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The White Paper: Don Henley's 'Inside Job' (Continued)
On “Inside Job” you sing your
interpretation of Larry John McNally’s “For My Wedding” and make
the song your own. Meanwhile, there are people these days who are
willing to give up that spiritual and personally committed side of
themselves, with full presence of mind, for mere money and fame on TV.
That’s their life and career; this is yours. Which are we supposed to
attach gravity to? Good point. Is not moment sacred anymore?
Does everybody have to do everything on television? Does everybody have
to have an audience for their private, most spiritual moments? And I
guess the answer is yes. Normally, we get married in front of our
friends, people who mean something to you. We don’t usually do it in
front of the entire fucking nation. And we’re not supposed to be
auditioning! These things are supposed to have lasting value and
responsibilities attached to them. I will say that given my track record
with women, some could say these things I sing may have a ring of
disingenuousness to them. But knowing many women you’ve dated
for a long time, I’m aware that you’re very loyal to them and they
speak well of you. I know what you mean. I am good friends
with most of my exes. And sometimes it took several years to get back to
that point with those people, but if you love somebody they become part
of your life. Especially in Maren’s case. We went through a lot
together, and we’re still very close friends, and she’s about to
have a baby any day now, and my wife and I are gonna have one any day
now, too [Julia Sophia Henley, Don and the former Sharon
Summerall’s third child, was born two days after this interview.] She
and her husband are doing very well, and I helped her get her business
off the ground, and now they’ve just sold it to Estee Lauder, and
she’s fixed for the rest of her life. But my life has changed, too. I finally
woke up one day and took a look around and said to myself, “I don’t
want to be the last guy at the party. It’s too sad.” The guy with
the lampshade on after the party is not me, and I snapped out of it. And
the universe responded in kind and sent me Sharon. [The couple
married in 1995.] And then the kids came [including a son, Will,
born in 1998] and that really changed everything. So these songs are heartfelt, although
some may scoff. But that’s OK. Tell me about the decision to write or
record “Taking You Home,” “For My Wedding,” and “Everything is
Different Now.” Right, and it’s a trilogy [laughs], OK.
They provide the balance to things like “Workin’ It.” While I didn’t write “For My
Wedding,” I wish I had, and when I heard it, I knew I had to do it.
And “Everything is Different Now” is of course about my wife and my
marriage, and there are chants on that song that sound sort of monk
like—you can almost see guys in hoods walking through a dark corridor.
But it is about walking through a dark corridor and coming out into the
light. The atmosphere is chilling, in a way, until it breaks into the
gospel thing, with a little nod to Al Green on the bridge; I put on my
best Al Green voice there. “Taking You Home” ironically enough
was written for a movie, but the movie had a theme in it that
dove-tailed into my life. I don’t know if you saw “Double
Jeopardy”---it was an OK movie that starred Ashley Judd, a very
competent actress, and Tommy Lee Jones—but the gist of the movie is
that she marries somebody and has a kid, but her husband is not what he
appeared to be. At the end of the movie she’s reunited
with her kid, and they walk across an open field together, and my song
was supposed to play into that, and I saw the song as being about
unconditional love and the strength of a parent’s love for a child.
And the Ashley Judd character did superhuman feats to get her kid back.
As a parent, I related to that, and as a parent I know you always have
fear for your children to be protected. So I sued the image of taking
Annabel, my first daughter, home from the hospital and the emotional
impact of that. I’ve written songs for movies before,
but this was the first time I was able to write a song for a movie that
I was emotionally involved in. And the director loved it, the head of
the music department loved it, the independent music supervisor they
hired loved it, the producer, who was Leonard Goldberg, loved it. And
then the all-powerful marketing department heard it and shot it down.
They said, “We can’t market the movie, we can’t make the right
video with this song, because this is an action/adventure picture, and
this is a love song.” Which was the most absurd thing I ever
heard, because that movie “Armageddon” had that huge love song by
Aerosmith, and then Whitney Houston, for “They Bodyguard,” had “I
Will Always Love You.” There are numerous examples of pictures that
could be called action/adventures that were marketed with love songs. It was a pretty big picture anyway and
did over $100 million worth of business, but the song would have helped
the picture, and it certainly would have given me promotional value, so
I sued them. We’re still battling that out; depositions are being
taken. We’re coming close to a settlement, but I don’t know if
we’re gonna get there. The point is, I did the work and they
accepted the song, they accepted delivery of the master. They jilted me
at the altar. You can’t do that to people. And I can’t tell you how
many phone calls Irving got at his office from other musicians, saying
“Good for you! They fucking did that to me, too.” I just decided once again to stand my
ground. But Bob Dylan put it best, and the older I get, the more I
understand it when he said, “You have to serve somebody.” But service to somebody, to the
community, to your family, to your friends—if you don’t have that
element in your life, you’re a miserable fuck, and you should be. But you’re also saying there are
responsibilities on both sides that come along with service. Those on
one side have to understand the power they hold, and those on the other
have to understand they’re not just there to be a mouthpiece. One has
to show a little isolated courage at times. That brings us to the song
"Inside Job." Which goes back to "Sunset
Grill" again. The germ of that idea was that this guy owns his own
business, and though it's just making hamburgers, it's honest work, and
he owns it. The "Inside Job" song came at the last minute, and
it came in part due to this intellectual property battle we're in right
now. It was fueled by that whole RIAA thing [with the "work for
hire" clause inserted without debate in Section 1101(e) of Title 1
of the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act, which was part of the
appropriations bill H.R. 3194, Public Law No. 106-113 as Section 101 of
Title 17, United States Code, paragraph two]. That, and all the articles
I've read that the Internet is going to completely destroy privacy and
that they know everything about you already. So it's kind of a combo
song. What's going to happen from your
standpoint in terms of countermanding these things, whether it's issues
regarding the Internet or with the RIAA? I'm going to keep writing songs about it!
