Inspired by several really good pop culture timelines, I thought I might start one that focuses on the 1980s, and one of my favorite musical artists of all time....
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December 14, 1981
It was shaping up to be one of those nights. Don was sprawled out on his stomach on the living room floor, surrounded by a sea of notebook paper – most of it torn, crumpled, folded, or otherwise mutilated. “I’m out of inspiration,” he growled.
If true, this would have been a stunning revelation from the former Eagles drummer and frontman. In reality, Donald Hugh Henley was frustrated by far too much inspiration. Earlier in the day he’d penned yet another letter to the editor, this one to the Dallas Morning News, replying to that paper’s op-ed about the national debt and skewering another Reagan story that was transparently false. He was as proud of the letter as he was of his song lyrics; the problem was keeping the two separate.[1] At one a.m., that was more of a challenge than one might otherwise suspect. Henley looked down at his notes and drew a thick black line through the phrase “eighty year olds with Social Security checks.”[2] Then, thinking better of the whole page, Don crumpled up his latest songwriting attempt in frustration and tossed the ball a few feet away to join its siblings. He needed to get his thoughts straight.
Henley’s writing partner, Danny Kortchmar – “Kootch” to his friends – had some inspiration of his own. Getting up rather unsteadily from the nearby couch, Kootch wandered even less steadily to the kitchen in search of a fresh bottle of Stolichnaya from Don’s freezer.
On the way back to the living room, Kootch unscrewed the cap and took a healthy slug. If the past few months had been any guide, the two of them would stay up for another four or five hours, trying to write just one more song for Don’s upcoming solo project while soaking up copious quantities of Stoli, passing out just before sunrise and sleeping off most of the day.
The solo project had consumed both of them and fueled the unlikely duo’s friendship. For Don, it represented the opportunity to truly own his music, free from the interference he suffered while with the Eagles. Oh, sure, he’d written some fantastic songs and played some terrific music, but it was somehow more satisfying to know that everything he did from here on out would be his authentic vision, uncompromised.
Kootch, on the other hand, was trying to transition from being a session player to being an authentic record producer. While it was great fun playing with Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt, what Kootch really wanted to do was write – and sneaking in a single line about the Flying Machine into James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” didn’t cut it.[3]
Since hooking up with Henley, the two had been electric, pounding out nine songs (and one instrumental) in just a couple of months. He was confident that the solo project would be a success, but Don insisted they write “just one more” song, and so Kootch found himself once again in Henley’s cramped living room in Sherman Oaks, California, wired on adrenaline and drunk on vodka.
Kootch set the Stoli bottle down on a low table as he bent over to pick up Don’s errant pen. Or, rather, he set the bottle down into empty space where his vodka-infused brain thought such a table ought to have been. Momentary confusion set in as the bottle fell three feet, crashed to the hardwood floor and rolled into the living room, spilling vodka everywhere. “Shit,” Don said in hushed tones, “You’re going to wake up Maren.” The two began frantically cleaning up the spilled vodka using whatever was nearby – towels, napkins, and even Don’s discarded notes. Despite himself, Kootch giggled. “I swear, Don, there was a table there just a second ago.” Henley rolled his eyes and tried not to laugh; he’d pulled the “invisible table” trick before, too.[4]
A few minutes later, Maren Jensen emerged from the long hallway connecting the living room to Henley’s ground floor master bedroom wearing a thin nightgown. A former model and actress on the cult sci-fi TV show Battlestar Galactica, Maren was five foot seven, slender, with luxurious dark brown hair that fell about her shoulders.
She had been the first girl to ever tell Don “I love you” – or at least, the first one whom Don had ever really believed. A year and a half ago, in an effort to impress his new girlfriend, Henley had chartered a Lear jet to take the two of them to his ranch in Aspen, and the pilot had screwed up the landing, flying too high and too fast. The tiny jet barreled off the end of the runway at over sixty miles an hour, skidding over rocks that tore away the bottom of the plane. They’d both thought they were going to die, there in the middle of a cow pasture in Colorado. Henley had managed to tear off the emergency door and throw Maren out of the plane, fearing it would explode. She let go of Don, telling him, “I love you” on the way down.[5]
That was what Don most wanted to hear now. He looked up from the floor, still clutching a napkin, and searched Maren’s piercing ice-blue eyes to see how she was going to react. Stone-faced, she relented after a second or two, giving Don a soft, almost pleading smile. “We—” Don sputtered.
