There she stood in the doorway; I heard the mission bell And I was thinking to myself this could be heaven or this could be hell

 Songs Everyone Should Know

“Hotel California” by the Eagles (1976)

The surfer boys were growing up and moving on by the late sixties. The beautiful sons and daughters of the migrants to this magnificent coast with its tinge of the Mexican influence were changing. California was not the same place as the fictitious Joad family sought out in “The Grapes of Wrath”. It wasn’t the California of real characters like Brian Wilson’s father’s family either – they had moved to California from Kansas when he was five and were so poor they tented on the beach.

No indeed California of the ‘60’s had become the dream. From  surrealistic places like the LA suburb called Laurel Canyon Joni Mitchell (remember “Ladies of the Canyon”) the Byrds, The Buffalo Springfield (with transplanted Neil Young) and others like a young Jackson Browne, had made a sound of their own – what loosely could be called the Southern California sound.

As the decade clicked off into the seventies a young DonHenley from Texas met Glen Frey from Michigan at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles. Both of them had their own bands and wanted to make it big in California. It was Linda Ronstadt who by instructing her manager John Boylan to recruit her some session musicians in spring of ’71 who set in motion the events that would ultimately produce one of the biggest bands of all time.

Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone

Hip to be Square

“Big Yellow Taxi”, Joni Mitchell (1970)

I remember listening to “Both Sides Now” coming from the funky little yellow radio my Dad had in the kitchen that he snapped on every morning – which seemed like he had been doing every morning since the dawn of time. I heard a lot of songs on that radio. I had my toast with peanut butter at the arborite table, wondering if I would be on the Green team or the Red team for ‘Sports’ day. Listening to Joni, I made special note to look at the clouds when I sat on the schoolyard waiting my turn for long jump or high jump or whatever else they made us do.  It seemed to me I had never really looked at clouds at all.

You got your hair combed back, sunglasses on baby........

“The Boys of Summer” by Don Henley (1984)

Pick of the Week 

So I am pining for warmer weather and I am pawing through my albums. What will make me feel like it will actually be summer here again........hmmm........

After leaving one of the most successful bands in history, former “Eagle” Don Henley, put out his first solo album “I Can’t Stand Still”. When it first came out I thought this is one of the best solo albums I have ever heard by someone that left a very successful group – and he proceeded to get better Sure you have Peter Gabriel, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins all doing very well from Genesis, but generally it is quite an exception I have found.

I tried to learn “Johnny Can’t Read” on the piano that long summer and drove my family crazy. I just somehow related to these quirky tunes. “Dirty Laundry” also got pretty good radio play that summer.

Henley has a very broad spectrum of insightful emotional experiences in his songs and is not surprisingly a very adept song-smith. He of course had a lot of practice with the Eagles and has been exposed to some of the best, but you don’t necessarily get this good just by osmosis. He builds clever story lines and description that are reminiscent at times of Paul Simon’s song writing – although tends to have a perspective that is more social commentary than specific individual experience.  My favourite Don Henley lyric is from a song called “If Dirt Were Dollars” where he says “...she looked at me, uncomprehending me, like cows in a passing train...” Musically the songs pay a lot of attention to the expression of percussion as Don of course was the drummer in the Eagles.  

The album itself was not to be Don’s best by any means, as he went on to do a number of better works. 1984’s “Building the Perfect Beast” spawned “The Boys of Summer”, “Sunset Grill” and “All She Wants to Do is Dance”. His most mature effort, “End of the Innocence”  (1989) , gave us “New York Minute”, “Last Worthless Evening”, “Heart of the Matter” and the title song itself.

Henley became a serious advocate for recording artists rights in the early ‘90’s after his serious legal issues with Geffen (remember that name?) Records would not let him out of his agreement with them.

So a long pause and we got the 2000 effort “Inside Job”, which is a solid album, but had no real chart success.  

I have always liked and recently relistened to all these albums. My favourite Henley songs are still “Johnny Can’t Read” of course, but also “Talking to the Moon” (I Can’t Stand Still), “If Dirt Were Dollars” “I Will Not Quietly” (The End of the Innocence), “Miss Ghost” and “Annabel” (Inside Job).  

“... and I can tell you my love for you will still be strong after the boys of summer have gone.”