“I turned on the radio and a voice came over sweet and low and I didn’t know the tears were gonna start, what amazed me even more is I’d never heard that song before but somehow I knew each word by heart.” (“Three Chords and the Truth”- Sara Evans
This music memory I have isn’t about those lyrics but for a different tune. But the circumstances of me driving and hearing an unfamiliar song and how it impacted me, mirror exactly what Sara Evans wrote.
In the early spring of ‘87 I began my first serious adult relationship. Her name was Holly and for ten months we had something very special going on. Then there was a break-up over trust issues we both had.
For the next year Holly and I were off and on. We’d get back together for short spurts then split off again. Holly was more experienced in relationships than I and not to start a pity party for me but she treated our split up as ‘just another thing that happens, no big deal.’ She was pretty casual about the whole deal.
I remember my parents asking if she broke my heart and my answer was, if not broken, certainly seriously injured. Still, I felt there was a chance for us to have a ‘happily ever after’ ending. Maybe things could work out, maybe.
Then over time I realized this wasn’t going to happen. Holly and I were through and I was looking back at the relationship with loads of regret and hardboiled bitterness. I also had zero interest in moving on and dating other women. To quote J.Geils, “Love Stinks.”
So then in late June of 1989 I was still carrying these sour feelings until one night when I turned on my car radio. Returning home from a WCKG radio station movie screening for “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” I dialed into the national radio show “Rockline.” This weekly music program featured well known acts who would be interviewed live and share new music they were releasing.
The “Rockline” guest that night was former Eagle Don Henley and he was talking up his new album “The End of the Innocence.” The title track sounded like a surefire hit but it was another song that really got to me.
It was a cut titled “The Heart of the Matter”, a song that covers the subterfuge of a broken relationship and the moving on that both parties resolve to do. The chorus roped me in and changed my emotional direction for good:
“I’m trying to get down to the heart of the matter but my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter but I think it’s about forgiveness, forgiveness, even if, even if you don’t love me anymore.”
Wow! Hearing these words for the first time over my Toyota Celica car radio was a freaking epiphany. Then things got even better with these lines-
“There are people in your life who’ve come and gone, they let you down, you know they hurt your pride. You better put it all behind you, baby, ’cause life goes on. You keep carrying that anger, it’ll eat you up inside.”
It was as if Don Henley & co-writers Mike Campbell and the great JD Souther were tuned into my head. With this five minute song they cleared up my issues. It was like a baptism. The regret over my relationship with Holly instantly disappeared. So did the bitterness, the anger and the hurt. They were washed away and replaced with the wisdom of moving on and to stop allowing myself to be ‘eaten up inside.’ What a relief this was. I found what I was looking for, simple and sane closure to a love that was over.
I’ve been to several Don Henley solo concerts and when introducing “The Heart of the Matter” he tells the crowd, “This song took 42 years to write and about 5 minutes to sing.” Songsters write what they know. Henley, like all of us, had been through these kinds of downs in relationships yet he found redemption. And he helped me find that redemption and reckoning.
Anytime that old song is played, I think back to that car ride in 1989 when I first heard those lyrics. My guess is this track is one Don Henley probably gets the most thanks from his fans. I’d like to meet him some day to ask that very question, and also to thank him for reaching me that night and every time since then when I hear “The Heart of the Matter.”
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