Dan Henley & Pat Nebatar

I can relate to JB’s post on Don Henley’s End of the Innocence and how his pop culture point of reference to Walden has shifted from that album to Eric Cartman and South Park. I have long been unable to think of Don Henley without recalling a Beavis and Butthead episode in which they watched one of his videos, referring to him as “Dan” Henley throughout and discussing his legal problems due to molestation charges* and how those troubles had led to the break up of his marriage to Pat “Nebatar”. And I don’t feel bad about that, because that’s about how much respect I have for Dan.

The first and only time that I have ever heard this album was at summer camp, somewhere between ’89 and ’92. Some of my fellow counselors introduced me to some great bands over the years, but other guys listened to some real crap in the shack where we used to hang out. As you may have guessed, I would place this album in that latter category. In fact, it may have been the single worst album that anybody dared to play on that shared jam box for all four of those summers. It somehow manages to stand out in my mind as being even worse than M.C. Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em or Aerosmith’s Pump, both of which were both played ad nauseam. I remember being astonished when my fellow counselor played End of the Innocence, because I was unable to find any redeeming qualities. It was simultaneously too stale to be exciting, too predictable and stupid to be intriguing, and too trite to be moving.

In the process of reviewing albums for this blog, I have tried to re-listen to all of them in order to refresh my memory and perspective, but I cannot bring myself to listen to this POS again. This fact, that I cannot summon the strength to listen to this thing again after not having heard it for between 15 and 18 years, has me hoping that this is the worst album on Rolling Stone’s list.

I’m rethinking that statement about how much respect I have for Dan, because it makes it sound like I consider him to be on the same level as Beavis and Butthead and South Park, when I actually hold those cartoons in substantially higher esteem than I do him.

* See jahidi hoya’s response to Ancient Scientist’s review for elaboration; I had never gotten the reference but found it funny anyway, so it was great to learn the story behind it.