The Eagles will be appearing at The Pond on September 14th.
Tickets are available through Ticketmaster.
If you will be attending the show please post in the comment section. Don't forget to come back after the show and post your review.
The Eagles will be appearing at the Pond on September 14th, 16th, 17th and October 7th .
Tickets are available through Ticketmaster.
If you will be attending the show please post in the comment section. Don't forget to come back after the show and post your review.
The band hit the floor running with a spirited rendition of "Take It Easy", and moved on through the first portion of their set focusing on faithful renditions of material mostly drawn from their first few albums (i.e., the "country rock" stuff). Although these tunes were performed flawlessly, I felt the show really slipped in to gear when Joe brought out his new song, "One Day At A Time" near the end of the set. The energy level on stage and amongst the audience climbed to an even higher level as the band continued with "Boys of Summer" (which elicited a great response from the opening notes), which carried on through the end of the first set. During the intermission, some very cool film clips were shown on the video screen above the stage, some of which I had seen, and some I hadn't. Footage of the original line-up early morning in Joshua Tree National Park (looking very early '70s and very rough around the edges) was a hoot, as was an excerpt from the clip shot of the band dressed up in Old West attire at the Paramount Movie Ranch, engaging in a mock gunfight (I think this was used as part of a promotional clip for either "Desperado" or "Doolin' Dalton"). Other highlights included a brief segment of the late '70s Eagles lineup duking it out in a softball game with the staff of Rolling Stone Magazine. The opening numbers of the second set featured the band seated and playing mostly acoustic instruments. Robert Hilburn commented that he thought this was a little too laid back, and went on a too long.....however, I think the songs included in this portion benefited from this treatment, particularly "Hole in the World". I also believe it was was important from a dynamics viewpoint to start things off this way before cranking it up for the latter portion of the show. From that point on the emphasis was primarily on upbeat material, with the band and their additional sidemen stretching out vocally and instrumentally. The group actually did 3 encores, with the first one being one song only. Closing tune was "Desperado". A generous performance with over 2-1/2 hours of fine music. I was about 3/4 of the way back on the floor. A minor quibble....these seats (the most expensive) cost the same as those closer up on the floor, but I think a better direct view could be had almost anywhere on the first floor risers (which may or may not have been less expensive). Additionally, the first floor seats where basically just folding chairs (no padding), while all other sections in the venue had padded theater-type chairs. Luckilly, the fairly big video screen allowed all to see what was going on, and featured some excellent work by the camera crew. The virtually sold out crowd (myself included) loved the show, and the rousing finish definitely got everyone worked up. On my way out, I heard some of the ushers (who,after all, were just there doing a job) commenting about what an incredible show it was. Some general comments on the band and the show.... Glenn and Don were in excellent spirits, although Glenn (apparently as usual) did nearly all of the talking. Timothy (a consumate professional, none-the-less) seemed a little removed from the proceedings, for some reason. Joe was.....well, Joe...... a crowd pleaser who played and sang passionately throughout the evening. The backing musicians were first rate. A special tip of the hat to Steuart Smith, who I have been a big fan of since I saw him performing with Rodney Crowell, some years back. He did a fantastic job rendering the parts previously done by Don Felder, as well as making his own original contributions. I always despised the slide guitar solo in the recorded version of "Love Will Keep Us Alive"...Steuarts approach was much sweeter and more appropriate during this live rendition. His take off from Mike Campbells original ending solo in "Boys of Summer" was also very inspired. I saw the Meisner-Felder lineup perform in Sacramento in the later '70s...the group basically did note-for-note renditions of their material, and there were no concessions to any sort of stage presentation. They were great, of course....but I think their slightly more visual approach now, along with tweaking the arrangements and letting the instrumentalists flex their muscles a bit, is a definite good thing. I don't feel the contribution of Joe Walsh to their stage show can be overstated....the mere mention of his name never failed to get a response from the crowd, and his songs were highlights of the show, energy-wise. I didn't get to see the Eagles during their Hell Freezes Over tour, but if the set list on the video release is indicative of the actual show, I must admit that I thought it was a bit ballad and medium tempo heavy: great songs by themselves, but a bit draggy when all strung one after another. From a strictly stage presentation viewpoint, I thought this current song lineup was much better paced. On a related note...one of my co-workers, who saw the (similar) Melbourne video, thought that although well performed, the material was "overly familiar". I have to agree that there were few surprises in the song choice, and I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to hear them do some less mainstream tunes such as "Hollywood Waltz", "Whatever Happened To Saturday Night", or even "Good Day In Hell"...or more of the Henley or Frey solo material. On the other hand, the Eagles have such a vast body of first-rate work, that leaving out any of the "hits" would sure to dissappoint to somebody. Anyway, enough nit-picking...........an awesome show, well worth the money!
