Posted by 
On July 15, 2013 I finally got to see The Eagles. I had balked at the ticket prices for their Hell Freezes Over tour (funny how $100 a ticket seemed outrageous at the time) and had missed the few opportunities since. I believe this ticket came as a birthday gift so this time I didn’t even have to consider the ticket price.
But this was no regular concert, this was The History Of The Eagles. I had no idea what to expect and then the obvious turned out to be true: the show was arranged to lay out the lineage of the group, and it was fantastic.
First Don Henley and Glenn Frey came out and played Saturday Night. Afterwards they explained how they met and first started playing together, and then they played more of their early work. Song by song each of the band members walked on stage with a tune and a story of how they came to be involved with the group. There were even a few points when the big screen played video interviews with managers and record producers. It was enlightening, fun, and somehow totally unpretentious.
Now, I know there are some Eagles haters out there, a phenomenon that is simultaneously dumbfounding and completely understandable. That is, of course, until Joe Walsh steps on the stage. To me, any criticism of The Eagles falls apart when Walsh is added to the mix. Too easy-listening? How about Life In The Fast Lane. Too saccharine? How about Funk #49 (okay, not an Eagles song but…).
With wonderful foresight (and healthy acknowledgement) Joe Walsh was given a mini-set of his own later in the show, featuring the aforementioned tunes plus In The City and Life’s Been Good. They even gave him another nod in the final encore, positioning Rocky Mountain Way as the penultimate song of the night.
Haters got thrown another bone as Desperado closed the show. Sure, the song seems like another sappy Eagles tune but like most of them a little investigation shows that it’s a harmonic masterpiece that displays remarkably mature and developed songwriting, and frankly is indicative of the fact the The Eagles were writing circles around almost everyone else in the business at the time.
In the end the show was well worth whatever they were charging. Possibly the best part of this show was that it was the de facto kickoff to a personal concert tour that would take me on a road trip across North America seeing dozens of shows over the next six weeks, and a fine kickoff it was too.
Todd Man Out 