“I know,” she whispered. “Here, I brought some towels. Let’s get this cleaned up and then… maybe you can come to bed?”
Don was instantly defensive. “Come on. You know I have to finish the album. The guys at Asylum wanted it two months ago.”
“Don, honey, I know you want it to be perfect. But the album is done,” she said, emphasizing the word “is.” “It’s going to be great. We both know it.” She corrected herself a second later. “I mean, we all know it. Right, Kootch?”
Kootch began nodding enthusiastically. “She’s right, Don. It’s a friggin’ masterpiece. You’ve got a sure-fire hit with ‘Johnny Can’t Read.’” Don smiled; Maren had sung backup vocals on that one, and all three of them had been happy with the meaningful lyrics. “You’ve got a great ballad,” Kootch continued, alluding to what would become the album’s title track, “I Can’t Stand Still.” And if I can be immodest for a moment, ‘You Better Hang Up’ is a hell of a song. I still can’t believe we got—”
“Okay, Kootch, I get it,” Don interrupted, still trying to clean up the mess. “Still, I can’t shake this feeling that there’s one more great song stuck up here.” He pointed to his head, and then looked down at the mess. “But I think any chance of that just poured out into the carpet.”[6]
“Hey, that’s not entirely true. There’s still plenty over here on the hardwood. And, uh, I could probably wring out these towels….”
Don grimaced. Humor was not Kootch’s strong suit. “I need to get to bed,” he added, looking over at Maren for approval.
“Sure. I’ll clean up the rest of this.” And with that, Kootch carried the remnants of what would have been the song “Dirty Laundry” along with a pile of soaking wet napkins off to the nearest trash can, and Don Henley went off to bed -- uncharacteristically early, for him -- with his lovely girlfriend.[7]
June 20, 1982
Ring… ring. Don Henley rolled over and eyed his alarm clock, blearily. Eight a.m. Why on earth had he set his alarm for eight a.m.? He reached over to shut the clock off, but the ringing persisted. Oh, right. The phone. Still: who would be calling him at eight in the morning?
“Don? Don, is that you?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Kevin, with Asylum Records.” Kevin Gardner was a former assistant to the assistant to the assistant to David Geffen’s intern (or some such), back when Geffen was at Asylum and the Eagles were still releasing records. Don Henley couldn’t recall if he’d ever spoken to him before. Don was somewhat surprised Joe Smith hadn’t been the one to make the call.
Under Smith’s guidance, Asylum had released the solo project –- now titled I Can’t Stand Still –- the previous week.[8] Don was cautiously optimistic, although concerned that the album’s lead single didn’t seem to be slotting into heavy rotation on the local Los Angeles rock stations.
“So,” Don voiced over nervous laughter, “I guess you’re calling with good news?”
There was a moment’s silence as the Asylum Records rep pondered his options. “No, Don,” Kevin said, with considerably more than a trace of malice in his voice, “I’m not calling with good news. I’m calling to tell you that I Can’t Stand Still sold seventy-eight thousand copies. We’re not even going to recoup our marketing costs.”[9]
Don was stunned. Seventy-eight thousand was bad. Really bad. Worse than any album he’d ever released. “Well, what about the single?” Henley asked, trying to salvage something from this disaster. Asylum had cut alternate versions of “Johnny Can’t Read” in Spanish, French, and Italian; everybody expected it to be a massive hit.