Kim Lenz, Cerritos, California.
Link: calendarlive.com: The Eagles have landed.
"I think a lot of our songs were memos to ourselves," Don Henley once said of the Eagles' music. In truth, the best of those '70s tunes were memos to an entire generation, and often they were warnings about the slipping away of '60s idealism in a world rapidly turning more cynical and materialistic.
In the first of 10 scheduled local arena concerts over the next few weeks, the Eagles, led by co-founders Henley and Glenn Frey, mixed craft and commentary in a passion-filled performance Wednesday at the Arrowhead Pond that lived up to the best of that old idealism.
Time isn't usually on the side of rock bands. Few groups are as rewarding three decades into a career as they were during their imaginative early years.
And it has been tempting at various points since the Eagles reunited 11 years ago to dismiss the L.A. band. It hasn't given us even one album of new songs in all that time, and it sometimes seemed to just be going through the motions in its late-'90s concerts.
But it became quickly apparent during Wednesday's more than 2 1/2-hour set that the Eagles have been rejuvenated in the five years since they last played here.
The band, which also consists of guitarist Joe Walsh and bassist Timothy B. Schmit, delivered the songs with such conviction — and sometimes joy — that even the oldest tunes felt gloriously alive again.
With the help of several support musicians, including standout guitarist Steuart Smith, two keyboardists and four horn players, the Eagles dressed the songs in fuller, more encompassing arrangements and applied vocals that felt wonderfully inspired. The quartet's harmonies may even be more identified today with Southern California than those of the Beach Boys.
From the beginning of their career, the Eagles, who have gone through numerous personnel shifts, were masters of the pop form — writing songs (or sometimes finding outside material) so catchy and radio-friendly that many critics dismissed them as too "laid back."
While the Eagles' first two albums were more polite and polished than the works of many tougher-edged rock groups, its leisurely country-rock sound and especially its themes quickly became more urgent, mixing elements of blues and harder rock.
Almost immediately, the Eagles saw the dark side of success and changing social values, and they wrote about that temptation and corruption in such tunes as "New Kid in Town" and "Life in the Fast Lane" (clearly a memo about their own excesses).
Listening to the music Wednesday, it was easy to be simply lulled by the seductiveness of the melodies or enchanted by the lovely harmonies. But it's those themes that ultimately define the Eagles' legacy.
The band's creative cornerstone is its "Hotel California" period, when it wrote socially conscious portraits so finely crafted that they were reminiscent in some ways of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald's tales about an earlier generation.
Like the author of "This Side of Paradise" and "The Great Gatsby," Henley and Frey saw through the glamour of the time to focus on false idols (mostly material ones) and lost ideals.
At the Pond, the Eagles took us through their various creative stages, opening with the cheery, upbeat "Take It Easy," written by Frey and Jackson Browne, then soon moved into the band's middle phase, where the innocence was stripped from them.
After all these years, Frey's voice still has a sweet, pure quality that makes the underlying tension of "New Kid in Town" all the more moving. Even in the Eagles' first brush of fame, he and the song's co-writers, Henley and John David Souther, could see the way their world was changing.
