'TheEndof Innocence':

Henley Sryu$ It Up Again

ONHENLEY

"The End of the Inno-

***rtz

cence." Geffen
,

Much as the Eagles' *The Long

Run" sunimed up what there was
to sum up of the lg?Os a decade ago,

Don Henley has returned from a

nearly five-year recording silence

RECORD RACK
to put a lid on the 1980s with 'The
End of the Innocencg" the third
post-Eagles album from one of our

finest singer,/songwriters. In crle

your subscription to Time

lapsed

while the Shah was sittingpretty, a

fair share of raw malerial has

accumulated for a civic-tninded

sort to work with, ethics-wise.
All the topics here are lopied

enough, and references to Reaganomics, TV evangelists, real-estate

tycoons and the homeless abound.

In the, uh, long run, however, the

moments that draw you back tolhe
album are those in which Henley
sticks to such old, timeless standbys as looking for love in all the
wrong ivory towers.
The best songs here are by and
large personal ballads of loss and
subsequent self-discovery. The title track, a low-key, piano-based
collaboration with Bruce Hornsby,

LACYATXINS

/ LA.Tffi

Rock's quotable Don Henley

and he gets some terrific zingers,
his approach is a little too scattershot to do any of these subjects rcal
jusUce. Henley may be one of

rock's most eminently quotable

moralists, but the ethics he's most
comfortable exploring are still the
ethics of the heart.

-CHRISWILLMAN

neatly ties together several of

Henley's favored themes-pungent nostalgia for an earlier era in a
smaller town, anti-Republican politics and sexual releaseThe plaintive "The Last Worthless Evening" is the most Eagleslike number, a. romantic plea to
move on from the hurt of old

relationships. And "The Heart of

the Matter," Henliy tells us,

is

forgiveness; like millions of other

boomer loners, his protagonist has
realized, perhaps too late and perhaps not, that "the work I put

between irs doesn't keep me

warm."
Henley takes up most of Side 2
with a rocked.up four-songsuite of
social awareness. And though the

targets-greed, politics disguised

as religion, etc.-are legitimate,

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