Word: henley
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...Henley responded to the crisis in classic rock-'n'-roll fashion: a fair amount of rambunctious confusion, running concurrently with some studious dissipation, followed by the release of his own solo album in 1982. I Can't Stand Still sold well, but nowhere near what it deserved to. It was a superb album, yet the solid commercial breakthrough would come with his second release, Building the Perfect Beast. Its keynote single, The Boys of Summer, a romantic song full of nostalgia and vitriol, won Henley a Grammy. Now Henley is closing out the '80s with a splendid third album...
...doesn't much matter to Henley. "People have short memories and attention spans," he notes. "They forget me as soon as I'm off MTV. I'm glad." That kind of confidence can come not only from satisfaction in his work but also from a sense that the work has paid off. Out just a month ago, the new album has already gone gold: the title cut, released as a single, sounds similarly hit-bound. It is a ravishing love song, slightly world-weary and bracingly off-center, nostalgic for better loves and wiser times...
...Henley knows all the odd angles in the geometry of love. In one of his best songs, Long Way Home, he wrote, "There are three sides to every story:/ Yours, mine, and the cold, hard truth." There seems to be a lot of truth on this new album. Much of it sounds tough, as on one of Henley's favorite tracks, I Will Not Go Quietly ("It kicks ass more than any previous rock-'n'- roll songs I've done"), but nothing is delivered here with the jaded swagger that often got the Eagles branded as a slick bunch...
...Dirt Were Dollars ("I was flyin' back from Lubbock/ I saw Jesus on the plane/ . . . or maybe it was Elvis/ You know, they kinda look the same"), and a memorably nasty cameo portrait of Ronald Reagan as a cowboy named Jingo in Little Tin God. That's vintage Henley, delivered with a snarl and a smile, but The Heart of the Matter, which ends the record, is the struggle for a different sense of place, another state of grace: "I've been tryin' to get down to the heart of the matter/ Because the flesh will get weak...
...reputation grew from a beginning that was so typically modest it could almost be mythic. The only child of an auto-parts salesman-farmer and an elementary school teacher in Linden, Texas ("Drive 20 miles to The Crossroads or, in the other direction, to Uncertain") -- Henley had a bedrock upbringing that permitted his musical excursions but gave him something to kick out against. When success with the Eagles hit fast and hard, he lived his share of the Los Angeles high life and paid a big price. In 1980 he found himself pickled in the press when he was given...