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provided you can pull yourself away from the TV that seems permanently tuned to CNN, or the

divertingly funny odds and ends taped to the refrigerator: every. thing from an invitation to join the Republican Party's Inner Circle to a clipped-out ad that asks "BE HONEST. COULD YOUR LOVE LIFE BE IM.

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:l hcir.rtl'les-rif The /wg rra: T/se nuli/) t,rrurrali*sts-,rtttl Henle1' *s /:c trat'tt'td tl:tt ro*d.fi'rtn dtu'.t l:ippir tti srlit'i,r/. to an ever-widening array of recipi- Bill Szymczyk would later note, "lt's hard to ride a bike and ents, copying other friends and busi- be under it at the same time," and the in-house motto for ness associates on his more vivid ef- the group's much-delayed, overbudget, too-much-dramaforts. "The Mad Faxer" is how record producer John Boylan refers to Henley, while political activist Danny Goldberg has two Henleygrams posted in his office, including one especially pungent note to Sidney Blumenthal, then of The Washington
Posr, in which Henley states emphatically-very emphatically-that he did nor introduce Donna Rice to Gary Hart

in the entertainment business would be a collection of Don's letters," says Irving Azoff, head of Giant Records and Azoff Entertainment and for twenty years Henley's friend and adviser. "l've got a great file."

at a 1987 party he threw in Aspen. "One of the best books

In a quarter century, some things apparently haven't changed. "He always had something to say about almost unarticulated longings-for love, consolation and the seevery subject," recalls Margaret Lovelace, Henley's high. school English teacher. "He was a good writer and had a good command of the language. " It was those very skills, applied to songcraft (and combined with a srurdy drumming technique and a dazzling singing voice), that helped take Henley out of Texas, where he'd covered up an uncool love of literature by tomcatting with the town rowdies. "l made good grades," he says, "but I also got drunk and threw up

mama final studio album, The Long Run, instead became a trenchant epitaph: "We made it, and it ate us." The Eagles' 1980 breakup, and some less foreseeable personal crises, would traumatize Henley into finding new collaborators and fashioning a new sound. The dense, bracing, contemporary aural constructs that issued from his debut solo album, I Can't Stand Srill, incorporated more of FIenley's naturally ferocious intellect; to his surprise, critics as well as the public greeted his broadsides warmly. Then, several years later, on consecutive albums, came two unforgettable songs, "The Boys of Summer" and "The End of the lnnocence," stiffing melodies bravely sung, both of which seemed to pluck out of the air his audience's previously

renity of the past-and serve them up in compelling, unmistakably adult music. He would win a Grammy for "The Boys of Summer, " a second Grammy for the triple-platinum The End of the Innocence and the ultimate tribute: a skewering from rock-and-roll court jester Mojo Nixon entitled "Don Henley Must Die" ("Don Henley must die/Don't let him get back together with Glenn Frey"). "l can't tell you how grateful I am to have this second chance," Henley says in his warm, Texas-flecked voice, every day. " Like thousands of misfits before him, Henley rushed settling in on his couch next to a roaring fireplace; copies of headlong to the self-reinvention capital of the world, Los magazines from Garbage rc The New Republic envelop his Angeles. There, in league with a fun-loving doper out of coffee table. "l feel like I'm just reporting: I mean, I get all Detroit named Glenn Frey, he would wed the down-home my information from the media and from books I've read. harmonies of counrry music to studio.polished rock; that I'm repackaging it into something I think will reach the sound became the trademark of the Eagles, the most com- rock-and-roll audience, to make it palatable to people who merciallysuccessful bandof the 1970s. Duringthatdecade, might not otherwise pay attention. I rrever thought I'd the group would sell more than 50 million albums, win make it to the elder-statesman phase, and I'm not really armloads of Grammys and become Public Enemy Number there yet; I'm sort of the middle child-who is hell on One to a generation of rock critics, who found in the roar of wheels. " punk the artifice-free passion they weren't getting from such A fair description, perhaps, of Henley after-hours, the mellow milestones as "Thke It Easy." The irony, of darkprinceof BeverlyHills, amanwithconsiderableappecourse, was that Henley didn't know how to take any- tites, and not just for peace and justice. Given that, at 44, thing easy and wound up with the ulcer to prove it. In he is smart, funny, famous and preposterously handsome, such signature songs as "Hotel California" and "Life in he doesn't lack for female companionship, though he notes the Fast Lane," Henley excoriated the very sybaritic with a grin that "the great thing about getting older is that pleasures-kinky sex and cocaine, to name a couple- you put sex in perspective. lfhen you finish having sex, is

