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