Eagles TourBlog 2004

As 2004 draws to a close, so does another great year of Eagles shows. Feel free to continue to add to this blog. The continuation of Farewell I will be covered in the 2005 TourBlog

Here's How to Use The TourBlog

All the cities on the tour are listed on the left. When you click on a city, you'll see all reviews, articles and photos associated with that tour stop. You can also hit "comments" and post your own review of a show.

If you'd rather e-mail us your reviews, we'll post them for you.

If you would rather just see what's new...look at the right hand side. The most recent posts are listed there. You can click on the article or review you'd like to read.

Old kids in town to do Eagle rock (NEWS.com.au)

Link: NEWS.com.au | Old kids in town to do Eagle rock (November 24, 2004).

IT was a night of rock 'n' roll nostalgia in Brisbane last night as the Eagles came to town.

LONG list of hits . . . Timothy B. Schmit, left, Joe Walsh and Glenn Frey belt out a tune at The Eagles concert in Brisbane last night. Picture: Marc Robertson.

A capacity crowd of 12,500 people descended on the Entertainment Centre for the year's biggest-selling tour; a mammoth evening of Eagle rock. The music icons, with 140 million album sales to their credit, touched down in Brisbane with their Farewell 1 tour after wowing baby boomers and music lovers in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Along with their 14 semi-trailer loads of equipment, the enduring rockers brought with them a set list crammed with their raft of hits from the 1970s onwards. The ageing rockers opened with The Long Run before moving into a set which was scheduled to go for up to three hours, with an interval in between.

Another 12,500 fans will get to see Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit in action at the Entertainment Centre tonight, and they will return to Brisbane for a third encore on December 2.

Meanwhile, fans have been urged to buy up early tomorrow if they want to see Delta Goodrem in concert next year. The Internet pre-sale for her limited national tour next July starts from Ticketek at noon tomorrow, before phone and counter sales open at 9am on Monday.

Goodrem will perform at the Entertainment Centre on July 18.

The Eagles give Melbourne a freebie (Undercover)

Link: The Eagles give Melbourne a freebie.

Fans of The Eagles in Melbourne, Australia were given a rare treat to be part of their forthcoming DVD yesterday. The Eagles performed a free show at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena to record additional camera angles for the DVD and invited the city along to watch.

More than 6,000 fans turned out for the performance and we given a close-up view of the band performing their acoustic set.

The songs included 'Tequila Sunrise', 'Love Will Keep Us Alive', 'No More Cloudy Days', 'Hole In The World' and 'Take It To The Limit' as well as an encore performance of 'Hotel California'.

Filming concluded last night after the third Melbourne show.

The television rights to the broadcast have been sold to the NBC Network in the USA and it is expected the Nine Network in Australia is also bidding for the show.

NBC will broadcast the special in April. The DVD will be released in August or September 2005.

The audience at last night's performance showed equal enthusiasm to those on the first night. The band had a lot of fun with the crowd. Glenn Frey once again dedicated his song 'Lyin' Eyes' to "my first wife Plantiff". He also took a well placed stab at the Bush administration saying "contrary to what they believe, the Republicans do not own God. They just rented him for another four years".

Joe Walsh was in good humour explaining how his new song 'One Day At A Time' is about his struggles with alcoholism. He said the reason that he stopped drinking was that if he drank all the vodka in the world no-one else would be able to have any.

Joe is the star of the show with his solo performances of 'Life's Been Good', 'Funk 49', 'Rocky Mountain Way' and 'Walk Away' as well as the adopted Eagles tune 'In The City' and of course, his splendid guitar work on 'Life In The Fast Lane'.

Timothy B. Schmit once again was given a standing ovation for his performance of 'I Can't Tell You Why'. Don Henley's solo hits 'Dirty Laundry' and 'Boys of Summer' were audience favourites.

The Eagles Australian tour resumes tomorrow night in Sydney.

The oldies still pull crowds after 30 years (The Advertiser)

Link: The Advertiser: The oldies still pull crowds after 30 years [20nov04].

A MINI-SKIRTED teen down the front screamed "I love you" when the band came on.

Back in the crowd, her grandparents were feeling groovy, as they used to say in the '70s.
Something's happening here.