inwhichhewasthenindulging. ButasEaglesproducer there anybody there to talk to? Is there somebody you can

h ltd alt elder state$rnalt yd- lh

Ii

\
vocals be ? I'd never had that kind offreedom from any other

watch Dauid Letterman with?" And while the mention of actress Dana Delany, whom he dated briefly a while back, can trigger a paroxysm ofwordless rapture, there apparently has been no consuming romantic relationship in Henley's life since his longtime love acrress Maren Jensen moved out, in February of 1986. Saint Augustine's plea-"Give me chastity and continence, but not just now"-could be Henley's, though he prefers to cite James Thylor: "l hear words, I hear voices/l guess I was born with too many choices." "lf you spend any time with Henley, things are usually crackin' pretty good in rerms of hanging over the precipice," says Danny Kortchmar, the gifted instrumentalist and producer who has been Henley's collaboraror and friend
since his solo career began. "He doesn't like it unless there's

artist, ever." The size of the task ahead of them rook its toll. "For a while, I was pacing a lot in the house and I was drinking a lot," says Henley. "That was a really rough time for me." But things would get worse. Around 9 e.v., on November 21,1980, Henley called the L.A. Fire Departmenr, seeking medical aid for someone ar his home who appeared to be having a seizure. That someone was a prostitute, who
turned out to be suffering from aftereffects of Quaaludes and cocaine and who also turned out to be 16 years old. Hours later that day, police came to Henley's home and arrested him, after reportedly finding quantities of cocaine and marijuana in the house. This is Henley's least favorite topic, but when asked about it, he is admirably sraightforward. The firemen "just flat-out lied to me. They said, '\7ell, by law, we're supposed to take this little girl to the hospital, but if you'll take care of her, we'll leave her here. . We're not here to get anyone busted.'She was fine by the time they got there. I had no idea how old she was. I had no idea that she was doing that many drugs; I didn't have sex with her, you understand. Yes, she was a hooker; yes, I called a madam; yes, there were roadies and guys in my house-we were having a farewell to the Eagles. I got all of them out of the house; I took complete blame for everything. I was stupid; I could have flushed ev. erything down the roilet. I didn't want this girl dying in my house; I wanted to get her medical attention. I did what I thought was best, and I paid the price." Convinced he would have beaten the rap but tired ofgetting clobbered in the press, Henley pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge

too much to do and everything's in a real state of flux. He likes shit to be real busy." Such sensory chaos, filtered through Henley's natural outrage, makes for good art, no. nonsense social activism, vigorous faxes-and easily bruised relationships. "Everyone that spends time around Don eventually incurs his wrath," says Kortchmar. "He's a marvelous friend, and his friends are very loyal-but Don also rurns around and focuses on you: 'You're the reason, motherfuckerl' "
Henley's solo career had its genesis in the sundry miseries of 1980. Glenn Frey's announcement that he would be leaving the Eagles and doing his own album struck his partner as "a sort of horrible relief." To Henley, the consequences were

"l knew it meant I was going to have to do the same thing-l mean, some of the guys wanted ro go on without
clear:

him, which was really ridiculous-and that scared me a little bit. A lot, as a matter of fact." Then, as now, the
career-mortality rate for solo artists spun off from successful bands was brutal, and while Henley's songs and voice had held sway on radio for a decade, his public profile was low. As "a band guy, a drummer, " he understood that for his solo stint, "l needed to find a new partner." He settled on Kortchmar-"Kootch," to his colleagueswho'd worked with James Thylor, Carole King and Jackson Browne, not so incidentally at the height of their respecrive careers. Henley offered Kortchmar a chance to make the move from sideman to producer. "\(/e were trying to create a sound from scratch," says Kortchmar. "What instruments

of

contributing

to the delin-

quency of a minor and was fined and given two years probation. The incident had a cruel corollary; it came as Henley's girl-

friend, Maren Jensen, was in Dallas filming a horror movie-

and unbeknownst to her, was be- Tbe drummer turned will work and what won't? What would the background comingoneof thefirstpeople in front man gaTnely straps 0n 4 guxtar.

