On last night’s episode of The Two (myself and Pam Corkery, Newstalk ZB, Sundays 9pm-midnight) we ended the show with Don Henley’s melancholy masterpiece, The End Of The Innocence. The reason being was Henley’s 65th birthday and the fact it has always being my favourite of his solo works, but there’s also something about The End Of The Innocence which I was only reminded of when Pam and I turned our mics off and just listened to the song. For not the first time in my life, the song seemed perfectly appropriate.
Sometimes the stand-out line of a song can be misleading, especially if set to major chords with somber lyrics, or vice-versa, upbeat words to a minor-chord melody. You have couples getting married to Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You presumably unaware the song is explicitly about “bittersweet memories,” of loving someone but letting them go, just as you had Ronald Reagan thinking Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA was a fist-pumping ode to all that’s great in the good ol’ US of A.
In the case of Reagan (and probably at least half of Springsteen’s audience) the thunderous chorus obscured the verses’ description of a man who commits a crime, is faced with a choice between jail or Vietnam, chooses ‘Nam and alongside his brother, fights for his country in a war he doesn’t understand; his brother dies, the narrator comes home and his country doesn’t want to know about him and he can’t find work. “Born in the USA?” he thinks to himself, angrily, and with irony lost on a President who thought it might make a good campaign theme song.
The End Of The Innocence is luckily not one of those songs. It sounds reflective, even sad and if you just hear the chorus line and Bruce Hornsby’s (who co-wrote the song) unforgettable piano, you know that this very much is a song about innocence lost. Music fans have been analysing the lyrics ever since it hit the US top 10 back in 1989 with its themes of middle-age disillusionment, divorce and politics. To mention Reagan again, he is referenced in the line “…they’re beating plowshares into swords, for this tired old man we elected king.”
So there are the particulars of the lyrics which flesh things out, but the song’s structure with the repeated “end of the innocence,” line and the extended instrumental fade-out reinforce that this is a song about mood. And the mood that losing innocence evokes is timeless.
Just days after the mass-shooting at a cinema-screening of the new Batman film in Colorado – an event which moved President Obama to tears and an act of evil which killed 12 people, the eldest of whom was 51, the majority much, much younger – this song seems right for the moment. The rest of us will undoubtedly move on and maybe even forget what happened, but for those folks who survived, originally there excited to partake in something which has been one of life’s pleasures for almost 100 years – a trip to the movies – it may forever be the end of their innocence.
Thanks for posting this Tim. Loved Bruce's piano. So distinctive. A sad day yet again for America
Thanks so much for writing. This really is one of my all-time favourite songs, even if it is a piece of music I find genuinely sad. All the best.
Way too political here- you ruined an excellent essay about a song that many folks love and identify with by assailing one president and lauding another. Music should be immune to this type of partisan discourse .
Why should music be immune to partisan discourse? If the song wasn’t political then sure, but The End Of The Innocence references Reagan in that line, “this tired old man we elected king”. If the song is political, then the discourse can be political too. All the best.
The song “End of Innocence” is a reflection of our times. The historical (and political) references in the song punctuate the scenes illustrated by the players of the time. Are we trapped by the “tired old kings?” And, we wonder why or maybe how they get “elected.” The cycles of the song are as endless and the cycles of war and killing our so-called kings perpetuate. Iran-Contra follows Watergate and is followed by January 6th and the “big lie.” I like the essay. The song echoes. Then we have Sandyhook and the recent mass killings in Buffalo and Texas. We all end innocence when we fail to recognize the evil among us. And, we continue to elect to perpetuate the cycle. The song echoes. It begs the question, “were we ever truly innocent.”
Well put.
In 2022 I take it as meaning the start of the internet and social media – the ruination of the innocence of the young –
society will never recover from this error.
I wonder if old fossils like Don Henley ever look back at the Reagan years and think “Shit I was totally wrong, that dude won the Cold War and freed million of people from the scourge of Communism!”
I wonder….
Regarding “Born in the USA” you wrote:
“…description of a man who commits a crime, is faced with a choice between jail or Vietnam, chooses ‘Nam and alongside his brother, fights for his country in a war he doesn’t understand; his brother dies, the narrator comes home and his country…”
The lyrics:
“Had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all gone
He had a little girl in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms“
The subject in the song didn’t go to Vietnam with his brother, he went to Vietnam with total strangers who became his brothers through the shared misery of combat..
Breaking the song down to specific presidents is completely missing the point. The depth of this song is that as a society, we have come quite far on many fronts but at the same time, the simple innocence’s we had have faded in the ‘noise’ of the modern way of life. Every world leader (gender not withstanding) qualifies as the ‘tired old man we elected king’.
This song is about looking back at how the world was young and full of hope back in the day. Every generation sees the past present and future framed differently based on world events, but as we travel from youth to young adult, to middle age and beyond, our perspectives change and there is a melancholy for our younger simpler, happier times. Looking at the world we are leaving for our children, it looks depressing. Another ‘golden era’ is a long way off, if ever.
To me the song remembers the many times we lose our innocence in life. Through divorce of parents, through wars we never thought would happen and through saying goodbye to loved ones at the end of life. The song evokes these feelings of loss in each of us, no matter where we were born or who we loved and who we’ve lost.