The phenomenally successful music of the Eagles has been like a soundtrack to the lives of the baby boomer generation and they're still finding new audiences. But at the band's sell-out third Melbourne concert of the Farewell I tour at the Rod Laver Arena on Wednesday, the audience was mostly boomers.

This long-haul, three-hour concert was a blueprint of what Adelaide can expect when the Eagles land here again, after a nine-year absence, to play the Entertainment Centre on November 29 and 30. The band is as refreshing as ever, free-flowing, laid back, harmonically tight and unpretentious.

This is the rock of ages. This is indestructible songwriting.

When Don Henley croons what has become a country classic, Lyin' Eyes, almost the way he did in 1975, partners in the huge audience of the darkened stadium slyly peep at each other.

You can see them holding hands during Love Will Keep Us Alive. They sway to Desperado and sing along to Tequila Sunrise and young and old alike dance to other old favourites, such as Heartache Tonight. For Hotel California, one of the greatest enigmatic pop songs of all time, everybody stands, the way they do for the Hallelujah chorus in Handel's Messiah.

The Eagles grew out of a Linda Ronstadt backing band in 1972, with soft country rock sounds. This style was hardened with the 1976 addition of Joe Walsh, one of the most flamboyant of the psychedelic rock guitarists, and one of the most endearing clowns in rock music.

The deciduous process continues. The Eagles now include Don Henley and Glenn Frey as original members, with Walsh and bassist Timothy B. Schmit.

For this long tour of Asia and Australia, these are backed by an eight-piece band, with big, fat sounds led by Greg Smith on baritone sax.

Emerging from this backing band is a star in the making, the unassuming rock guitarist Steuart Smith, whose duet work with Walsh is a treat.

In the growth process, there are new songs, too, ranging from bubblegum pop (No More Cloudy Days) to saccharine Americana (Hole in the World).

But they haven't fallen into the smoke and mirrors traps of the big concert circuit. They don't need to prance about like such other boomer-rockers as Mick Jagger.

Promoter Michael Gudinski said he was concerned about giving value since there has been public disquiet about ticket prices that start at $95 – more than the cost of three CDs.

So it's a long show, no support acts, three hours of more than 30 of the songs that over three decades have made the Eagles one of the richest rock acts in the world. As Glenn Frey said, explaining why he's still playing the oldies: "The longer this goes on, the better these songs sound."

The Eagles phenomenon also can be explained by the fact that the band is not over-exposed. They've made only six studio albums in three decades and have spent more time apart than together.

In the songs, most of which are band-written, Glenn Frey has a sunny Californian sense of melodic hooks and English literature graduate Don Henley is an obsessed perfectionist about polished lyrics.

Their songs are mostly about love and, in contrast to such activists as Bob Dylan in the 1970s, they are not political.

Frey might talk and talk about the virtues of diversity and how "the Republican party in America does not own God" and how "musicians and plumbers and other ordinary people could do a better job of governing countries", but he doesn't clutter his songs with his politics.

The music of the Eagles grew out of a frontier mythology which resonates strongly in Australia. And no song better explains the Eagles ethos than Take It Easy, which has also has a certain resonance here.

The Eagles have been making a DVD at the Melbourne concerts. "We thought this would be a good place to film Farewell I, " said Frey, and the DVD is due for release next September.

Frey also said that the "sort-of" honesty in calling the tour Farewell I, with its implication that there will be another long goodbye, was really just his dig at Cher on her "everlasting" farewell tour.

Life's Been Good One Day At A Time For Joe Walsh (Undercover)

Link: Life's Been Good One Day At A Time For Joe Walsh.

The Eagles Farewell I tour is not only about their evergreen classic rock moments from the 70s, Farewell I also gives each member the chance to shine solo. For long-time fans of guitarist Joe Walsh it is a treasure trove of some of his best solo work. In the current set he performs 'Life's Been Good', 'Walk Away', 'Rocky Mountain Way' and 'Funk 49" as well as 'In The City', a song that started out as a solo recording and later became an Eagles song.

"It's my turn in the barrel when my songs are up" Walsh tells Undercover News. "I'm sure Don (Henley) feels the same with 'Sunset Grill' and 'Dirty Laundry'. I think The Eagles do a nice translation of my stuff. The thing with The Eagles is that we are trying to make places in the set where people can improvise. We are really good at making it sound like the record, that's our craft. But I think live is important to improvise".