There's talk on the street; it sounds so familiar
Great expectations, everybody's watching you
People you meet, they all seem to know you
Even your old friends treat you like you're something new
The band saved "Hotel California" for the first encore, dressing it up with a trumpet introduction. In the song, which was written by Henley, Frey and then-Eagle Don Felder, Henley sings about trying to break out of the nightmare of the times and return to the innocence.
"Relax," said the night man
"We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave."
Not all sections of the concert worked equally well. An acoustic section in the middle felt sluggish, and the high-energy section that followed went on too long.
And neither of the two new songs from the band's recent concert DVD (Frey's "No More Cloudy Days" and Walsh's "One Day at a Time") felt close to the level of the night's vintage fare.
But Walsh, who seemed like a questionable fit in the Eagles when he joined in 1975, added an energy and playfulness to the band's otherwise straightforward stance.
Except for the smallish video screens above and at the rear of the stage, there's not much flashy about the Eagles' show. More than most of the veteran touring bands, it rests its case strictly on the music.
In the final moments of the show, the band returned to its innocence for "Desperado," another signature number.
It took the audience and band back to the early point in the band's career, when the young musicians could see the storm ahead and wondered whether they could live up to the test. Moving from the drums he played for most of the show to the center stage, Henley sang:
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you
You'd better let somebody love you, before it's too late.
The song serves as a measuring point for the audience too — a way to look at their own lives to see how their dreams have fared over the years. It's that shared history that keeps the Eagles' music — and memos — vital.
Link: The long crawl.
Ten shows.
Let me repeat that: Ten shows- five at the Pond, the first of which came Wednesday night, interspersed with five more at Staples Center. And I hear talk of another two gigs in November, one at each venue, after they play San Diego.
No one has headlined that many arena shows all at once in 20 years - not since Prince and Bruce Springsteen were at commercial peaks and selling out equally long stretches at SoCal arenas.
It's staggering and bewildering until you really think about it. No doubt the Stones and Paul McCartney and U2 could do likewise; their tours have sold faster and stronger, actually, with 97 percent of all Stones tickets snatched up in a matter of moments, assuring the legends a full house at Angel Stadium and two nights at the Hollywood Bowl.
So why don't those acts follow the Eagles' example? Because it's overkill.
Note that primo seats for all nine remaining shows are still available for face value ($175) via Ticketmaster, not brokers. In an era of three-bucks-a-gallon gasoline, asking, say, two couples or a family of four to burn a grand (or more) on tickets, dinner, parking, T-shirts, programs, maybe some new threads and, hey, how 'bout a limousine? (they were everywhere Wednesday) - well, that leads to a case of abundant supply exceeding overanticipated demand.
Another reason those other Hall of Famers don't offer so many shows all at once: They're not the Eagles. Which is to say they tend to finish a world tour in about a year and can't spend two weeks (or a month) in one place.
The Eagles, however, have been on their "farewell" jaunt since summer 2001, and after circling the globe they're only now arriving in the region that spawned them. Indeed, these dates are the band's first local appearance since a one-off benefit show in 2002.
Thus, this momentary mania. Fans and their children and grandchildren have been waiting and waiting and waitingfor this time to come.
You know the impetus for blindly shelling out triple digits for veteran performers, of course: "This may be our very last chance to ever see these guys." Certainly that's a large part of what fuels enthusiasm for the Stones and McCartney, too. With these crawling-to-a- homecoming Eagles, though, such determination to get one last glimpse can become severely swollen.
That's why what critics say about the group's performance will fall on deaf ears.
"They sound just like the record," I charge. "Only slower." "Yeah," Mr. & Mrs. Eagle Nuts will reply - "isn't it great?!"
"But of 28 songs," I'll continue heatedly, "only 16 were certifiable Eagles classics. Of the other dozen, four were hits for Don Henley and four came from Joe Walsh records."
"Yeah," the Nutses will counter, "but we knew 'em all! Whew, what a concert!"
So let's dispense with any grand theories as to what the Eagles' music signifies and why it has endured - for at this point it signifies only nostalgia for an easier (though not more peaceful) time. And when you truly scrutinize the band's catalog, only two discs' worth of inescapable classic-rock staples have really endured.
