All-Time Albums: #98

DON HENLEY The End Of The Innocence
(1989)

The End Of The Innocence 5:14 (UK single, #48)
How Bad Do You Want It? 3:46
I Will Not Go Quietly 5:41
The Last Worthless Evening 6:05 (UK single)
New York Minute 6:34 (UK single, #97)
Shangri-La 4:54
Little Tin God 4:39
Gimme What You Got 6:10
If Dirt Were Dollars 4:32
The Heart Of The Matter 5:21

One of my most-played CDs from the second half of 1989 right through 1990, the third solo album from Don Henley lacks a Boys Of Summer or a Dirty Laundry but makes up for it with consistent class. The fact it sold so well (UK Top 20, several months on the chart) without a bonafide hit single says a lot for its quality.

An album that has songs as sublime as The End of The Innocence, New York Minute and Heart of the Matter deserves a place in any all-time rundown. Added to that, Don Henley is probably among my Top 3 male vocalists, with the ability to elevate even the most mundane lyric…not that many of the lyrics are mundane.

Whilst several of the collaborations (Axl Rose, Bruce Hornsby, Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers) do result in tracks which bare more of the hallmarks of the collaborators themselves, the material wins out. I Will Not Go Quietly refuses to do exactly that, and How Bad Do You Want It has echoes of the previous album’s All She Wants To Do Is Dance (and is probably the most commercial track).

The only slight downside, and the reason it’s down at #98 and not in my Top 50, is the dip between tracks 6 and 9. Gimme What You Got, in particular, spends an eternity going nowhere quite tunelessly. Yet that Side 1 is like a mini greatest-hits itself.