CD Odyssey Disc 1372: Don Henley

Sometimes you love an album more than it deserves, which is certainly the case for this next review. I’d call this a guilty pleasure, but Sheila always admonishes my use of that term noting, “there are no guilty pleasures, only pleasures.” That’s a nice thought, but if I’m being honest, I’m a lot less likely to roll the windows of a car down if I’m listening to Enya. Sorry, Enya.

Sorry to Don Henley as well, who is about to experience some tough love. He can take solace in his combined eight Grammys and tens of millions in record sales.

Disc 1372 is…. The End of the Innocence

Artist: Don Henley

Year of Release: 1989

What’s up with the Cover? Don casually brandishes a cigarette in an attempt to make an awful late eighties haircut look cool. Don fails.

How I Came To Know It: I heard three songs off this album back when it came out and liked them sufficiently to buy the album…on cassette! I later sold that cassette for beer money during some dark times, but a few years ago I saw a CD copy on sale for cheap and decided to bring it back to my collection.

How It Stacks Up: We have two Don Henley albums; this one and 1984’s “Building the Perfect Beast” (reviewed back at Disc 1035). Of the two, I prefer “End of the Innocence.”

Ratings: 3 stars

The mid- to late-eighties production decisions were unkind to many a seventies rocker. Springsteen survived on the strength of the material with “Tunnel of Love” and Tom Petty limped through it with “Southern Accents” but folks like Eric Clapton turned promising material into dredge on 1989’s “Journeyman”.

“End of the Innocence” also came out in 1989, which may be the nadir of the entire sorry period. So how did Don Henley fare? Better than Clapton, yes, but he fell short of Petty and well short of Springsteen. In a word, results were mixed.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The album starts off with the title track, which is cowritten by Bruce Hornsby and features one of his signature emotive piano hooks. That delightful hook buoys the whole song, and with the song’s world-weary theme it sets the scene for a record that Henley will load with a large dose of cynicism. “The End of the Innocence” (song and album) tell stories about how the world doesn’t always turn out the way you’d hoped it would.

I used to love “New York Minute” as well, but coming back to it years later I was disappointed with how it tried to catch that “In the Wee Small Hours” feel of New York City, only to be dragged down by fuzzy production values. It still features one of my favourite lines in music:

“Lying here in the darkness

I hear the sirens wail

Someone’s going to emergency

Someone’s going to jail.”

In 1989 I was relatively new to living in a city (and all the sirens that form part of that experience’s backdrop) and this line popped into my head whenever I heard one. It still happens from time to time.

And speaking of personal experience, “The Heart of the Matter” is not only the record’s best song (and a soft rock classic), but also came to me around the time I needed it. The song is a heartbreaker in more ways than one. Fueled by co-writer Mike Campbell’s jangly guitar, it tells the tale of trying to recover from a failed relationship. This means forgiving not only your ex, but also yourself. Hearing Henley rasp out how forgiveness was at the heart of it all helped me through some dark times. Do not worry though, gentle reader, it was thirty years ago. I’m better now.

Also solid are the more hopeful, “The Last Worthless Evening” and the slightly weird (but still wonderful) “Little Tin God” both of which find some measure of silver lining amid a lot of dark themes populating the record.

However, even the good songs must bear the weight of bad production. When Henley sings “you don’t have to get down on your knees/For a little tin god” he should have also applied this advice to eighties production. This whole record feels like it was recorded in an oil drum. The actual drums are mechanical and devoid of emotion. And I know he didn’t play drums on every track but seriously, Don, you’re a fucking drummer. Do better.

Also, as was the style at the time, random saxophone solos abuse many of the tracks. On “How Bad Do You Want It?” Henley should have applied the question to the saxophone part. To which I would have replied, “To end? I want that very badly.”

The worst thing is that on some of the songs - “Shangri-La” comes to mind – the ridiculous percussion is the only way you can hear this song. It is written for such silliness. It is unredeemable. As for “Gimme What You Got” it is a pale imitation of his first solo hit, “Dirty Laundry.” I know one’s about sensationalism in news and one’s about corporate greed, but the deeper issue is that one song (“Dirty Laundry”) is good, and the other one is not.

Despite these misses, however, this album holds a special place in my heart. Yeah, I sold it for beer once, but in my defence I wouldn’t want it on cassette now anyway. Besides, I bought it again, didn’t I? Also, the good songs are very good, bad production and all. Best of all, when I’m not beholden to Odyssey Rule #3, it is way easier to skip songs on both CD and MP3. All that fast forwarding and rewinding back in 1989 really lessened the listening experience.

Best tracks: End of the Innocence, The Last Worthless Evening, Little Tin God, The Heart of the Matter