JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Don Henley and The End of The Innocence

I'm listening to this Masterpiece by a GREAT Singer Songwriter with a voice to die for AND trying really hard to think of ANYBODY in his class today.....? WOW

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/don-henley-the-end-of-the-innocence/

As far as somebody in the same class…
Stephen Merritt

He might not have the same traditionally "pretty" voice as DH, but he is an excellent singer in his own way. And I would say that, as a songwriter, he is light years ahead of DH. More on a par with Cole Porter.
Yeah, I said it.

"All My Little Words"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo8vW_0H_Kg

"Papa Was a Rodeo"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yZ50ptDpuQ

And there are tons more where that came from.
Probably the best living songwriter.

DH has a lot of personality in his voice.

Who is Don Henley?


"I can't stand still", I told him, "and you better hang up because it's a long way home".

"It's nobody's business", he snarled back. "I could be talking to the moon airing dirty laundry"

What can you expect but banter when the boys of summer get together, building the perfect beast. I mean, if you 're not drinking enough, you can't make love, so you got to be a man on a mission.

"We gotta get laid", he'd growled earlier that afternoon, as if reading my mind. "We gotta get some them and us. How's about we we call Annabel, The Genie and Miss Ghost?"

"Call em" I'd suggested", but I knew before he was finished asking that they're not here and they're not coming.

But you know, that hangup turned into the best thing ever.

You see the best place I found to complete our mission was the Sunset Grill. In this land of the living, even in a month of Sundays you'll never find anywhere where all she wants to do is dance, and where every Lilah feels there's not enough love in the world and she wants you driving with your eyes closed.

Definitely led to the end of the innocence for me. First thing she asked when I walked into the place was "how bad do you want it?"

Now, not knowing this was the last worthless evening I was spending, I shot right back in less than even a New York minute and got right to the heart of the matter.

"How bad do you want it?", popped out of my mouth, along with "Gimme what you got"

Perhaps I was being so bold because just at that moment, Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows was playing on the jukebox, and it was right at the part where he sings

Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Maybe she heard it too, because she looked at me with those taking you home eyes and whispered "I will not go quietly"

"Well" I thought "You don't know me at all. If dirt were dollars I couldn't be happier. I mean that would be Shangri La for me."

Yup, everything's different now. It became the unclouded day. I went from a little tin god to there's nobody else in the world but you.

Now if Johnny can't read, he'll never know that for my wedding, we reserved the Garden of Allah for our reception. Yup, I said goodbye to a river, took an inside job, and man I'm workin it.

i really dug that song when it came out,i couldn't get enough of it or the whole cd for that matter.But these days DH seems like a real sour-ass to me.

How about this one. Henley, Johnny Cash, and Earl Scruggs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w02wzSfmclg

An old thread I know, but I thought I would chime in. Great song. Big fan of Don Henley the performer, not of the person. That being said, I am a much bigger fan of the writer of the music for End of The Innocence, Bruce Hornsby. Henley gets the lyric credit, but for me this song is all about the beautiful music, which is all Hornsby!

Agreed and Hornsby is really UNDER RATED....He is a total Original....he's still out there playing. BUT it was a great collaboration.

I agree with JLS & Barry. Hornsby MAKES this song a minor-masterpiece!...By the way, he is also one of BAW's fvorites:-)

Midnite

P.S..

Brilliant addition, Mr. Voorpostel:-)...And when I get an extra hour, I'm gonna track down PopTodd's suggestion.

