Happy Birthday to Don Henley!

The singer, songwriter, musician, and founding member of the Eagles, Don Henley, is celebrating his 79th birthday today!

He’s had an incredibly successful career with the Eagles, selling over 150 million albums, six Grammys, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and highest-selling American band in history. His solo career is nothing to sneeze at, either, including two Grammys and eight Top 40 hits!

One of those hits is the perfect summer song: 1984’s “The Boys of Summer.”

Henley recently told Classic Rock that after the Eagles broke up in 1980, he felt unsure about starting a solo career but still dove right in.

Henley’s inspiration for “The Boys of Summer” came up from a Dylan Thomas poem, and the line “I see the boys of summer in their ruin.” Henley’s lyrics for the song have a similar theme of lost innocence and youth.

He told the outlet how he came up with the line, Out on the road today, I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. 

“It was a gift,” Henley recalled. “It came from that mysterious place that lyrics sometimes come from. I had been stuck on the bridge section; couldn’t get the words, the melody. One afternoon, I was driving on Interstate 405, somewhere south of Sunset, the cassette of the track blaring through the sound system. I looked to my left and there it was: a 1979 Cadillac Seville with a ‘Deadhead’ sticker on the back. It just struck me as ironic, paradoxical, with a little touch of nostalgia, and it went right into the song.”

Henley said the song remains “one of the best I’ve co-written. The song is almost 40 years old now. It’s just another reminder that life is short, but it’s very wide.”

The song was released in October 1984 and hit No. 5 in the U.S. The black-and-white music video also won big at the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards.

And in honor of Don Henley’s birthday, see if you can name his Top Ten Solo Songs!