Don Henley - The End of the Innocence
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Free Music Notes for The End of the Innocence
Free Music Review: Don accurately documents the end of the 1980s with INNOCENCE
Hit: 5 Stars
After the Eagles' acrimonious break-up at the beginning of the decade, the individual members couldn't have pursued more different solo careers. Glenn Frey tried his best, but his success came mostly with soundtrack songs like "The Heat Is On" (from BEVERLY HILLS COP) and "You Belong To The City" (from MIAMI VICE). Joe Walsh had already had a considerable career before joining the Eagles as a solo artist and leader of the James Gang. But even his solo career was a bit less than satisfying in the '80s. Don Henley, on the other hand, who was probably the least vocal of the Eagles (at least musically), had only just begun. I CAN'T STAND STILL (1982) was a good start for a solo career, but was immediately overtaken by the sheer flawlessness of BUILDING THE PERFECT BEAST (1984). Dated as it sounds today, it was still an excellent example of Don's cynical look at society of the time. With Reaganomics at their height, Don was probably one of the few people brave enough to claim that all things may look good on the surface, but could cost us dearly in the long run. By 1989, with Reagan gone, and Bush the elder starting out, it was time to look back at our progress and regress of the decade, and ever the unofficial political pundit, Don Henley contributed his viewpoint with END OF THE INNOCENCE. In a decade where pop music was so much geared towards the youth market, a near-middle-age guy like Don Henley having hits was quite an anomaly. But it showed that adult wisdom was still very much appreciated among the din of prefabricated pop music. END OF THE INNOCENCE proved that Don had learned a whole lot more in the 5 years since BEAST. Opening with the immediately recognizable piano chords of Bruce Hornsby, the title track on the surface sounds like end of a love affair. But when you dig deeper, that's only part of the story, for the song has Don claiming that after an age of tax cuts, recessions, and government deregulations, we're facing an uncertain future as to how those things would soon affect us. Some truly wise words for a song that became a top 10 hit in 1989. While BEAST captured the '80s at their materialistic peak, INNOCENCE had Don examining the fallout. Other songs like "How Bad Do You Want It?" (another social commentary masked as a song about a lovers' quarrel), "Shangri-La", "If Dirt Were Dollars" and "Gimme What You Got" further examine the idea that in an age of "free money", we were too busy reaping the benefits while not looking close enough at the side effects. This may be considered a little hypocritical coming from an artist like Don, whose albums always bring him plenty of money. But for a man who's also gotten involved with environmental causes like the Walden Woods Project (which he helped found), perhaps he really is putting his money where his mouth is by calling it a corruptor of society. Not every song on INNOCENCE is social commentary, though. The more personal statements of INSIDE JOB are foreshadowed on the album's other two hits singles "The Last Worthless Evening" and "The Heart Of The Matter". With most love songs not surpassing the old "I love you, I can't live without you" standard, those two songs on INNOCENCE have Don looking at a different side of love that is more honest and adult than what you'd normally hear in constant rotation on the radio. And with many middle-aged artists trying their best to be young and hip, Don wasn't afraid to act his age. After END OF THE INNOCENCE did its time on the charts, Don Henley fell silent for most of the 1990s. But that's not to say he was taking a load off. With the Eagles reunion we thought we'd never see, Don getting married and starting a family, and his record company trying Don's patience, no wonder we wouldn't hear from him until the new millennium. While INSIDE JOB took a long time to appear more because of life itself and not Don's legendary perfectionism, that was actually good. A whole different era would take its time unfolding Don had a chance to put in his two cents about it.Free Music Review: Award-winning ballads and Reagonomics -- a Henley must-have.
Hit: 5 Stars
"Remember when the days were long and rolled beneath a deep blue sky" ... remember Paradise Lost and the Last Resort? At the end of the 1980s, his awareness of society and what's wrong with it more acute than ever, on his third solo album Don Henley took up the theme of the closing song of the Eagles' classic "Hotel California" even more forcefully than on his two prior releases. Now, however, it was not just "somebody" any longer who "laid the mountains low while the town got high." Now the enemy had a face; he was "the tired old man that we elected king;" that cowboy whose name was Jingo, and who "heard that there was trouble, so in a blaze of glory he rode out of the west - nobody was ever certain what it was that he was sayin' but they loved it when he told them they were better than the rest." ("Little Tin God.")
