutes that gave record companies greater control, and less accountability, in dealing with artists. The fight proved to be a challenge.

"All these laws get passed that affect how musicians get paid," Don told the magazine. "But musicians, for the most part, don’t want to deal with it. They’re so independent that they don’t want to join anything. Frank Sinatra tried to organize musicians into a trade group back in the ‘60s, but he finally threw up his hands and said, ‘The hell with it.’ Now I understand why. It’s like herding cats."

The Eagles’ in-fighting in earlier years was legendary. They’re apparently less contentious these days in a lot of ways, but they still have plenty of disagreements. Some of those disagreements played out in the final song selection and sequence for their album Long Road Out Of Eden, their first completely new studio album in 28 years.

"I still think it should have been a single album," Don said. "But I lost that one. There were four or five more songs that were good but not finished, but we wanted to get it out for Christmas. Again, the dictates of business — either Christmas, or they’d have to wait for the summer or even next fall to put it out. We’re not getting any younger, so we decided to let it go. But I wasn’t done."

It didn’t hurt them. The album’s been certified seven-times-platinum, for shipments of 7 million discs. And they’re nominated this Sunday for Top Vocal Group at the Academy of Country Music Awards, the first time they’ve been a finalist in that ACM category since 1976. Their music did make an impact on the awards in the interim — the tribute album Common Thread: The Songs Of The Eagles was an Album of the Year nominee in 1994.