Up Close but Not Personal

Don Henley went more than halfway through his two-hour concert Thursday at the Santa Barbara Bowl before playing any Eagles songs.

Good move.

The challenge facing Henley as he undertakes his first solo tour in seven years, following a long run back in the reunited Eagles’ nest, was to remind us that he is just as compelling on his own. And it’s a challenge that, for the most part, he met in superb fashion.

Just one important thing: In selecting material from his solo albums, Henley, who plays tonight and Sunday at the Universal Amphitheatre, was unexpectedly timid.

You’d think someone who has just released his first solo collection in 11 years would be eager to share a lot of that music with his fans, especially because it contains some of the most personal and revealing music he has ever written.

But Henley played just five of the 13 songs from “Inside Job,” and only two of them really spoke to the emotional heart of the album. It was too much emphasis on energy and performance rather than on insight and discovery.

Disappointing move.

But Henley has always been a difficult artist to figure out. His decision six years ago to go back to his day job--as co-leader of the Eagles--was one of the biggest pop music surprises of the ‘90s.

Not only had Henley seemed unhappy during his tense, final years with the group in the late ‘70s, he was also doing well commercially and creatively on his own.

“The End of the Innocence,” “Sunset Grill” and other highlights from Henley’s first three solo albums were meditations on relationships and social ethics as illuminating and well-crafted as such Eagles classics as “Hotel California” and “The Best of My Love.”

Even if it was puzzling, however, the Eagles’ 1994 reunion went well for a while. The old songs--the best of which chronicled the tensions of a generation struggling to maintain its fading idealism--held up, and the band played with conviction.

But the absence of strong new material eventually caused things to go stale. By the time the band played the Rose Bowl in 1995, you could already feel that the expiration date on the product was fast approaching.

So it was encouraging Thursday to see Henley and hear the music so fresh. From the opening notes of “Dirty Laundry,” he looked liberated and renewed. The song, a snarling attack on the innuendo and sleaze of tabloid journalism, felt as relevant as when he wrote it almost 20 years ago.

He was backed by a seven-piece band whose arrangements tended to be more aggressive and, at times, more complex than those generally associated with the Eagles. For extra seasoning on music that combines country, rock and R&B; influences, he also selectively employed a seven-piece horn section and a 12-member choir.

After “Dirty Laundry,” Henley moved quickly into two other early, memorable solo tunes--the pointed social observation of “Sunset Grill” and the more introspective and melancholy “The Last Worthless Evening.”

After this quick refresher course, Henley turned to the new album, and he chose wisely.

For anyone familiar with Henley’s reputation for excessive brooding and sometimes taking himself too seriously, “Everything Is Different Now” is an especially winning number.

“I hate to tell you this, but I’m very, very happy,” Henley sang, exaggerating the words in the playful, burlesque manner of Randy Newman at his most theatrical. “And I know that’s not what you’d expect from me at all.”

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The beauty of the song (which Henley wrote with Scott F. Crago and Timothy Drury) is that it’s not meant as satire. It’s confessional, one of many songs on the album inspired by his 1995 marriage and the subsequent birth of his three children.

Henley later unveiled the new album’s “Taking You Home,” a warm, open-hearted expression of comfort and faith co-written by Henley, Stan Lynch and Stuart Brawley.

The uplifting message of the two songs was all the more evocative because they were surrounded in the set by so many of Henley’s vintage tales of struggle and doubt, songs in which he speaks achingly of broken promises and vanishing optimism.

Henley’s transformation by marriage and family is the theme explored in the core of the new album. He approaches the subject in different ways--from the sweetness of Larry John McNally’s “For My Wedding” to the personal testimony of “My Thanksgiving” (which he wrote with Lynch and Jai Winding).

After closing the formal set with explosive, high-energy versions of “Life in the Fast Lane”--the first of the night’s five Eagles songs--and his own “All She Wants to Do Is Dance,” he set the stage perfectly for a return, during the encore, to the love songs from the new album.

The opening lines of “My Thanksgiving,” in fact, would have served as the perfect vehicle to begin sharing the changes in his life with his fans: “A lot of things have happened since the last time we spoke. . . .”

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But we didn’t hear that song or any of the other tender ones from “Inside Job” during the two encores.

The old Eagles songs--especially a ska-accented treatment of “Hotel California”--were sonic knockouts, but his old chest-thumping “I Will Not Go Quietly” seemed like hollow bluster when he had so much more to give.

The audience, which was on its feet throughout the encore, welcomed the Eagles numbers, including “Desperado,” but the closing seemed like a lost opportunity.

Henley displayed in the formal part of the show where he’s been and why he is one of the premier pop-rock artists of his generation, but he didn’t share enough of his new life. Instead of soaring at the end, this left the solo Eagle--when measured by his own high standards--flying too close to the ground.

* Don Henley plays tonight and Sunday at the Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, 8:15 p.m. $39.50 to $99.50. (818) 622-4440.