Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
June 24, 1990
Don Henley is manning two telephones in his St. Louis hotel room. On one line is a reporter; a book publisher is on the other. He puts the reporter on hold.
“I’m sorry about that,” Henley said, returning to the interview. “I’ve got this book coming out and I’m kind of frazzled. We’ve still got some last-minute details to work out.”
The publication Henley is talking about isn’t a tell-all book about his former band, the Eagles, nor is it fiction. Slated for publication late this month, Heaven Is Under Our Feet is a collection of 67 essays written by such celebrities as Kurt Vonnegut, Meryl Streep, E.L. Doctorow and Tom Cruise.
Henley said he felt like a “schoolteacher gently cajoling and prodding” them into meeting their deadlines. The essays deal with conservation, and the purpose of the book is to help save Walden Woods, the idyllic Massachusetts setting that inspired some of Henry David Thoreau’s best-known literature. Henley and rock critic Dave Marsh are co-editors of the book.
Currently on tour, Henley, a former University of Texas English major, is better known for writing introspective rock songs than editing literature. Henley will perform with Sting and Susanna Hoffs at 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Alpine Valley, County Roads D & G, East Troy, Wis. (312-899-7469 or 414-271-2000).
At first, Henley and Sting had planned to donate some of the proceeds from these shows to ecological projects, but Henley said at this point, things are up in the air.
“There has been some financial difficulty with the promoters (at Alpine Valley), and for a while it looked like these dates weren’t going to happen at all,” said Henley, a cautious interviewee whose 1982 hit “Dirty Laundry” dealt with the corrupt media. “Little Feat was originally scheduled to perform with us but ended up getting dropped because the promoters didn’t have enough money to pay them.”
Henley is touring without the benefit of a new album to promote. He released his Grammy Award-winning LP “The End of the Innocence” two years ago. “Innocence” has sold more than 3 million copies and is still lingering on Billboard magazine’s pop album chart after 107 weeks.
“It’s very strange about what’s been happening in music over the past few years,” Henley said. “We’re living in an age of style over content and form over substance. I don’t think that videos are so much the problem with music these days as . . . the advances in technology. Some of the technology that Japan has introduced has made it easy for non-musicians to be creative. But unfortunately, these non-musicians usually don’t have much to offer.”
