The Last Worthless Evening
| "The Last Worthless Evening" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Don Henley | ||||
| from the album The End of the Innocence | ||||
| Released | October 1989 | |||
| Format | CD | |||
| Recorded | 1989 | |||
| Genre | Rock, Soft rock | |||
| Length | 6:03 | |||
| Label | Geffen | |||
| Writer(s) | John Corey, Don Henley, Stan Lynch | |||
| Producer(s) | Don Henley, Mike Campbell, John Corey | |||
| Don Henley singles chronology | ||||
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"The Last Worthless Evening" is a song written by John Corey, Don Henley, and Stan Lynch. It was a single recorded by Henley in 1989 which reached #21 on US charts. The song was included on Henley's third album The End of the Innocence that same year.
The song is rumored to be about actress Michelle Pfeiffer. Henley himself tells the story to concertgoers that he was at a Hollywood party in the late 1980s when, from across the room, he spied the beautiful blond "It girl" of Hollywood. She had just broken up with her husband and was sitting on a couch smoking a cigarette next to her recent co-star, Jack Nicholson. Henley says that he, like every man in the room, wanted to meet her. As he tells it, he walked up to the woman and asked if he could bum a cigarette. Without ever looking up at him she thrust a cigarette in his direction. As he slinked away, he says Nicholson chortled, "Well played, Henley." (Vegas, 2012). Pfieffer separated from her first husband, Peter Horton, in 1988 and co-starred with Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick in 1987. The female protagonist in the music video of this song is played by Clare Michelle Hoak, the daughter of Jill Corey and Don Hoak.
Chart performance
| Chart (1989) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| RPM Top Singles | 5 |
| RPM Adult Contemporary | 3 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 21 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks | 5 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks | 4 |