Does that make the Eagles overrated? Maybe. I mean to take nothing away from the unbelievable clamor people stir up to cajole mid-50s guys like Walsh, Henley, Glenn Frey and Timothy B. Schmit to return and expertly re-create favorites that made "Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)" a competitor for the Biggest Selling Album of All-Time crown.
But when compared to their older betters, well, there's no comparison. The Stones and McCartney just released some of the best music of their later careers. In 10 years, the Eagles have put out a live album with a few weak new tunes, two live DVDs, a double-disc best-of sporting a well-meaning but feeble single ("Hole in the World") and not one but two retrospective box sets.
And from the sound of the new songs presented Wednesday night - Walsh's Buffett- goes-12-steppin' "One Day at a Time," Frey's squishy "No More Cloudy Days" - it's just as well that the Eagles stick to the past. Frey may be the master vocal arranger, Walsh the guitar hero who gives most of his leads to a capable sideman. But Henley, it seems, is their only writer of substance - and I suspect anything meaningful he has to say he'll leave for another solo album.
"Shut up already and tell me how the concert was," Mr. & Mrs. Nuts just complained. OK, fine: It was like watching dull music television. Everything sounds just about perfect. Everything moves at a snail's pace. Nothing is left to chance, nothing surprises.
Just still-life memories.
Granted, if you came to hear immaculate simulacra, you got your money's worth. Under Frey's direction, the seven voices (all but the horn players and percussionist join in) harmonize unerringly, so high and flawlessly, in fact, that the opening "Take It Easy" had me wondering if some of it hadn't been sweetened by tapes.
Then Frey mentioned that "New Kid in Town" features "the highest note I can hit in my natural voice in 1977." And lo and behold, they really couldn't sing it like they used to, though that one is such a lovely piece it hardly matters.
Henley hasn't lost a bit of his Frankie Valli falsetto, used to excellent effect on "One of These Nights." Faring worse was Schmit, who was far too brittle on "I Can't Tell You Why," a deceptively simple song that is hard to play with precision and which nearly put me in a coma. Retire it.
There was humor, mostly from Frey - "I'd like to dedicate this next song ('Lyin' Eyes') to my first wife, Plaintiff" - and Walsh, who at one point donned a helmet-cam, apparently to prove middle- age housewives will still flash when put on a Jumbotron.
There were some political comments, though surprisingly more from goofy Walsh than serious Henley. Henley before "Hole in the World," written in the wake of Sept. 11: "Just keeps getting more and more appropriate. Things are really a mess."
Walsh before "Life's Been Good": "I've decided to run for president again. I can top this guy." And a change in "Rocky Mountain Way": "Bases are loaded and Bush is at bat / Playing it play by play / Time to change the batter."
Have you noticed? Where are all the Eagles songs?
"Dirty Laundry," "The Boys of Summer," "All She Wants to Do Is Dance," "Walk Away," "Funk 49" - all of them are just fine, and preferable to, oh, Frey's "The Heat Is On." But what are they doing taking up space at an Eagles concert?
What about "Wasted Time" or "The Last Resort" or "The Sad Café" or "Those Shoes" or "Ol' 55" or "Seven Bridges Road" or "Victim of Love" or "Best of My Love,"for crying out loud! Seems like those belong in an Eagles show more than "Sunset Grill" - and yet they still do "Take It to the Limit," a great one that happens to have been sung by a guy who split long ago.
I guess those lesser-known tunes just don't curry as much favor as "Heartache Tonight" and "Life in the Fast Lane," ubiquitous bits that get white people drinkin' and thinkin' they can dance - and rarely questioning whether their money was well-spent.
I only hope that as these shows roll along, the Eagles think to vary songs a bit. But I'm not about to check in to find out if that happened.
And I'd advise anyone on the fence to buy the DVD. It looks and sounds much better.
Cincy C. sent us some great photos from this night at The Pond. You can access the photo gallery we made for them.
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