the mlddle chlld, who ls hell 0lr wheelsl'

Hollywood to suffer the debilitating effects of Epstein-Barr syndrome. "l was PatientZeto at the time," recalls Jensen, who has since recovered. "lt was a really tough period, in my life and in his as well. I was so young, and to have so many different things bombarding me all at once' it was overwhelming. But we hung in there; we had a lot of love for each other." "l stood by her and she stood by me," says Henley, who spent some months caring for the bedridden Jensen-but he admits that, given his own change-of-career worries, his behavior wasn't exactly flawless. "l was freaked out, and while I was attentive and supportive, I didn't exactly come home when I was supposed to, 'cause I was traumatized. Kootch and I were just guzzling scotch and vodka; we'd record until three in the morning and then go to my house, sit up with bottles and tell each other how great we are, just to bolster our confidence . . . and poor Maren would get up at eight o'clock and here were these two drunken monsters:

His future with Geffen Records, for example, is on shaky

ground..

"l guaran-fucking-tee you I'11 be on the market after the next two albums," Henley says. "l want out. They're

nickel and diming me to death. [David] Geffen has one set of rules that apply to him and one set of rules that apply to
everyone else."

In recent months, Henley and Kortchmar have had

falling-out over a business matter, and future collaboration seems doubtful. "l love Kootch. I think he's wonderful," says Henley, "but we may have reached our creative peak
together. "

Instead, for his next album, Henley plans a departure:

"l'm going back to Dallas," he says, "recruit some local

guitar players. I've done all the Danny Kortchmar production I can do; I want to do a blues-oriented kind of thing, go back where I came from. Besides," he adds with a grin, "thanks to Paul Simon and David Byrne, God knows there are no forelgn cultures left to rape and pillage. " Henley was an only child, the July 22, 1947 , issue of a 40year-old auto-parts-store owner and his 3O.year'old schoolteacher spouse. If Hughlene Henley was responsible for her son's affinity for literature, Don surely got his temper from his father, C.J., whose methods of discipline included whacking a doubled-up leather belt across his offspring's bare butt. But C.J. also imbued his son with a love for the land, especially the two and a half acres the family tended in Linden, a small town in Northeast Texas's Cass County. As he grew older, Don was put to work in the field; after school, from six until eight, and on the weekends' too,
sometimes rising at five. "There was a time in my teens when other kids were hot-rodding around," he recalls, "and my dad would make me stay home and work." Riding in his father's truck, Don got his first taste of country music: Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, Ernest Tubb.

'Hi, bay-beh. .

whassss

lrap'nin'7."'

In the studio, at least, something was indeed happening.

Kortchmar beefed up Henley's drum sound and took advantage of high-tech studio capability: "To use this technology, knowing that you'd have this amazing soul singer over the top of it, " he muses, "that's what would prompt me to come up with a song like 'Dirty Laundry.' One night, I just got this keyboard groove going and I thought, This is itl This is

i
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3

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T

itl" The insistent riff, wedded to a fiery Henley rant on the media's evils ("Kick 'em when they're up/Kick 'em when they're down"), got club play soon after the 1982 debut of I Can't Srand Sdll but didn't become a single until two independent promo men each called Asylum Records with a simple message: If you don't release "Dirty Laundry"'
you're crazy. The song became a mini'sensation (the S7ashington press corps did its own video of it), and its distinctive sound helped Henley shed his Eagles baggage. The albums that followed-1984's Building the Perfect Beasc and 1989's The End of the Innocence-carved out Henley's new artistic identity: obsessive, pissed-off, reflective, looking to the fu' ture without surrendering the past. The necessities of modern-day rock stardom have required Henley to develop skills as a music-video performer (two black-and-white efforts, which cast Henley more as a Greek chorus than as a protagonist, have garnered him a shelfful of video trophies) and as a front man, out from behind his drum kit. And while Henley will never be confused with Bruce Springsteen as a live performer, his fortyfive-date tour this summer is showcasing his growing in-concert comfort zone. "l'm a hell of a lot