“The single? The single? Don, I’ve bribed every deejay in California, and there’s not enough money in the world to make them play ‘Johnny Can’t Read.’ Worse, your old hometown paper called it…” There was a brief, perhaps theatrical, shuffle of paper on the other end of the phone. “… ‘overblown, pompous tripe.’ Those are your people, Don. And if they hate the song, then you tell me who’s supposed to play it?"[10]
Don swallowed. It wasn’t quite his old home town, but that review in the Tyler Morning Telegraph had hurt. They had taken the first lines from “Johnny Can’t Read” – “Football, baseball, basketball games/Drinkin’ beer, kickin’ ass, and takin’ down names” – totally out of context. He wasn’t attacking sports; he was attacking the whole its-good-to-be-stupid anti-intellectualism mindset that reigned at too many schools. His mother was a teacher, after all! He’d written it to honor her.
The Asylum rep interrupted Henley’s wistful thoughts. “And why, exactly, did you put a six minute slide whistle solo on the album? What were you thinking?"[11]
“Uilleann pipes,” Henley said, softly. “They’re Uilleann pipes. And Paddy Moloney is a musical genius.” In fact, it had taken months of negotiations to get Moloney to play selection for the album. Henley had thought it was exactly what the album needed to bring everything together; a sorrowful, moving bit of artistry that was sure to endear him to the Rolling Stone reviewers that were always looking down their noses at the Eagles.
“Well, it sounds like a cat screwing an accordion, and you can damn well bet Asylum Records isn’t going to sign Mister Paddy O’Malley any time soon. You’re a prima donna, Henley,” he sneered. “You were a prima donna back with the Eagles, but at least the Eagles sold ten million records. Now you’re a prima donna stuck in the 1970s who can’t even sell a hundred thousand records. So we’re done.”
“Done?”
“Yeah, done. As in ‘cancelling your contract.’ As of now, you and your Uilleann pipes are headed for the discount bin at Tower Records. Your advance check is in the mail, but I wouldn’t stay up late at night waiting to hear about royalties.” Kevin laughed cruelly, and then hung up.
Don hung up the receiver and buried his head in his hands. The only thing he’d ever wanted to do with his life was to play music. Now what would he do?
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[1] This is as per OTL. Today, Don Henley is well-known as a major Democratic Party contributor and environmental activist, but even during his days with the Eagles he was a compulsive letter-writer to newspapers.
[2] Those lines (if used) wouldn't be anywhere near the most awkwardly didactic lyrics in a Henley song. Sometimes Henley found a way to almost make this sort of stuff work (as in "A Month of Sundays", buoyed by Henley's moving vocals); other times (as with "Johnny Can't Read"), it just doesn't work at all.
[3] All as per OTL.
[4] Tell me you haven't pulled the 'invisible table' trick at least once in your life....
[5] All of this is IOTL, too.
[6] Despite being a perfectionist, Henley isn't going to be hard to convince on this score; at this point, it looked like anything related to the Eagles (which is, in Henley's mind, anything featuring himself) is going a sure-fire hit regardless of quality.
Consider: the Eagles' Greatest Hits Vol. I (1971-1975) is the best-selling album of all time, and that's only the band's pre-Hotel California songs. (Vol. II wouldn't be released until 1982). At this time, Henley is just over a year removed from literally "mailing in" his performance on the Eagles Live album -- Federal Express actually got a shout out engraved on the album itself! -- and the album went multiplatinum and spawned a rather unlikely Top 40 hit ("Seven Bridges Road") anyway.
So yeah: Henley pretty much had the Midas touch going for him for a while.
[7] And there's your POD: "Dirty Laundry" is never written.
[8] Two months earlier than IOTL; since "Dirty Laundry" was the last song to be written, ITTL, the album ships earlier.
[9] IOTL, I Can't Stand Still (eventually) went gold. ITTL, without the only successful single on it, it's a total bomb.
[10] The review is genuine. IOTL, "Johnny Can't Read" was almost a modest hit as a single -- but (in my view) only because stations had "Dirty Laundry" already in the pipeline. Here, it's a flop, and Henley's "Midas Touch" is gone.
[11] IOTL, "La Eile" is just 52 seconds long. It's still pretty bizarre. Here, without "Dirty Laundry"'s five-and-a-half minutes, the instrumental is expanded to pad out the rest of the album.
