Eagles Concert Review
The band’s evocative performance brought the 70s to San José
On Tuesday night, the Eagles turned the SAP Center into a time machine, transporting the audience to the year 1976 and dropping us off at the dusty, desert doorstep of the Hotel California.
The band executed their show with impeccable sound, powerful vocals and a movingly wistful performance that reminded concert-goers of what music used to be like all those decades ago.
Guitarist and vocalist Joe Walsh echoed this vision of nostalgia right before the band’s performance of “Life’s Been Good”: “It was better being 20 in the 70’s than 70 in the 20’s.”
When a band’s average age is above sixty, assumptions are often made about their performing abilities. The Eagles shattered that stereotype during their San José performance.
The show began with a cinematic entrance, as a mysterious man in a conductor’s hat placed a vinyl copy of the band’s 26-time platinum album Hotel California on a turntable. Then, the iconic title track played.
The San Francisco Strings, the symphony that elegantly accompanied “Wasted Time”’s melodramatic tune, produced a longing feel for an era of music void of synthesizers and artificial sounds. Henley introduced the symphony at the end of their onstage performance.
Henley began the brief intermission with a message to the crowd. “Well, that’s it. Back then albums only used to be 40 minutes long,” followed sarcastically with: “Heard they should be even shorter now.”
Though Henley was primarily delivering a laugh, his message rang true: music today is not what it used to be. But that doesn’t deter from the fact that those old tunes are just as successful and popular today.
The Eagles, in their 51st year of performing and playing together, are continuing to find success not just from what they used to be in the good ol’ days but in their continuous elevation of musical artistry. This was exemplified through layering sounds of strings and a live church chorus in with their classics.
The band’s hit songs “Take it Easy” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling” were performed by Deacon Frey, the son of original late band member Glenn Frey, who joined the Eagles after his father passed. From the nosebleeds, Deacon was the spitting image of his father in the seventies, contributing to the time-machine effect.
Then, the spotlight shifted to Vince Gill, another guitarist and vocalist, during the opening notes of “Take it to the Limit.” His voice soothed the ears of every listener in the near-sold-out show to a point of hypnotization. During the song, his voice swept through the arena, but was a whisper in comparison to the crowd’s echoing cry of each lyric.
His performance was a moment too sentimental and intimate to record. So the crowd simply sat and swayed in time to the ballad sans phone lights, fully present in the music.
Their 2023 tour will continue in Southern California, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, New Jersey and Maryland.