Mr. Henley, the lead singer of the Eagles, and his songs have an understated sex appeal. He was not the most classically handsome of the group, Glen Frey was, nor did he have the woolly sexiness of Don Felder when he was with the group. But Henley has a well-structured face, a strong, masculine jaw, and penetrating, purposeful eyes, and he never smiles. His look is mesmerizing, slightly dangerous, the undercurrent of sex appeal hard to pinpoint exactly, and far greater for the difficulty locating it.
The lyrics of his most popular songs are not rap-hip-hop explicit of sex, not at all, they are suggestive but unmistakably of sex:
She had a lot of pretty, pretty boys who she called friends.
I never will forget those nights, I wonder if it was a dream, Remember how you made me crazy? Remember how I made you scream?
You think of the background instrumentals to some of his songs, Hotel California, One of These Nights, Boys of Summer--I thought as I just watched the last of those three, the repetitive guitar riff twang-twang, twang-twang-twang, twang-twang-twang, twang-twang-twang, part of the definition of insanity is repetition--that it could have been used as background music in The Shining, a movie of insanity and danger. And later the variation with the guitar sounding like a Harley Davidson starting, would be used for the murder scene.The beginning instrumental of One of These Nights; the organ-sounding beginning to Hotel California, and of course, the screaming guitar duel between Frey and Felder that concludes Hotel California, all suggest sinister insanity to the ear. And as Felder pounds on the drums and sings in Hotel California, but she just could not kill the beast, his face is contorted in a malevolent sneer, for it is he who stabbed it with her steely knife. There is a sex appeal in that.
For a brief second the camera shot members of the live audience in One of These Nights and there was a middle-aged woman, a MILF in the patois, passion on her face, singing along, Swear I'm going to find you one of these nights.
In Boys of Summer:
You got your hair combed back and your,
Sunglasses on, baby.