-----------------------------------------
Thoughts?
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December 14, 1981
It was shaping up to be one of those nights. Don was sprawled out on his stomach on the living room floor, surrounded by a sea of notebook paper – most of it torn, crumpled, folded, or otherwise mutilated. “I’m out of inspiration,” he growled.
If true, this would have been a stunning revelation from the former Eagles drummer and frontman. In reality, Donald Hugh Henley was frustrated by far too much inspiration. Earlier in the day he’d penned yet another letter to the editor, this one to the Dallas Morning News, replying to that paper’s op-ed about the national debt and skewering another Reagan story that was transparently false. He was as proud of the letter as he was of his song lyrics; the problem was keeping the two separate.[1] At one a.m., that was more of a challenge than one might otherwise suspect. Henley looked down at his notes and drew a thick black line through the phrase “eighty year olds with Social Security checks.”[2] Then, thinking better of the whole page, Don crumpled up his latest songwriting attempt in frustration and tossed the ball a few feet away to join its siblings. He needed to get his thoughts straight.
Henley’s writing partner, Danny Kortchmar – “Kootch” to his friends – had some inspiration of his own. Getting up rather unsteadily from the nearby couch, Kootch wandered even less steadily to the kitchen in search of a fresh bottle of Stolichnaya from Don’s freezer.
On the way back to the living room, Kootch unscrewed the cap and took a healthy slug. If the past few months had been any guide, the two of them would stay up for another four or five hours, trying to write just one more song for Don’s upcoming solo project while soaking up copious quantities of Stoli, passing out just before sunrise and sleeping off most of the day.
The solo project had consumed both of them and fueled the unlikely duo’s friendship. For Don, it represented the opportunity to truly own his music, free from the interference he suffered while with the Eagles. Oh, sure, he’d written some fantastic songs and played some terrific music, but it was somehow more satisfying to know that everything he did from here on out would be his authentic vision, uncompromised.
Kootch, on the other hand, was trying to transition from being a session player to being an authentic record producer. While it was great fun playing with Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt, what Kootch really wanted to do was write – and sneaking in a single line about the Flying Machine into James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” didn’t cut it.[3]
Since hooking up with Henley, the two had been electric, pounding out nine songs (and one instrumental) in just a couple of months. He was confident that the solo project would be a success, but Don insisted they write “just one more” song, and so Kootch found himself once again in Henley’s cramped living room in Sherman Oaks, California, wired on adrenaline and drunk on vodka.
Kootch set the Stoli bottle down on a low table as he bent over to pick up Don’s errant pen. Or, rather, he set the bottle down into empty space where his vodka-infused brain thought such a table ought to have been. Momentary confusion set in as the bottle fell three feet, crashed to the hardwood floor and rolled into the living room, spilling vodka everywhere. “Shit,” Don said in hushed tones, “You’re going to wake up Maren.” The two began frantically cleaning up the spilled vodka using whatever was nearby – towels, napkins, and even Don’s discarded notes. Despite himself, Kootch giggled. “I swear, Don, there was a table there just a second ago.” Henley rolled his eyes and tried not to laugh; he’d pulled the “invisible table” trick before, too.[4]
A few minutes later, Maren Jensen emerged from the long hallway connecting the living room to Henley’s ground floor master bedroom wearing a thin nightgown. A former model and actress on the cult sci-fi TV show Battlestar Galactica, Maren was five foot seven, slender, with luxurious dark brown hair that fell about her shoulders.
She had been the first girl to ever tell Don “I love you” – or at least, the first one whom Don had ever really believed. A year and a half ago, in an effort to impress his new girlfriend, Henley had chartered a Lear jet to take the two of them to his ranch in Aspen, and the pilot had screwed up the landing, flying too high and too fast. The tiny jet barreled off the end of the runway at over sixty miles an hour, skidding over rocks that tore away the bottom of the plane. They’d both thought they were going to die, there in the middle of a cow pasture in Colorado. Henley had managed to tear off the emergency door and throw Maren out of the plane, fearing it would explode. She let go of Don, telling him, “I love you” on the way down.[5]
That was what Don most wanted to hear now. He looked up from the floor, still clutching a napkin, and searched Maren’s piercing ice-blue eyes to see how she was going to react. Stone-faced, she relented after a second or two, giving Don a soft, almost pleading smile. “We—” Don sputtered.
