The End of Innocence’: Henley Sums It Up Again

DON HENLEY: “The End of the Innocence.” Geffen *** 1/2

Much as the Eagles’ “The Long Run” summed up what there was to sum up of the 1970s a decade ago, Don Henley has returned from a nearly five-year recording silence to put a lid on the 1980s with “The End of the Innocence,” the third post-Eagles album from one of our finest singer/songwriters. In case your subscription to Time lapsed while the Shah was sitting pretty, a fair share of raw material has accumulated for a civic-minded sort to work with, ethics-wise.

All the topics here are topical 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 to the 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, neatly ties together several of Henley’s favored themes--pungent nostalgia for an earlier era in a smaller town, anti-Republican politics and sexual release.

The plaintive “The Last Worthless Evening” is the most Eagles-like number, a romantic plea to move on from the hurt of old relationships. And “The Heart of the Matter,” Henley 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 us doesn’t keep me warm.”

Henley takes up most of Side 2 with a rocked-up four-song suite of social awareness. And though the targets--greed, politics disguised as religion, etc.--are legitimate, and he gets some terrific zingers, his approach is a little too scattershot to do any of these subjects real justice. 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.