Walsh's solo career was happening before, during and after The Eagles. His biggest selling solo album But Seriously Folks was released in 1978 after Hotel California and before The Long Run. "That was really good timing" he says. "But Seriously Folks just so happened when I was in a really, really creative phase. (Bill) Szymczyk was rolling tape and got my brains on tape. I think for all of us, this time is to have The Eagles be the mother ship and we can run out a little bit and do solo projects but always come back to The Eagles. It is important that we all have our own little scene too. It makes the band stronger".

Szymczyk has produced Walsh since the James Gang days back in 1969. He became The Eagles producer from their third album 'On The Border'. Although Walsh wasn't to join the band for some years to come, he was responsible for the teaming. "The Eagles were kind of painting themselves in the corner as a county rock band" he says. "Glenn was from Detroit and had a huge R&B influence that finally surfaced. I asked Bill to produce The Eagles and he said "what would I want to do that for, they are country". I said "No Bill, they like R&B".

Joe Walsh joined The Eagles in 1976 at the peak of a successful solo career because it took the pressure of running the business off him. At the same time, The Eagles could use someone with his sound. "I had a pretty good solo career" he says. "I had a couple of hit records and was headlining a lot. There is a lot of non musical stuff that comes along with being solo, like hiring and firing and it becomes easy to feel alone. I had a good taste of a solo career but I really wanted to be in a band again. I satisfied my ego as a solo artist. Don (Henley) and Glenn (Frey) are two amazing singers with amazing stuff that was screaming for guitar parts".

The first song he wrote for The Eagles was 'Pretty Maids All In A Row', featured on Hotel California. "I had a bunch of songs that are in various stages of being finished" he says. "The way The Eagles usually work is we bring in bits and pieces and put them in a pile like a jigsaw puzzle. Don and Glenn then run with it. They thought that could turn into a pretty good Eagles song. Some of the stuff isn't cut out to be an Eagles song. Some of the stuff Don and Glenn write also isn't cut out to be an Eagles song".

On The Long Run, he contributed 'In The City'. The song was never a single but is a big part of the setlist today. "It was never a single. It was a movie project" Joe says. "The movie was The Warriors. It was an underground favourite. It was about gangs in New York. I put together the music for the soundtrack. Don and Glenn heard it and thought it would be a great Eagles song".

The current tour features a new Walsh song, the autobiographical 'One Day At A Time', written about his battle with alcohol. "I wrote it over the last three or four years" he says. "I did some soul searching because anonymity is a big part of recovery but most of the planet knew I was a drunk so it's not a surprise. I was a good drunk too".

It's not the first time Joe has used himself as the basis for a song. "A lot of songs are just about my experience in life" he says. "For example 'Life's Been Good'. That was satire. I got sober and started messing around with chords. My recovery had a lot of one liners and that came out. It is the new way I operate, one day at a time. It is meant to be a message of hope for the people in trouble".

After a 14 year break-up, The Eagles became an active force after the Hell Freezes Over project. What started out as a laid-back unplugged session for a television network has gone on to become the biggest selling music DVD of all time. "In retrospect we did a pretty good job" Joe says. "At the time we didn't really know exactly what we were doing. But gosh, when I hear it and see it, we were right on track. DVD at that time was uncharted waters".

Don Henley came up with the line Hell Freezes Over. At a point during the break-up when asked when the band would get back together he told an interview "When hell freezes over". Joe doesn't remember hearing the original quote. "Not only were none of us talking at the time but none of us were listening either. I was probably drunk. We get along great, just not with each other. No, we get along fine".

So what's next? "I think we have another Eagles album" he admits. "I think at this point we have realised we are not going to get it done the way we have been doing it. The way we have been doing it is in LA so we can be with our families and there are too many distractions to us all. We need to be a band and go somewhere like the old days. We are still looking for the right environment. I'm pretty close to having a solo album ready but with the DVD I am going to be an Eagle for a while. When it is time one or the other will come out".

So now the tour continues. US dates for 2005 have already been announced. "We never dreamed we would effect as many people on the planet as we have" he says. "It is like we are playing for a bunch of friends everywhere we go".