By the time he published "The End of the Innocence," Don Henley's name was as firmly established as that of a successful solo artist as it had previously come to be known as one of the driving forces behind the Eagles' almost decade-long success. Commercially his most successful album and critically his most acclaimed, his third solo release garnered a Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocalist (for the title track) and produced several more hit singles besides "The End of the Innocence:" "The Heart of the Matter," "New York Minute," "How Bad Do You Want It?" and "Last Worthless Evening." Stylistically, the album ranges from ballads like the piano-driven title song (co-written by Bruce Hornsby, whose fingerprints are all over its instrumentation; not just in the keyboards but also in the saxophone solo, performed by Wayne Shorter, and in the song's main theme), "The Last Worthless Evening," and Don Henley's variation on the theme of forgiveness, "The Heart of the Matter" (a song that took him "42 years to write," as he explained during the opening show of the Eagles' "Hell Freezes Over" tour) - all the way to hard-rocking tunes like "I Will Not Go Quietly," featuring background vocals by Axl Rose. In between are the jazzy, introspective "New York Minute," yet another (percussion- and rhythm-driven) warning that the world "ain't no Shangri-La," the deceptively light-footed "Little Tin God," and no less than three hard, edgy songs rounding up Henley's damning verdict on Reaganomics ("How Bad Do You Want It?," "Gimme What You Got" and "If Dirt Were Dollars").
As were his previous solo albums, "The End of the Innocence" was co-produced and largely co-written by Danny Kortchmar, and likewise as on the previous albums, Henley enlisted the cooperation of a number of other outstanding musicians - in addition to Kortchmar, Hornsby, Shorter and Rose, Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, Julia and Maxine Waters, Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Stan Lynch, Toto's David Paich and Jeff Porcaro, "inofficial Eagle" J.D. Souther, and many others. Except for his greatest hits album, 1995's "Actual Miles," this was also to be the last record Don Henley would publish on Geffen; a label he did not leave without a fight (which alongside the Eagles' reunion, his marriage and his preoccupation with the Walden Woods Project, he would later list as one of the reasons why he did not produce another new album in all of eleven years).
Henley is well-known to be a perfectionist and is sometimes criticized for allegedly overly "slick" productions; a statement usually going hand in hand with accusations of superficiality and occasionally even hypocrisy (his records did, after all, earn him millions; so how serious can he be about his social criticism?). But it doesn't even take a look at his efforts to preserve the environment (in the Walden Woods Project and elsewhere), his recently formed coalition for artists' rights, and his testimony before Congress on a variety of related topics to doubt the accuracy of that assessment. This guy means every word he writes; just listen to his lyrics - and as long as "we got the bully pulpit and the poisoned pen" and "this brave new world [is] gone bad again" ("If Dirt Were Dollars [we'd all be in the black]"), he'll be around to hold up a mirror before our eyes.
Also recommended:
Don Henley Live - Inside Job
The Eagles - Hell Freezes Over
Selected Works: 1972-1999
Hotel California
Free Music Review: A Masterpiece
Hit: 5 Stars
I've always lived under the notion that even a blind squirrel picks up a nut every once in a while. Don Henley proved this in The End Of The Innocence. I had never cared for any of his work with the Eagles, and his first two solo efforts contained some decent tracks, but nothing ground-breaking. In The End Of The Innocence, Henley presents five of the best songs ever written: The evocative title track, the two mature ballads "Heart Of The Matter" and "The Last Worthless Evening", the melancholic jazz found in "New York Minute", and the hard rocker "I Will Not Go Quietly" that isn't typical of Henley's style. I think Henley was at the pinnacle of his career with this album, because its lyrical content was mature and relevant. Pick up The End Of The Innocence if you want to own one of the best albums of the 80s and one of the best albums of all time.Free Music Review: His Best Album
Hit: 5 Stars
Though Sunset Grill is the best Don Henley Song in my opinion, the title track is a darn close second. The piano riff and the great lyrics make it a classic. I like how he switches from acousitc guitar to organs and then electric guitar in his songs. This album contains his best collection of songs of his four solo albums and it is the best produced. It is easily one of the best albums of the eightites becuase of the way Henley encapsulizes the feeling of the late eightites. The withering economy and the realization "of the tired man we elected king" comes full circle. He has beautiful love songs that have a message and unlike his new album, every song is written well and is cohesive to the album as a unit. Henley's voice is his greatest asset and I hope he will revert back to the songwriting displayed here and forget the scholck he wrote for Inside Job.Free Music Review: Don Henley's Masterpiece
Hit: 5 Stars
"The End of the Innocence" really hit home.When JFK was killed in Dallas,I lost my Innocence.This song,that Bruce Hornsby co-wrote,and plays keyboards on,just brings back that terrible day.I was only 8,but I still remember sitting in my 3nd Grade Classroom,and being sent home.This song also tells about the terrible Reagan years,with the line,"For this tired old man that we elected king," and the preachers telling us not to sin,while there sleeping with everyone and stealing our money.Every song on this CD has some special meaning."I will not go Quietly,"about turning your life around,"The last worthless evening," a loveless relationship,and a the wonderfull fun cut,"Shangri-la." The last song on the album,"The Heart of the Matter," is my favorite.Just forget about hatred,and move on."You keep carryin that anger,it'll eat you up inside."When you play "The End of the Innocence," you think about the end of he 80's.This album is Don Henley's greatest solo Album.