Rock and roll was never meant to stay confined to one style. For every bluesy tune, there was an artist—whether The Beatles, The Byrds, or Led Zeppelin—exploring different genres, finding inspiration even beyond the traditional rock framework. The Eagles might get credit for being early country rock influencers, but Don Henley claims one songwriter was the first to truly capture the genre’s essence.
Country rock and classic rock were already close in sound when rock and roll began. Early rockabilly, like Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” carried a country flavor with a new swagger. Even The Beatles wore their country influence proudly on tracks sung by Ringo Starr, like his original “Don’t Pass Me By” and his cover of Carl Perkins’s “Honey Don’t.”
Henley, however, singles out one artist as the definitive country rock trailblazer: Gram Parsons. Within The Byrds—often considered America’s answer to The Beatles—Parsons stood out. While Roger McGuinn’s voice and 12-string guitar gave the band its signature sound, Parsons lived and breathed country music and brought it into his songwriting.
Parsons’s influence extended beyond his own work; his style resonated in rock and roll at large. The Rolling Stones, too, were captivated by Parsons’s sound, especially Keith Richards, whose experimentation in country music owes much to Parsons’s influence.
As Henley told Louder, “We were surrounded by all these great songwriters. There was the Laurel Canyon scene, and Gram Parsons had introduced country music to rock ’n’ roll and synthesized that.”
Though Parsons passed before he could witness the country rock wave he’d inspired, his influence lived on, particularly through the Eagles, who built on his vision throughout the 1970s. Some of their early records, like Desperado, leaned heavily into cowboy imagery, and their later work, like “The Last Resort” from Hotel California, could easily be adapted into pure country arrangements with only slight tweaks.
Henley acknowledges that not every Laurel Canyon artist fit into the country rock mold, but if there’s a starting point for country’s fusion into rock, it’s with Parsons. His solo albums, like Grievous Angel, provided the blueprint that future songwriters would follow. Even if Henley didn’t entirely follow Parsons’s path, the influence is woven into the Eagles’ best work, embodying the spirit of country rock Parsons pioneered.