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In high school, he failed at the trombone and took

up
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drumming instead. His first band was a cross-generational instrumental oudit, but the emergence of the Beatles made

more comfortable than I was in '85, I'll tell you that, " he says. "l don't know if I'll ever be entirely comfortable. But on some nights I go, 'Hey, this isn't so bad; I kind of like this.' " And yet there is some disquiet in his world too.

The 1976 aersion of tbe Eagla: Joe Walsh, Henley, Frey, Randy Meisner and Don Felder.

ueryhody ln a hand ffinilrltdo

thlnp

vocals a must, and Henley won the intra.band audition. He and his buddies-eventually known as Shiloh-gigged at bars, clubs and frat houses across the ArkloTex area, pull. ing down as much as $500 a night and always carrying a

in the glove compartment. "'We were hair pioneers," jokes Henley. "l was the first guy in town to smoke grass or have my hair touch my ears." After a failed engagement to his high.school sweetheart and stints at Stephen F. Austin State University and ar North Texas State, Henley beelined it to L.A. in 1970 and trrupped lI'I d.t Lr^u rIOUbOu--^, !tre Sentrlr-. llu( Jll vdrlLd Monica Boulevard. "l remember the first time I walked in," he says. "The first guy I saw was Rodney Dillard [of rhe
revolver

critique of the band's own life.style. L.A. scenestress Loree Rodkin, who was dating Henley at the time, recalls "the dynamics of people making so much money at such young ages: affording private planes and wanting ro go to Paris for dinner. That was the fast lane to me." As for Henley, "l think probably Don was more prone to having a girlfriend at the time, whether that had parameters for him or nor." Parameters such as. . . ? "Fidelity," says Rodkin, laughing.
Henley's prodigious romantic escapades would include an affair with Stevie Nicks, who "l believe to the besr of my KlluwilJge be"-...' lrr-grrdrrr Dy rtle. ,rtffd Shc rLdrrrcU !rrc [unborn] kid Sara, and she had an aborrion"-and then wrote the song of the same name "to the spirit of the aborted baby. I was building my house at the time, and there's a line in the song thar says'And when you build your house, call me.' " In the wake of Hotel California's stupendous success and the pressure to follow it up, the band, now boasting Timothy B. Schmit on bass, began its slow disintegrarion. "Maybe we were taking it all too seriously," Henley allows. "But at the time, it was very serious. And there was a lot of pressure from the record company, the fans, the managers, everybody. \We needed a vacation, and we didn't get one. A lot ofour creative energy was spent just trying to placate the

influential electric-bluegrass act the Dillards]. There was Ronstadt, standing over near the corner with this short little Daisy Mae dress on, barefoot, literally scratching her ass; Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash . . . I thought, I've arrived. " Sulking in the comer were a country duo known as
Longbranch Pennywhistle, who were about to go their separate ways: J.D. Souther and Glenn Frey. "Glenn was really charming," recalls Henley, "and he was golng somewhere. He had this fucking plan, he had a vision. He told me about this guy named David Geffen; I

didn't know him from

a hole in the ground." John Boylan, then serving as Linda Ronstadt's producer,

egos-you know, some guys wanted (continued on page 200)

