All of This and Nothing: I Can't Stand Still

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Any indy cred I might have ever had is out the window: I'm writing about a Don Henley song.

I Can't Stand Still was the opener and the title track for his debut solo record, way back in 1982. The Eagles had broken up; he'd had a random song or two in the year or so in between, including a single with then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks; Stand Still was his big launch as himself and not one guy in a band. This song was never a single. But, if you bought the record, as a lot of us did in those days, this is what you heard first: Henley's disciplined drumming and a wailing keyboard line to launch right into yet another story of bad love.

You say you haven't got another lover
You say you only want to make the scene
Then you try to keep it under cover
What does that mean?

It's all in the voice of Henley's character; we don't know what "she" would say about any of this. But the singer is jealous, and suspicious, and worried. When I listened to this song in 1982, I was thirteen - I believed him entirely.

Now...well, I'm not so sure. There's more than a little control in the way he talks about the relationship.

I can take it if you need some freedom
Understand it if you miss your friends
Don't you ever try to think of me some
You never tell me where you've been

The refrain is all about that other guy - the one the singer assumes or knows or suspects is seeing "his" girl when she goes off - maybe assumes he's always there whenever she's anywhere else.

I love that energy in Henley's singing, and especially the keyboard, which is dominant throughout the song, in a clear '80s style that sounds nothing like a real physical piano or organ. And, most of all, that restlessness, fed by that unspecified, sourceless dread of what he's sure is happening when he's not around.

But baby, I can't stand still (while he's holding you)
I can't stand still (while he's touching you)