And I'm refining a letter I'm going to send to all the artists alerting
them to the need for congressional hearings to overturn the "work
for hire" amendment. Other artists like Sheryl Crow are signing on
with me and have given me lists of connections with other managers and
artists, and I'm building this coalition. I'm doing it slowly and cautiously, and
hearings are going to be held, from the way I understand it, in the
middle of May, and I'm gonna be there. People like Billy Joel and Sheryl
Crow say they're ready and willing to come, and we're gonna make a big
stink about this. I'm more determined than ever to try to
walk the talk. Otherwise, these songs ring hollow. If I don't fight back
at the corporate structure even though I'm a part of it, even though I'm
signed to Warner Bros. Records, if I don't give them shit, then these
songs don't mean a thing. I have to live this. Meanwhile, the revised copyright laws
as enacted in 1978 were still weighted so heavily against the artists
and creators of intellectual property that Congress put a clause in them
that artists could make a written request and get their intellectual
property -- such as master recordings -- reverted to them in 2013, even
if a Joni Mitchell or an Eagles had never owned those master recordings
before. Creative people have a right to own these things -- particularly
after they've had a long run of making money for somebody else. You bet your ass. In the '70s, maybe
there was a lot of guilt there or maybe everybody was high, but then
they woke up 20 years later and went, "Whoops!" Here in the
age of incredible corporate greed, I think they're waking up and saying,
"Well, maybe we were a little bit hasty." We gave away the store back then. I don't
think we should have done that. And even Congress isn't a good tempering
structure anymore. They're beholden to both sides on these things and
turn around and kowtow to the studios. So you've got to keep an eye on
them every minute. I mean, I'm also disappointed in network news and how
they've sensationalized it. Just to be No. 1 in the ratings. That's how
they justify it. Meanwhile, you also had your own fight
over “cyber-squatting” and somebody trying to take your name and
possibly trying to sell it back to you. There’s going to be two Web sites,
donhenley.com and then Warner Bros. Will have their own, but I had to
get lawyers and fight to get these domain names back because somebody
had bought them. In some instances, people did the right thing and gave
them back to me free of charge—I mean I paid them a small fee, which
was what they had paid to register the name. In other cases, people
tried to hold me up and tried to extort large sums of money out of me. And that’s going to be a while issue,
too. This whole cyber-squatting thing. Congress has passed some
legislation, but I’m not sure it has enough teeth in it. And
there’re going to be issues not easily resolved even by legislation.
For example, there’s a guy in San Antonio whose name is Don Henley,
and he registered the name, and he’s a Vietnam vet
who’s a fundamentalist Christian, and he’s registered his Web
site, and it’s all about that. So people went there expecting it to be
me. And he decided, “as a favor to them,” to list a discography of
mine and some information about me, thereby muddying the waters even
more over whether it was me or not. And some people came away totally
confused. He finally put on a very small disclaimer, tiny, that you had
to hunt for to find. But he refuses to give up that name, and there’s
nothing I can do. It’s not so easily remedied. And I’m conflicted about my own site.
I’ve put my own guts on the records, and I don’t want to feel
there’s nothing left that’s my own. I’ll put tour information on
it and digital downloads of on-the-road updates and Kerouac-ian camera
work. But it’s all new to me. I don’t go online much or use E-Mail,
and I’ll let the record company promote my catalog on their site. Speaking of catalog, how do you feel
about your other four solo records, starting in 1982 with “I Can’t
Stand Still,” which you made with Danny Kortchmar and Greg Landanyi? You know, I feel really good about that
song I wrote with Kootch, “Lilah.” I got to work with the Chieftains
on that, and they hadn’t yet become a really well-known entity in the
pop music world at that point, ‘cause we actually recorded the song in
’81. I’m proud of that song. And I still stand by “Dirty Laundry,”
of course, Even though I’m a little weary of it, it still has
resonance and truth in it, I think. And I stand by “Johnny Can’t Read”
as well. I’m so frustrated these days with George W. Bush taking
credit for reforming the education system in Texas. First of all, it
hasn’t been reformed; they just lowered the test criteria. Secondly,
to the extent that it has been reformed, it was done by two of the
members of the state legislature—Paul Sadler; who’s a Democrat, and
Bill Ratliff, who’s a Republican. They’re the guys who greatly
improved—I wouldn’t say “fixed”—the Texas education system.
Bush let them have pretty much of a free hand, and now he’s taking
credit for it. But Johnny still can’t read. And “The Unclouded Day”—my
grandmother, Eula McWhorter, used to sing that song, my mother’s
mother. It’s a Protestant spiritual, written in the late 1800s. |