prevailed upon Henley and Frey to back her up on an upcoming tour, eventually with a bassist from Rick Nelson's Stone Canyon Band named Randy Meisner and bluegrass picker Bernie Leadon out of the Flying Burrito Brothers. "Henley was the kind of guy you could depend on ro show up on time," says Boylan. "All his bills were paid on time; his house was always pretty well rogerher." His symbiosis with Frey, says Boylan, "was based on difference: Glenn
brought Henley a sense of fun and commerciality, and Henley brought Glenn a more serious, intelligent, poeric way of looking at rhings. " The four dubbed themselves rhe Eagles, and it was Frey and fellow Troub habitu6 Jackson Browne who wrore the group's first hit single, the banjo.fired, high-harmony anthem of California rock, "Thke k Easy," in 1972. By the end of the year, the Eagles were an across-the-board smash, destined to become the apotheosis of country rock. Despite changes in personnel and ever-edgy relationships, rhe group flourished through the mid-Seventies, releasing one record a year. The band was augmented by the hard-rocking Don Felder, in 1974; Leadon left the group in '75 and was re. placed by guitar hero-clown.enigma Joe \7alsh. "The high standards in the singing, the playing and the writing were set by Henley and Frey," recalls Bill Szymczyk, who produced the group's last six albums. "Henley was always the English'lit major-the final lyrics were always his. Until he pronounced the words done, they weren't done." In Henley's view, the group reached irs high point in 1976, with the release of Hotel California, a devastating Henley

tt,ith bis tben-gir/friend, MarenJensen, at a 1985 firnd-raiser for Senator Christophir Dodd,

eqrrillly rlrrelh thatb why yorl haue a lnrtl,'

DoN HENLEY
(continued from page 143) to sing more write more songs. Glenn and I tried to keep it as democratic as possible, but every man is not a jack-of-all-trades. Everybody in the band cannot do things equally well; that's why you have a banl. But unfortunately, the singers and songwriters get most of the glory, so it makes other people unhappy. " The l-ong Run was released in late '79, followed by what apparently was a uniquely unpleasant tour; afterward, the group disbanded for keeps. "\7e broke up in '80," Henley says, "and nobody really knew
songs and

it until '82, because the managers and the record company didn't want to tell anybody. They thought, Oh, they'll get over it. " They didn't; in fact, Frey couldn't stand to be in the same studio as his exabout
colleagues, Henley in particular. "When we were doing fixes on the live album," remembers Szymczyk, "l had my assistant in Los Angeles with Glenn, and I had the rest of the band in Miami. We were fixing three.part harmonies by Federal Express." (Frey didn't respond when asked to discuss his ex-partner for this article. ) Through the Eighties, even as relations between Henley and Frey thawed, the band resisted outside attempts to reunite them, until last year, when such a reunion

quarters, things are not quite so rosy as they are for me," says Henley. "That's a good enough reason alone, as far as I'm concemed." (According to Irving Azoff, "Tim [Schmit] and Felder both desperately wanted and needed this, and Henley felt a great loyalty to them.") "l got together with Glenn and we began to write," says Henley, "and a month or two down the road, things fell apart. Old ghosts reared their ugly heads. " In a way, those ghosts had been there from the very beginning. "When things were coming to a halt, Glenn said to me on the phone, 'You know, Don, we're very different people than the people we were then.' And I thought to myself, No, Glenn, we're exdctl) the same." I.lot even rock and roll, though, could contain Henley's disputatiousness and idealism, and so it should hardly be surprising that for more than a decade now, Henley has steeped himself in the hurly-burly of political and environmental activism. "l remember sitting at the breakfast table," says Maren Jensen, "with these stacks of letters from the Wildemess Society, the Cousteau Society, and he'd sit there and write checks. And I'd go, 'Gee, you're real-

hosted dinners, badgered politicians and has been, for more than a decade, in the front lines of environmental conservation.

"He doesn't care if people like him,"

says

lawyer Lisa Specht, who helped Henley as-

semble a California-based antidevelopment group called Mulholland Tomorrow.

"That's amazing to mei everyone in my

world likes to be liked. He cares about being respected, but only by people he respects.

"

Early last year, Henley took on his biggest activist challenge to date: the creation of the Walden Woods Project, an effort to preserve from incipient development the 2,680 acres of largely unspoiled New En-

gland forest in Concord, Massachusetts, where Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden-a piece of literature that Henley says virtually saved his life as a young man
growing up in Texas. For more than a year, the bulk of his efforts have been directed at publisher-developer-bon vivant Mortimer Zuckerman, who stands ready to build a $25 million office complex inside the boundaries of Thoreau's landscape. "He doesn't consider this to be a valid or important cause," says Henley, frequently

leaping up from his couch to grab a file

folder with supporting documentation. "As he said to me, 'You have your charities, I have mine'-which is fine, except the iro-

nearly took place. "You know,

in

some

ly supportingthese places.' " He has chaired events, raised funds,

t'\

.t^

Cleans theWall Street mouth.

