Music: Building On Prime Real Estate

At the onset of the '80s, Don Henley was sitting behind the drums of the Eagles, a colossally successful Los Angeles band with a lot of hits behind it and a future of guaranteed disintegration. There was a fair portion of intramural rivalry among band members. There was also a sense, even among the group's fans, that the Eagles' sound -- smooth melodies and often aseptic lyrics that took listeners on a twilight tour of the Hotel California -- might be about played out.

Glenn Frey, Henley's friend and co-writer in the band, was the one who put the wraps on it. He called Henley one September afternoon in 1980 and told him he was making an album on his own. No Eagles invited. "He didn't say that he was through with the group, but I knew what he meant," Henley says. "He was tired of all the diplomacy and compromise necessitated by a group situation. Still, I was shocked and hurt. You just don't think of ending something that was great."

Henley responded to the crisis in classic rock-'n'-roll fashion: a fair amount of rambunctious confusion, running concurrently with some studious dissipation, followed by the release of his own solo album in 1982. I Can't Stand Still sold well, but nowhere near what it deserved to. It was a superb album, yet the solid commercial breakthrough would come with his second release, Building the Perfect Beast. Its keynote single, The Boys of Summer, a romantic song full of nostalgia and vitriol, won Henley a Grammy. Now Henley is closing out the '80s with a splendid third album, The End of the Innocence, which will shoo him into the new decade as one of the fleetest talents around. Not bad for 42 and for a guy people still mistake for Frey.

It doesn't much matter to Henley. "People have short memories and attention spans," he notes. "They forget me as soon as I'm off MTV. I'm glad." That kind of confidence can come not only from satisfaction in his work but also from a sense that the work has paid off. Out just a month ago, the new album has already gone gold: the title cut, released as a single, sounds similarly hit-bound. It is a ravishing love song, slightly world-weary and bracingly off-center, nostalgic for better loves and wiser times.

Henley knows all the odd angles in the geometry of love. In one of his best songs, Long Way Home, he wrote, "There are three sides to every story:/ Yours, mine, and the cold, hard truth." There seems to be a lot of truth on this new album. Much of it sounds tough, as on one of Henley's favorite tracks, I Will Not Go Quietly ("It kicks ass more than any previous rock-'n'- roll songs I've done"), but nothing is delivered here with the jaded swagger that often got the Eagles branded as a slick bunch of SoCal libertines. That was mostly a bum rap, and it has taken Henley until now not only to find his own voice but also to get his own footing.