Glad Hornsby is getting the credit he deserves. The music came first. It was a finished track just sitting around waiting for Bruce and possibly his brother to write lyrics and Henley asked if he could write something. The music is the star of the song, the rest is just a political rant by the ranter in chief. When Don Henley formed RAC, a group that he peddled around to government claiming they and they alone represented the musician and songwriter community (it was few dozen superstars mostly lending their names to it and no indie artists at all). He presented their demands/concerns, all of which served only multi-millionaire stars and wanted laws created and passed that met their financial agendas. I was interviewed by, among many others, The Chicago Tribune for an award winning Sunday series and was asked about the music community and they mentioned Don's group and asked if we were being helped by their efforts, did we support their agenda etc. and I explained I worked with artists who had more pressing concerns like trying to find health insurance, earn more money to pay for babysitters to watch the kids while they gigged, make ends meet in the early days of file sharing, pay their rent, fix their touring van and pay for their album studio time while fighting over ever artificially limited shelf space in music stores etc. etc. etc. and that none of our concerns, which represented roughly 98% of those commercially pursuing music, were addressed by RAC nor would Don Henley share any of our needs, legislatively, commercially or even creatively. One of the quotes they used was "I doubt Don sits up at night at his kitchen table trying to figure out how to insure himself so he could pay his daughters cancer bills after the dozen benefits the community had done had still fallen short." BUT..I DID say that I also supported his issues and hoped one day more of our members would find his level of success so they too would share those concerns but until then, they really didn't represent most musicians and songwriters. So of course, they had quoted Don bloviating all these points that were in some case in contradiction to what I had said, so they went back to him with my quotes for comment. He called his attorney and demanded to know "who the [naughty word removed] Brian Austin Whitney was" and when his lawyer (with whom I shared 2 good friends) explained what we were doing back then, he said "[naughty word removed] em, there's already too many musicians and anything to cut the numbers is a good idea..." among other choice comments. (A paraphrased version of that statement was also stated on the record). We had a well publicized back and forth for weeks where he looked like the hot head he always has been. (Thank God he didn't learn I am not a leftist like him or he'd have had an aneurysm).

So here I was in a fight with one of my musical heroes... I mean literally, he was one of my very favorites and I never said anything bad about him or his org. but I simply explained what the mass of grassroots musicians and artists needed and how our collective lives had little to do with theirs on most issues. And I DID say we'd welcome working with them to help both sides of the larger community. To his attorney's credit, he tried to get us together several times but Don didn't show up. He was too busy to actually work on any real issues. As far as I am aware, aside from some press coverage, photo ops with politicians and hot air they didn't do much. Meanwhile we worked on getting the first ever admission of Payola on record and a settlement arranged with Sony to stop the practice and make reparations as well as coming up with resources to help teach a pathway/strategy to insure musicians with what was available at the time.

But I love the music on that song... and even though the lyrics shared common themes with much of Bruce's stuff which I think delivers them so much better than Don does. But I am still a BIG Bruce H fan.

Brian

No wonder you had a stroke!!!!

I remember our DC Days, and always MARVEL at how much you DIDN'T unload about your day while sitting on the couch.

For me, there are 3 Musical Bruce's:

Cockburn
Hornsby
Springsteen.

None of them perfect...

All of them "touched" by whatever it is that touches us...

Our lives are richer for it...

Midnite

Gotta love Don Henley, he's badass! Don't take [naughty word removed] from anyone. Not many of those types left. Times have changed, as Bob used to say. Now it's kosher to suck ass instead, because it pays not to offend anyone.

Humm,
What happened to the Age of Innocence? Johnny Cash had the answer. Google THE ONE ON THE RIGHT IS ON THE LEFT. Write a Hit!

Actually, Don Henley's song Get Over it (written with Glenn Frey) is one that sticks with me. I hate whining and evidently, so does he......

"Get Over It"

I turn on the tube and what do I see
A whole lotta people cryin' "Don't blame me"
They point their crooked little fingers ar everybody else
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves
Victim of this, victim of that
Your momma's too thin; your daddy's too fat

Get over it
Get over it
All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it

You say you haven't been the same since you had your little crash
But you might feel better if I gave you some cash
The more I think about it, Old Billy was right
Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight
You don't want to work, you want to live like a king
But the big, bad world doesn't owe you a thing

Get over it
Get over it
If you don't want to play, then you might as well split
Get over it, Get over it

It's like going to confession every time I hear you speak
You're makin' the most of your losin' streak
Some call it sick, but I call it weak

You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass

Get over it
Get over it
All this bitchin' and moanin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it

Get over it
Get over it
It's gotta stop sometime, so why don't you quit
Get over it, get over it

Well i watched a Don Henley interview the other day on CNN or somewhere and i will say i misjudged ol Don.I don't think he is a sour ass after all.I know he's got his reasons for what he does as we all do.But after seeing him on Caddo Lake and his hometown in Texas,he's kinda alright i think.Sure he can rub me the wrong way as anybody can but i saw that he is not always like that and just wants to grow old and have a corn field.Just thought i'd clear that up to make myself feel better.Mike

ah, get over it Michael! =)

i did Brian.I'm sure it won't be long he'll rub me the wrong way.