Cleans the All-Pro mouth.

GQ AUGUST I99I

ny of ir is he thinks he's a man of letters." Indeed, in addition to U.S. News E Vorld Reporr, Zuckerman is the chairman of The Atlantic. "the magazine that published Thoreau in this country and made him fa-

Johnson-to entertain at two benefit con'

mous. You'd think just from a historical

perspective he would be a

little more sym-

pathetic to our cause. But he simply is not. " What in part spurred Henley to hit the
road this summer without a new album to support is the financial needs of the Walden r07oods Project, which will require some substantial funds to accomplish Henley's intentions. Henley thinks that there is only one way to save Walden lUoods, and that is to buy the land. "lf somebody owns a piece of property, there is almost no way

certs. Soon afterward, the Trust for Public Land, on behaK of the Walden \7oods Project, began negotiating to buy the site on which builder Philip DeNormandie planned to erect a 139.unit housing complex to be called Concord Commons IIonly some 1,400 yards from Walden Pond. Unfortunately for the celebrity preservationists, Concord Commons had an "affordable housing" provision, whereby more than a third of the condominiums were ear' marked for middle- and low-income residents. Amy S. Anthony, then Massachusetts's secretary of communities and development, wrote to Henley that his efiorts were unintentionally supporting "a thinly

clared his intention, a week or so later, to buy an altemate piece of land for the lower-income housing, project director Kathi Anderson says "it took a good six months to get people convinced of our sincerity. " Eventually, DeNormandie agreed to sell his site for $3.55 million, $1.5 mitlion of which came via a loan secured by the Isis Fund, Henley's federally recognized non-

profit organization. In short, along with

some $300,000 needed to buy new land

for

veiled attempt on the part of the few to

in hell you can stop them from building something," he says. "You can march
down to city hall with all the little old grayhaired ladies and give your speeches and

obstruct the construction

of

affordable

pound your fist on the podium and raise hell, but it doesn't do any good. " So in early 1990, Henley formed the \Talden \7oods Project to fight both the Zuckerman complex and other developments in the area. To kick off fund-raising for his new organization, Henley rounded up some fellow performers-musicians Bonnie Raitt and Bob Seger among them, as well as actors Carrie Fisher and Don

housing in a wealthy suburban community"; her letter leaked rc The Bosnn Glabe before Henley had even seen his copy. The apparent high-concept irony ofthe situation-out-of-town show-biz lefties raising money to keep poor people from getting decent housing-was catnip to the business press: "Ar Wnl-ogtt PoND, Two LresRRL Ceusrs Srev ONr Too MANY" trumpeted The Vall Street Joun'nl's gleefuI page-one account. The media meltdown that followed, Henley says, "almost shut my operation down." Though Henley de-

the affordable housing, Henley is personally on the hook for some $2 million. He will donate to the project 50 cents from every ticket sold on his summer tour and plans two or three benefit shows in the East this fall, to which Billy Joel has already accepted an invite. Henley has also cajoled such literary and entertainment figures as E.L. Doctorow, Jim Hanison, Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep into writing chapters for a book he and rock joumalist Dave Marsh are putting

together on Walden Woods, entitled Heauen Is Under Our Feet. "Larry

McMurtry tumed me down," he says disgustedly. "He said the American people
need their malls." Hunter Thompson sent Henley a chapter from his book, in which he tortures a fox by dumping peacock shit on it. "The note with it said 'We need to (contirued on page 208) consider the

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(continued from page 201) bahnce.'

