Music

Don Henley calls Kanye West 'arrogant' and Frank Ocean 'talentless pr*ck'

by Jesse Locke

On his debut release Nostalgia, Ultra, R&B singer Frank Ocean used The Eagles’ “Hotel California” as the basis for his song “American Wedding.” He didn’t ask the band for permission, and Don Henley was mighty pissed. Listen to the song below:

Henley threatened to sue Ocean for performing “American Wedding”, and then followed up in an interview with The Daily Telegraph revealing his distaste for samples or interpolations. “I heard it,” said Henley of Ocean’s song. “I was not impressed. He needs to come up with his own ideas and stop stealing stuff from already established works.” Henley also blocked the band Okkervil River from releasing their cover of his solo hit “The End of the Innocence.”

Now the Eagles singer and multi-instrumentalist has spoken out in a new interview with The Guardian, and it’s Old Man Yells at Ocean (all over again). When asked whether he was flattered that a “cool” young artist would reference his material, Henley’s responded with a thick slab of beef: “I didn’t think he was cool. I thought he was a talentless little prick. And I still do.”

For a musician who describes his band’s booze/party-free backstage area as “a morgue” and calls his former bandmate Don Felder “bitter”, it should come as no surprise that he has some words for Kanye West as well. Henley says he’d be “just as pissed off” if an artist of Yeezy’s stature had sampled his music. “I don’t like him, either,” says Henley. “He’s either incredibly arrogant or incredibly insecure, or some combination of the two.”