“I know,” she whispered. “Here, I brought some towels. Let’s get this cleaned up and then… maybe you can come to bed?”
Don was instantly defensive. “Come on. You know I have to finish the album. The guys at Asylum wanted it two months ago.”
“Don, honey, I know you want it to be perfect. But the album is done,” she said, emphasizing the word “is.” “It’s going to be great. We both know it.” She corrected herself a second later. “I mean, we all know it. Right, Kootch?”
Kootch began nodding enthusiastically. “She’s right, Don. It’s a friggin’ masterpiece. You’ve got a sure-fire hit with ‘Johnny Can’t Read.’” Don smiled; Maren had sung backup vocals on that one, and all three of them had been happy with the meaningful lyrics. “You’ve got a great ballad,” Kootch continued, alluding to what would become the album’s title track, “I Can’t Stand Still.” And if I can be immodest for a moment, ‘You Better Hang Up’ is a hell of a song. I still can’t believe we got—”
“Okay, Kootch, I get it,” Don interrupted, still trying to clean up the mess. “Still, I can’t shake this feeling that there’s one more great song stuck up here.” He pointed to his head, and then looked down at the mess. “But I think any chance of that just poured out into the carpet.”[6]
“Hey, that’s not entirely true. There’s still plenty over here on the hardwood. And, uh, I could probably wring out these towels….”
Don grimaced. Humor was not Kootch’s strong suit. “I need to get to bed,” he added, looking over at Maren for approval.
“Sure. I’ll clean up the rest of this.” And with that, Kootch carried the remnants of what would have been the song “Dirty Laundry” along with a pile of soaking wet napkins off to the nearest trash can, and Don Henley went off to bed -- uncharacteristically early, for him -- with his lovely girlfriend.[7]
June 20, 1982
Ring… ring. Don Henley rolled over and eyed his alarm clock, blearily. Eight a.m. Why on earth had he set his alarm for eight a.m.? He reached over to shut the clock off, but the ringing persisted. Oh, right. The phone. Still: who would be calling him at eight in the morning?
“Don? Don, is that you?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Kevin, with Asylum Records.” Kevin Gardner was a former assistant to the assistant to the assistant to David Geffen’s intern (or some such), back when Geffen was at Asylum and the Eagles were still releasing records. Don Henley couldn’t recall if he’d ever spoken to him before. Don was somewhat surprised Joe Smith hadn’t been the one to make the call.
Under Smith’s guidance, Asylum had released the solo project –- now titled I Can’t Stand Still –- the previous week.[8] Don was cautiously optimistic, although concerned that the album’s lead single didn’t seem to be slotting into heavy rotation on the local Los Angeles rock stations.
“So,” Don voiced over nervous laughter, “I guess you’re calling with good news?”
There was a moment’s silence as the Asylum Records rep pondered his options. “No, Don,” Kevin said, with considerably more than a trace of malice in his voice, “I’m not calling with good news. I’m calling to tell you that I Can’t Stand Still sold seventy-eight thousand copies. We’re not even going to recoup our marketing costs.”[9]
Don was stunned. Seventy-eight thousand was bad. Really bad. Worse than any album he’d ever released. “Well, what about the single?” Henley asked, trying to salvage something from this disaster. Asylum had cut alternate versions of “Johnny Can’t Read” in Spanish, French, and Italian; everybody expected it to be a massive hit.
