Don Henley profile, Las Vegas Sun, April 12, 2002

The Heart of the Matter Lisa Ferguson Friday, April 12, 2002 | 2:24 a.m. WEEKEND EDITION Don Henley is dealing with some major issues. For the most part, they're positive: saving the environment, preserving the birthplace of a literary masterpiece, protecting fellow musicians from the evils of the recording industry. But that also means Henley -- a founding member of The Eagles and a Grammy-winning solo artist who headlines Saturday's "Tiger Jam V" benefit concert at Mandalay Bay -- has to be picky when deciding which "good cause" to lend his name and time. "Tiger Jam" is the annual event sponsored by The Tiger Woods Foundation. The golf great's cause raises funds for children's charities in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The well-being of children is another issue the 54-year-old Henley holds close to his heart, along with the Walden Woods Project, a preservation/education effort he founded in 1990 at the historic Concord, Mass., site where Henry David Thoreau penned the self-sufficiency tome "Walden." More recently Henley co-founded and has been among several artists backing the fights of the Recording Artists' Coalition, a trade group for music makers. On behalf of RAC Henley and other music stars, in January, lobbied the California senate to support a bill to repeal a state labor statute that denies recording artists the limited-work contracts enjoyed by other professions. Some musicians have been bound to lengthy recording contracts (likened by some to indentured servitude), which, as Henley argued, "restricts the basic American philosophy of free-market competition." Henley, nearing the end of a tour in support of his 2-year-old release "Inside Job," recently spoke to the Sun from his Dallas home about his charitable endeavors, representing his fellow artists and reuniting with The Eagles: (Reports have the group scheduled to perform June 1 at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel. As of Friday, the hotel would not confirm the show was scheduled.) Las Vegas Sun: Why did you chose to participate in "Tiger Jam V"? Don Henley: A couple of reasons: I admire anybody who achieves a high level of success and then uses that success to turn around and do something good for the community at large. People like Tiger Woods ... who don't forget where they came from, and so I'm happy to help out, particularly when it comes to children. My primary concerns are the environment and children, and I don't really separate the two because one has a great deal of bearing on the other. Sun: What is your role with the Walden Woods Project? DH: Well, it's mine. I work on (fund-raising) every day ... We need a $28 million endowment and a land-acquisition fund so that if more historic property becomes available on the market around Walden Pond we can pounce on it and we won't have to go begging for money to buy the land. It's been daunting and challenging and it keeps me awake nights sometimes wondering how I'm going to raise all this money, but it's been incredibly rewarding at the same time ... It's very different from rock 'n' roll. Sun: Speaking of music, it was 10 years between the release of "Inside Job" and your previous disc, "The End of the Innocence." DH: The time between albums was a result of a lot of things, including getting married and starting a family ... and including The Eagles' reunion and tour (1994's "Hell Freezes Over"). So the actual making of the album was pretty much my normal time span, which is a couple of years. Sun: What can we expect next from you? DH: Right now we're working on an Eagles album and have been for four or five months, and it's going very well. We hope to have it completed either late this year or early next year. Sun: Talk about the Recording Artists' Coalition. For those who may not be familiar with it, what is going on with the labor laws and how are you involved? DH: The labor law that we're dealing with in California right now is simply the tip of the iceberg. We are about much more than that ... The Recording Artists' Coalition is, for all practical purposes, our attempt to give the recording-artist community its own trade group. We are not a union. Most recording artists do not know or understand what a major role the legislative process has in their lives and indeed in their livelihoods. What happens in the government in Washington, D.C., ... plays a pivotal role in the lives of recording artists whether they know it or not, in terms of how we get paid, how much we get paid, if we get paid. It also determines the future of our intellectual property, our artistic creations. It's something that artists have been sadly uninvolved in, and we are trying to change that because we are getting our clocks cleaned by the record companies and by the Internet companies. Sun: Is this because of artists' own doing? DH: It's because of their own doing, because of their unwillingness to become informed ... and on the part of the complete willingness of recording companies to take advantage of that. The record industry knows full well that artists don't understand how the business works and they have been taking advantage of it for 60 years ... With all of this globalization and consolidation and "corporatization," it's only become worse. Sun: RAC also took issue with the business of Napster and other Internet music sites. DH: This is a crisis facing the entire industry. This is where artists and record companies are in alignment because (the sites are) going to put us all out of business. If people keep stealing music off the Internet, there will be no record business anymore, there will be no reason for any of us to write or create music anymore except for our own amusement. People need to understand that intellectual property belongs to somebody. The unfortunate part is that recording artists and songwriters make a product that can be digitized ... and it can be transmitted over the Internet. A car, for example, cannot be digitized, but it still got made as a result of somebody's idea ... and they get paid for it. If somebody steals a car, the police come after them. People need to understand that only about 7 or 10 percent of us in the music business are really successful ... The rest of the people in this business are struggling and living from hand to mouth. They're not rich, they're not famous but they still make their money from music. But whether an artist is rich or poor, stealing is wrong. And something's got to be done about it. Sun: Are you saddened by the state of music these days? DH: Yes, I am and I'm not alone in that. What concerns me is that the record companies A), don't know good art when they hear it, and B), aren't willing to put forth the energy and the effort and the money anymore to develop new talent ... It's all about the corporate profitability report and the bottom line. It's always been about that, but it's gotten much much worse, and music and culture have suffered for it. Same thing with radio: All of the radio stations now belong to four or five huge conglomerates and those radio stations are formatted and compartmentalized ... and it's all about profitability. You don't hear a diverse selection of music on one station anymore ... whereas in the early days of FM radio you could hear a lot of different kinds of music on one station ... And that was good for art, and that was good for culture, but we don't have that anymore. Sun: It was good for The Eagles. You guys were everywhere in the '70s. And people are still clamoring for the band. DH: Go figure ... I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I just try to keep going forward. I've been around long enough to know that the pendulum swings and it's gonna start swinging back now. I think people are fed up with the dumbing down of popular music ... I think that people understand that the desperate climb of these companies to the top of the corporate ladder has actually resulted in a race to the bottom of the barrel, and I think things are going to start to change now ... So I'm optimistic about the future. archive Share on printShare on emailShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_shareMore Sharing Services 0