There Is No Hiding Place

Building The Perfect Beast
Don Henley (1984)
The second solo album from Eagles vocalist Don Henley turns forty years old today.  It went triple platinum and produced four singles that hit the Top 40 in the Billboard Hot 100.  The songs that seem to have gotten the most radio play from this record are The Boys Of Summer and All She Wants To Do Is Dance.  They're both excellent, but my favorite song on the album is its 9th track, Sunset Grill.

The song's namesake and inspiration was an actual restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles called the Sunset Grill.  It was owned and operated by Joe Froehlich from 1957 to 1997.  This is the man that Don Henley is referring to when he sings about "an old man from the old world" who "calls his customers by name".

In 2013, co-songwriter Danny Kortchmar went into greater detail about the inspiration of the song during an interview with Carl Wiser of Songfacts.

Sunset Grill is a real hamburger place on Sunset Boulevard that Don used to go to. He admired the fact that the same family and the same people had run it for many years, and that the burgers were made with love - they were everything he liked about American society. So he used that Sunset Grill as a metaphor for what he liked, what he thought was great about society. And then he also used it to describe what he didn't like, which is plenty.

Sunset Grill
Don Henley (1984)

Let's go down to the Sunset Grill

We can watch the working girls go by

Watch the basket people walk around and mumble

Stare out at the auburn sky

There's an old man there from the old world

To him, it's all the same

Calls all his customers by name

Down at the Sunset Grill

You see a lot more meanness in the city

It's the kind that eats you up inside

Hard to come away with anything that feels like dignity

Hard to get home with any pride

These days a man makes you somethin'

And you never see his face

But there is no hiding place

Down at the Sunset Grill

Respectable little murders pay

They get more respectable every day

Don't worry, girl

I'm gonna stick by you

And someday soon

We're gonna get in that car

And get outta here

Let's go down to the Sunset Grill

Watch the working girls go by

Watch the basket people walk around and mumble

Gaze out at the auburn sky

Maybe we'll leave come springtime

Meanwhile, have another beer

What would we do without all these jerks anyway?

Besides, all our friends are here

Down at the Sunset Grill