Actual Miles: Henley's Greatest Hits (CD - 1995)

Personnel: Don Henley (vocals); George Gruel, Danny Kortchmar, Roger Linn, Steve Lukather, Steve Porcaro, Jeff Porcaro, Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh, Mike Campbell, Larry Klein, Martha Davis, David Paich, Patty Smyth, Tim Drummond, Ben Tench, Ian Wallace, Mike Boddicker, Pino Palladino, Michael Fisher, Bruce Hornsby, Wayne Shorter, Jai Winding, John Corey, Bob Glaub, Stan Lynch, Steve Madaio, Take 6, W. Axl Rose, Waddy Wachtel, Carmen Twillie, Julia Waters, Maxine Waters, Vinnie Colaiuta, Sheryl Crow, Neil Stubenhaus, Frank Simes.

Producers include: Don Henley, Danny Kortchmar, Greg Ladanyi, Mike Campbell, Bruce Hornsby.

Engineers include: Greg Ladanyi, Niko Bolas, Shelly Yakus.

Recorded between 1982 and 1995.

ACTUAL MILES: HENLEY'S GREATEST HITS features 10 of his solo hits, plus two new recordings "The Garden Of Allah" and "You Don't Know Me".

Although it is drawn from only three albums (with only one track, "Dirty Laundry," from I Can't Stand Still), Actual Miles was a well-chosen best-of from an artist who had enjoyed just enough hits to justify one. Five tracks each came from Building the Perfect Beast and The End of the Innocence, and they included all of Don Henley's Top 40 hits. The album was filled out with a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" and two new tracks, among them the ambitious "The Garden of Allah," which seemed to be an attempt to create a new allegorical masterpiece along the lines of "Hotel California," but managed to be only pretentious. Still, the bulk of this album was the sound of AOR radio in the mid-'80s. That, of course, was the catch -- this album should have come out about four years before it did, and probably would have if Henley hadn't been suing Geffen Records. Though destined to be a successful catalog item, in 1995 it was more a historical artifact than a major release. ~ William Ruhlmann

Every one of once-and-future Eagles vocalist Don Henley's solo hits, plus two new tunes and an overlooked cover version of an old Leonard Cohen songs are included on ACTUAL MILES.

One could question the validity of a greatest hits collection that draws from only three solo albums, but with the rampant success of the Eagles' recent reunion, Henley saw fit to compile this retrospective personally. He could have done much worse. The songs still stand up over time, and the thematic sequencing of ACTUAL MILES serves the selection well. The collection also features a pair of previously unrecorded tracks with "The Garden Of Allah" being the more interesting of the two. ACTUAL MILES serves as a decent primer to anyone who wants to hear Henley's hits but wishes to eschew his actual albums. minimize