No Eagles topic was supposed to be taken lightly. They had their gentle moments, but part of their attraction and insufferability came from the heavy-handedness of many of their tracks, which turned off as many as it turned on. Don Henley never apologized for making his audience think, and Glenn Frey applauded his risk-taking for ‘The Last Resort’.
The album’s closer feels like the opposite of the title track due to its structure. Everyone knows what the mystic hotel is, yet the record looks to be a loose concept album about stardom’s perils.
Every song sounds like a mini-movie, unlike Desperado’s disastrous concept album. The band welcomes you with the opening song. However, ‘New Kid in Town’ suggests that something is wrong by showing the members glancing at their replacements.
After grieving lost love on ‘Wasted Time’ and trying to recover on ‘Try and Love Again’, Henley looks beyond his bubble on ‘The Last Resort’. Henley finally realizes what the big wigs are stealing from the land since they spend all the world’s resources on artificializing life.
The song has an environmental theme. However, it’s not a Captain Planet song lecture. Henley is softly grieving over the expense of making Hollywood. He forced out the people and converted the lovely fauna into industry parks.
Telling The Very Best of the Eagles, Glenn Frey was happy that they ended up with a song about glamor and glamour. “We started the song early in the record, and Don finished seven months later. Named Henley’s opus. I helped define and arrange the music, but Don wrote the lyrics and chord progression.
This song could have failed in many ways, but its earnestness makes it hard to dismiss. Henley wants to help address the world’s issues instead of lamenting about them like many artists do in their songs.
No doubt, Don Henley has delivered. His solo career was equally dedicated to The Walden Woods Project, which fought big business’s destruction of America’s greatest woodlands. Since that foundation indirectly helped the band reform in the 1990s, Henley has become an activist as well as a performer.
