Post by erik on May 27, 2023 19:22:34 GMT -5
Don Henley, the most commercially successful member of The Eagles, is in this week's Pop Music Hits Spotlight with a song about a special independently-owned business in Hollywood.
SUNSET GRILL (Don Henley; Geffen; 1985)—Though he was the most commercially and critically successful of all the members of The Eagles after the band first split in 1980, drummer and vocalist Don Henley initially found it much harder to establish himself as a solo artist, partly because of initial run-ins with the law in Los Angeles that nearly landed him in jail and, on a more profound level, because when he did try to make an album, it took seemingly forever to get said album in the can. His initial offering, 1982’s I Can’t Stand Still, was a big hit on his old label Asylum; but by 1983, the label no longer had any use for him or the band. When his old Asylum boss David Geffen established his own self-named record label in 1980, he sought out Henley after Asylum had dropped him. Henley, burned by Geffen’s selling of Asylum to Warner Brothers in 1973 after the Eagles had hit it big, still felt some antagonism towards Geffen; but with no other labels willing to take a chance on the often volatile Henley, he really didn’t have much of a choice. The first album Henley did for Geffen, 1984’s Building The Perfect Beast, was a huge hit, spawning two big Top 10 hits, “The Boys Of Summer” and “All She Wants To Do Is Dance”. A third hit from that album came in the late summer of 1984 in the form of “Sunset Grill”, which talked about an actual hamburger grill place along Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood, and the elderly man who operated it, along with the slightly sadder aspects of “basket people” who are far less fortunate than him. While it wasn’t as a big a hit on the Hot 100 as its predecessors, peaking at #22 in October 1985, it remained one of Henley’s most distinctly recognizable solo hits. Following this, however, it would take another four years before Henley would release his third solo album overall, 1989’s The End Of The Innocence; and the length of time it took to complete it would cause his tenuous relationship with Geffen to collapse altogether, leading to something that Henley said would only happen “when Hell freezes over”—namely an Eagles reunion.
SUNSET GRILL (Don Henley; Geffen; 1985)—Though he was the most commercially and critically successful of all the members of The Eagles after the band first split in 1980, drummer and vocalist Don Henley initially found it much harder to establish himself as a solo artist, partly because of initial run-ins with the law in Los Angeles that nearly landed him in jail and, on a more profound level, because when he did try to make an album, it took seemingly forever to get said album in the can. His initial offering, 1982’s I Can’t Stand Still, was a big hit on his old label Asylum; but by 1983, the label no longer had any use for him or the band. When his old Asylum boss David Geffen established his own self-named record label in 1980, he sought out Henley after Asylum had dropped him. Henley, burned by Geffen’s selling of Asylum to Warner Brothers in 1973 after the Eagles had hit it big, still felt some antagonism towards Geffen; but with no other labels willing to take a chance on the often volatile Henley, he really didn’t have much of a choice. The first album Henley did for Geffen, 1984’s Building The Perfect Beast, was a huge hit, spawning two big Top 10 hits, “The Boys Of Summer” and “All She Wants To Do Is Dance”. A third hit from that album came in the late summer of 1984 in the form of “Sunset Grill”, which talked about an actual hamburger grill place along Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood, and the elderly man who operated it, along with the slightly sadder aspects of “basket people” who are far less fortunate than him. While it wasn’t as a big a hit on the Hot 100 as its predecessors, peaking at #22 in October 1985, it remained one of Henley’s most distinctly recognizable solo hits. Following this, however, it would take another four years before Henley would release his third solo album overall, 1989’s The End Of The Innocence; and the length of time it took to complete it would cause his tenuous relationship with Geffen to collapse altogether, leading to something that Henley said would only happen “when Hell freezes over”—namely an Eagles reunion.