Eagles 8/7/09

I had never seen the Eagles before so this was definitely an itch scratched after a long time. In fact I had avoided the come-back gigs in the early 2000s as I had assumed it was a commercially driven thing which would have a parade of short recreations of the most popular songs and an audience drowning in nostalgia.
My change of mind had come following the purchase of "Long Road Out of Eden" which was released in 2006. I realised that the Eagles were still creating music and were doing it well.
I still hesitated as the tickets were expensive and the venue (Birmingham NIA) not ideal. I'm very, very glad I went for it. From start to finish (which was not far off three hours later) the music was fabulous. The four long-serving members of the Eagles (Henley, Frey, Schmidt and Walsh) together with Stueart Smith on guitar are all superb musicians and the show was brilliantly arranged to allow them to showcase their talent. For a start they had a second drummer so that Don Henley was not confined to drums but could spend half the gig out front playing guitar and singing front of stage. They also shared out the vocals and when your third and fourth best vocalists are Timothy Schmidt and Joe Walsh, then they need sharing. The guitar playing was a joy. I hadn't really picked up on Stueart Smith before although he features on the album "Long Road Out of Eden" but to have him and Joe Walsh on the same stage was stupendous. When they played lead guitar off each other it was perfect.

With such a huge back catalogue as well as a recent double album there was plenty to choose from and they did a brilliant job of picking a cohesive balanced set of songs
The set started with three songs off "Long Road Out of Eden" including "How Long" and "Guilty of the Crime". From the outset the tempo was great, the music vibrant and the singing sublime despite the ages of the singers.

Next up was "Hotel California" much earlier than I expected and the class of the numerous backing musicians kicked in with some great brass intro and of course supreme lead guitar from Stueart and Joe.

The rest of the first half was mainly older stuff of which "Lyin' Eyes" was simply outstanding and they closed with "The Long Run".

For once the short break was exactly that - fifteen minutes before possibly the highlight of the gig which was a short semi-acoustic set with the guys all on stools playing guitar.
A powerful version of "Waiting in the weeds" had the hairs on the back of the neck definitely moving. This is what live music is about for me - taking a great song and making it come alive in front of an audience. This mini set finished with "Take it to the Limit" and then to top that was a simply outstanding version of "Long Road Out of Eden". It rarely gets better than that.

I reckon there was another nine or ten tracks after that ranging over the Eagles and Joe Walshs' history before it was time for "Desparado" and then they were gone.
Wow.