“The single? The single? Don, I’ve bribed every deejay in California, and there’s not enough money in the world to make them play ‘Johnny Can’t Read.’ Worse, your old hometown paper called it…” There was a brief, perhaps theatrical, shuffle of paper on the other end of the phone. “… ‘overblown, pompous tripe.’ Those are your people, Don. And if they hate the song, then you tell me who’s supposed to play it?"[10]
Don swallowed. It wasn’t quite his old home town, but that review in the Tyler Morning Telegraph had hurt. They had taken the first lines from “Johnny Can’t Read” – “Football, baseball, basketball games/Drinkin’ beer, kickin’ ass, and takin’ down names” – totally out of context. He wasn’t attacking sports; he was attacking the whole its-good-to-be-stupid anti-intellectualism mindset that reigned at too many schools. His mother was a teacher, after all! He’d written it to honor her.
The Asylum rep interrupted Henley’s wistful thoughts. “And why, exactly, did you put a six minute slide whistle solo on the album? What were you thinking?"[11]
“Uilleann pipes,” Henley said, softly. “They’re Uilleann pipes. And Paddy Moloney is a musical genius.” In fact, it had taken months of negotiations to get Moloney to play selection for the album. Henley had thought it was exactly what the album needed to bring everything together; a sorrowful, moving bit of artistry that was sure to endear him to the Rolling Stone reviewers that were always looking down their noses at the Eagles.
“Well, it sounds like a cat screwing an accordion, and you can damn well bet Asylum Records isn’t going to sign Mister Paddy O’Malley any time soon. You’re a prima donna, Henley,” he sneered. “You were a prima donna back with the Eagles, but at least the Eagles sold ten million records. Now you’re a prima donna stuck in the 1970s who can’t even sell a hundred thousand records. So we’re done.”
“Done?”
“Yeah, done. As in ‘cancelling your contract.’ As of now, you and your Uilleann pipes are headed for the discount bin at Tower Records. Your advance check is in the mail, but I wouldn’t stay up late at night waiting to hear about royalties.” Kevin laughed cruelly, and then hung up.
Don hung up the receiver and buried his head in his hands. The only thing he’d ever wanted to do with his life was to play music. Now what would he do?
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[1] This is as per OTL. Today, Don Henley is well-known as a major Democratic Party contributor and environmental activist, but even during his days with the Eagles he was a compulsive letter-writer to newspapers.
[2] Those lines (if used) wouldn't be anywhere near the most awkwardly didactic lyrics in a Henley song. Sometimes Henley found a way to almost make this sort of stuff work (as in "A Month of Sundays", buoyed by Henley's moving vocals); other times (as with "Johnny Can't Read"), it just doesn't work at all.
[3] All as per OTL.
[4] Tell me you haven't pulled the 'invisible table' trick at least once in your life....
[5] All of this is IOTL, too.
[6] Despite being a perfectionist, Henley isn't going to be hard to convince on this score; at this point, it looked like anything related to the Eagles (which is, in Henley's mind, anything featuring himself) is going a sure-fire hit regardless of quality.
Consider: the Eagles' Greatest Hits Vol. I (1971-1975) is the best-selling album of all time, and that's only the band's pre-Hotel California songs. (Vol. II wouldn't be released until 1982). At this time, Henley is just over a year removed from literally "mailing in" his performance on the Eagles Live album -- Federal Express actually got a shout out engraved on the album itself! -- and the album went multiplatinum and spawned a rather unlikely Top 40 hit ("Seven Bridges Road") anyway.
So yeah: Henley pretty much had the Midas touch going for him for a while.
[7] And there's your POD: "Dirty Laundry" is never written.
[8] Two months earlier than IOTL; since "Dirty Laundry" was the last song to be written, ITTL, the album ships earlier.
[9] IOTL, I Can't Stand Still (eventually) went gold. ITTL, without the only successful single on it, it's a total bomb.
[10] The review is genuine. IOTL, "Johnny Can't Read" was almost a modest hit as a single -- but (in my view) only because stations had "Dirty Laundry" already in the pipeline. Here, it's a flop, and Henley's "Midas Touch" is gone.
[11] IOTL, "La Eile" is just 52 seconds long. It's still pretty bizarre. Here, without "Dirty Laundry"'s five-and-a-half minutes, the instrumental is expanded to pad out the rest of the album.
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Thoughts?