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1

land; the reality of the marketplace is that they'll be lucky to sell even one tenth as many copies. But even after the $2 million is paid, there's the Leviathan of Walden lVoods to deal with: the Zuckerman property. Zuckerman has thus far proved to be a

So what is a transplanted Texan tumed Hollywood rock star doing trying to protect a patch of semi-wildemess so far from his homel "l recognize the absurdity of my condition," says Henley, "the inappropriateness of my being the guy who is trying to

\foods. And I don't give a shit, okayl It needs to be done; I happen to be the guy who's willing to do it-rather
save Walden

far more intransigent developer than is DeNormandie. Zuckerman bought the land for $3.1 million, in 1984, and despite the collapse of the Massachusetts economy, says he'l1 sell it only for $7.5 million. Henley says he wouldn't pay that much
even

than the State of Massachusetts, rather than Yale or Harvard or Princeton. I can't
help but believe that somewhere down the line, Thoreau's legacy will make a difference to somebody."

ifhe had it.

I\ESS

"We really don't feel that we should take property," says Edward Linde, Zuckerman's partner in Boston Properties. "l don't think someone can say, 'You ought to sell it for less than that.' That's asking us to make a contribution to somebody else's
a loss on the
cause.

"

BLE
A MEMOIR OF MADNESS

Zuckerman was reported to have pledged

WILLIAM
STYRON
"Here is an example of art refined in the fire of experience: the writing is so pure one is hardly aware of the ink on the Page."

to Henley's organization, but Zuckerman says that donation will be in the form ofa reduction on the asking price for the land, which, despite some conversations, has remained in the $7.5 million range. "Had they been willing to be more constructive, they would have been different conversations," says Zuckerman. "My understanding is that they are nowhere close to having that kind of money. They've only raised $250,000."
$100,000

Don Henley is the last male in his family; he has no siblings, no cousins, "really no family to speak of. I mean, my mother and a couple ofelderly aunts is about all I have left." Last Christmas, he found himself walking through a supermarket in Colorado and he saw a blonde 3-year-old shopping with her father. "She was pointing at things saying, 'Daddy, I want this,' and 'Daddy, I want that' . . . and I got all fuck. ing choked up," he says. "Much to my em.
barrassment and shock." He thinks he'd be a good father, and his

friends agree. But he wonders if it's inesponsible to bring a child into this screwedup world. And where would he raise a child? Not in Los Angeles, certainly, and not in Texas, either; on the other hand, he notes, "lfyoming spends the most on the environment of any state and has the best
public-school system in America." ("He's

"Total bullshit," says Henley, who

-Edmund Morris

# 1 NATIONAT

BISTSEttER

claims his organization has received a host of $100,000 contributions. What's more, he says, "l guarantee if he brings his price down to $3 million, I'll have it by the end of the week. " The question arises: Since the literature will endure and inspire, why save Walden
Woods at all? "You know," says Henley,

Also available in larse print and on audiocasYetfe

"if

this place were a battlefield, it would be preserved in a minute. If the cradle of free-

very scientific, Henley is," says his friend Harrison Ford. "He better find himself an old lady.") For Henley, it is hard enough to choose from the myriad of possibilities-artistic, personal, political-open to him. Once he makes a choice, it's harder still to convince people that he means well. Henley may seem angry, but he's motivated by hope. "The whole crux of rhis Walden \Yoods thing is that we live in such a skeptical
GQ AUGUST I99I

DoN HENLEY
age," he says. "There's so much doubt about good intentions: 'This guy must be

SAL}1
/cot-.:'

saving l7alden Woods for some personal l-:..': reason. It couldn't possibly be because -::-::: somebody has good intentions.' Goddamn i.. -it, we have to get a little more posirire :.:-:\- : than that. I've been accused of being a
curmudgeon. .
ing raving
.

rhe

"But I'm not!" he declares. "l'm a fuck-

romnntic!"

-. '

Chistopher Connelly is an execurile edrr,'- Premiere and the host o/ MT\,"s The E:: Picture. This is his frst piece for CQ.

..COME
(continued

- :: winging it here. Unless I'm mi.:=,:.: - - , of you will be confused s'irh \1:-: : :: .: man anytime soon. A. \'(.'j :-- ,.. .- :
Thirsty Market Outlook scripr

ON, TIGER. . .', from page I89) t.. :i.= i

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