Don Henley “The End of the Innocence”
Of the twenty five greatest offensive seasons in baseball, on the basis of WAR (Wins Above Replacement), four are the work of Rogers Hornsby. “The Rajah,” a legend of the Cardinals in the 1920s and 30s, won two triple crowns and hit over .400 on three (3) separate occasions. At his peak, the only hitter more extraordinary was Babe Ruth.
And yet, there is another man named “Hornsby” who has accomplished more and scaled greater heights than Rogers Hornsby. That would be Bruce Hornsby, a Grammy award winning artist who has sold millions of albums, who has scored Spike Lee films, who has played over 100 shows as the de facto keyboard player for the Grateful Dead, who has inspired and collaborated with Bon Iver and who has produced two (2) Division 1A College athletes.
But perhaps the greatest Hornsby achievement in the history of Hornsby’s is the composition and performance in Don Henley’s “The Age of the Innocence.” Not only did Bruce Hornsby co-write the song and play piano and keys on that song, he took a simple, pretty, wistful, bland tune and made it the easiest and most frictionless listen in the history of modern Pop music. The song is finished by Henley’s voice but glides on top of the tracks laid by the pianist. The song feels like it could go on forever and never get worse and never get better. It just gets easier and easier to listen to.
“The End of the Innocence,” the first and title track of Henley’s 1989 album, is undeniably pretty. There’s something singular and brilliant in it. It’s one notch above boringly pretty. But it’s definitely insidiously pretty.
Maybe that’s the best way to start in sizing up Henley — pretty, singular, brilliant, boring, insidious. Photo and video evidence from 1989 bears out this assertion. He stands there — broad shouldered lapel, wide and serious face, a ponytail or bun and, most importantly, a single lock falling out from the pulled back hair. It’s a handsome look. It’s an odd look. It’s a poor fashion choice. But the hair. That falling lock. In 2020 a tousled man bun is a misdemeanor. In 1989, at forty two years old, it was a goddam crime. It was capital murder.
Who or what was the victim of Henley’s crime? It was the last semblances of edge, surprise and urgency in the sound of guitar-driven, Classic Rock. Henley had been flirting with this crime for decades. “Desperado” and “Tequila Sunrise” are like the designer hummus of the Classic Rock canon. As a solo artist, though, free of the shackles of electric guitar, Henley became a friction killing machine. His music got nicer and nicer; more and more pleasant; longer and more repetitive. “The Boys of Summer” (from “Building the Perfect Beast”) is like Melatonin. “The Last Worthless Evening” is a six minute masterclass in audio Ambien. And then, teamed up with Bruce Hornsby, Henley made pure heroin with “The End of the Innocence.”
The funny thing is that Don Henley is an odd guy. He has a raspy, pure tenor with the slightest Texas twang. He is a drummer that sings like an angel. He seems entirely devoid of humor. His songs can be serious and angry and still deeply relaxing. He’s not boring so much as he is uninteresting. Even when he tries out odd verses and time signatures, as in “How Bad Do You Want It?” he ends up finding his way into a sweet, perfect, harmonic chorus that fits like a glove and covers like a blanket. His musical biological imperative seems to be the reduction of friction.
Is frictionlessness a good thing for Rock music? Probably not? Was it a good thing for an easy-Rock machine programmed to sell albums and win Grammy’s? It was. If you were white, between the ages of 22 and 100 and were not named “Don Felder,” in 1989 you listened to Don Henley and you just plain liked it. “The End of the Innocence” is too easy to be called “Yacht Rock.” No, this is music you listen to poolside, at the Four Seasons, in San Diego, drinking exactly what you wanted and feeling exactly as you wish while also restoring your faith in humanity. Love will conquer all. And all is good.
All is good. Except, that is, most of this album. With ten songs and clocking in at over fifty three minutes, this is the “Marquee Moon” of middle-aged, boring rock. Almost as astonishing as the ease with which Henley’s voice and melodies go down is his ability to say things that sound topical and important but really are just platitudes in the service of a half baked idea and an endless, pastoral musical road to nowhere.
On “The End of the Innocence” there are basically two (2) sorts of “serious Don’s.” There’s seriously contemplative Don and seriously, kind of pissed Don. The former is bland and pleasant. The latter is intolerable. On the album’s second half, including “Little Tin God,” “Gimme What You Got” and “If Dirt Were Dollars” kind of pissed Don throws all seventeen musicians and fourteen backing singers at the wall to prove just how serious he is. Among the backing singers on this album are Patty Smyth, Edie Brickell, Ivan Neville, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, Gloria Estefan and Axl Rose. Yep. Axl Rose. Don Henley was that fucking serious on this album.
“The Heart of the Matter” is a truly beautiful album closer. It’s a perfect, just slightly Country, Pop song. After almost fifty minutes of kind of saying the same things, Henley finally admits it. This is an album that sounds like it’s about something but is really about nothing and about getting to that point, slowly, easily, endlessly. He says it all himself:
“The more I know, the less I understand,
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again”
Don Henley was 42 when he wrote that lyric. He was still impossibly talented, presumably wiser and really trying to say something. But that’s where he landed. That was the best he could do. That really was the heart of the matter. At least he asked for forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Even if. Even if.