I keep running into Don Henley.
Its not like a daily thing, but in the overall ratio of encounters between civilians and immortals, ours is kinda high. Like three times in the past couple of years.
Its not an obvious or expected thing, like when Dennis Quaid bumped into me at the USA Film Festival as he was escaping out a back door, or when Walter Koenig sat next to me in a bookstore before a reading of his own book, or when I bumped into Ron Howard while he was directing a film I was being an extra in.
This is just random paths crossing in public. Bizarre.
Rolling Stone had a great article about the Eagles recently, and in it Glenn Frey remarked humorously about going nuts in the '70s having to do things over and over and over with Henley in the studio to get the exactly right drum sound or horn sound or whatever. Now that computers have made recording a science of digital exactness, Henley's new intel-powered focus on getting everything perfect reminded me so much of our creative team at work, and how computers can feed the obsession over perfecting minutiae beyond human perception.
You have to have a special immunity to repetition to be successful in any facet of the music business. In my case, being on the radio meant that for every blissful moment of Henley's "Boys of Summer" I had to hear Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" and feign equal enthusiasm. Whether in a radio production room or a professional recording studio, in the fury of free-play, repetition and the pissing-away of precious time go hand in hand.
This idea occurred to my wandering mind this afternoon while we were looking for the exactly right guitar sound to place on a new track. It suddenly struck me how the piece was evolving sort of in the manner of Henley's "Sunset Grill" in instrumentation, and then somebody spoke and I went into a dream ...
I can remember being fifteen and reclining in the back seat of a beat-up '64 Fleetwood convertible, sans Dead Head sticker. We were piled-in cheek by jowl, and not complaining, and being driven around White Rock Lake hearing "Hotel California" on the radio for the first time. It was the long version with the endless guitar riff over the reggae beat. The sun dappled through the passing trees overhead.
"Boys of Summer" with it's yearning to retrieve an impossibly romantic past resonated with me hugely. I was a young adult and was becoming familiar with the sensation of wistfulness and the power of haunting memories. The driving drum hits and mesmerizing shimmers of that song, its very simplicity of clear thought and musical structure, destined it to become an American classic.
I first heard "Sunset Grill" out on the road at night while streaking across the now-vanished high prairies of North Dallas. The city spread out before me like a slow-moving diorama of halogen jewels. Passing arrays of radio masts glowed red and the glass towers of Las Colinas glinted against dark low hills as the constant buzz of planes circled overhead. It looked and felt like The Future. In the song, the incredible fusion of big band brass, be-bop solos and rock arrangements rendered through synth keyboards sounded compellingly modern, and the bitterness of the lyrics kicked it up into the post-modern. I never saw the video and never wanted to. I had my image.
So, looking up from the blue jean bin on a weekend afternoon and locking eyes with Don Henley is at best awkward for me. First of all, his steely gaze is unmistakable, even if he doesn't mean it to be steely. No doubt he encounters this astonishment all the time and it gets pretty tedious and embarrassing.
The first time I ran into Henley was in a crowded specialty store I was working in part time and he was Christmas shopping. I looked up and there he was and he knew I clocked him. In that split second I figured my job was to distract the attention of people around him by offering them service, thus allowing him to go about his business. Of course the minute he left the store the whole place flew into an uproar.
Since then it's always happened to me when I least expect it, a chance pass within the orbit of a recording genius, and never in a studio where I'd most desire it. But why would he drop by our studio? Please! It's like wishing Kanye West would email me his spit for a new hip-hop package, or Michael Buble phoning-in to allow as how to bend a note exactly-so while crooning.
... I snapped out of my reverie when we seemed to have found the right guitar sound, and then we focused together on what to do next in order to make the track perfect.
