June 18 – Don Henley – The End of the Innocence

And now I’ve gone and broke my Henley. Shame, too, cause this is what I’ve been leading up to with all that negative Eagles talk in the past two posts, and I’ve been so enjoying this tape that I’ve been playing it often and it’s inspired my workouts. If Henley’s first solo effort was a practice run to Building the Perfect Beast, then Building the Perfect Beast was just a prelude to The End of the Innocence. I can’t recall which of the songs did it for me – the title song, “The Last Worthless Evening” or “The Heart of the Matter.” I’m thinking like a lot of women of various ilks, “The Last Worthless Evening” made us swoon inside and showed how much we’d let Henley get away with, as it is slightly sexist and could be considered a bit stalkerish. But with Henley now front and center, and more like a romantic cabaret singer, he almost could do no wrong. That voice that was the focal point of many of the more irksome Eagles songs, for me, was now insightful, clever, dreamy and passionate. He’d gone from California hippy dude to kinda cool. And I was so digging the pony tail. “The End of the Innocence” is a really well-crafted collaboration between Henley and Bruce Hornsby about growing up and coming of age in the era of Reaganomics and corporate greed, and escaping from it all, at least in one’s mind. Its political message blends with the idealism it presents in the gentlest of ways and you find yourself saying to yourself – wait, what did he just say? And of course the song “The Heart of the Matter” had special meaning for me and the ex.

I liked that Don Henley had passions and causes, and could speak intelligently on political topics, and looked just a bit uncomfortable alone and out front on stage. I noticed, and it was confirmed, that Henley would sing his own songs front stage and then climb back on the drums when performing one of his Eagles numbers. Was it respect, insecurity or just a gimmick? Didn’t matter.

And though I was totally into anything Henley and was crushing on him big time, in actuality Fry is probably the guy I’d go for. Now I have another addition to my must get CDs list.