Eagles in Full Flight (The Nation)

Bangkok's Independent Newspaper

Thirty years on, the quintessential American rock band shows they’re in it for ‘The Long Run’ as they kick off the ‘Farewell I Tour’ with a real beauty in Bangkok

Between the “Peaceful Easy Feeling” laid down oh so quietly by original band members Don Henley and Glenn Frey to the spirit-jolting guitar raunch of later addition Joe Walsh, Friday night’s Asia-Oceania tour kick-off by the Eagles was a string of superlatives even longer than their 27-song hit parade.

The first night of a double-header at Impact Arena was three hours of high-tech, high-quality fun for a capacity, star-studded crowd that started roaring from the moment the lights went out a half-hour late - seconds after Thaksin Shinawatra and his entourage had grabbed their floor seats - and worked itself up to a deafening crescendo as Henley crooned the final, goosebump-lifting notes of “Desperado” to close the second encore and the show.

Evocatively lit and filmed DVD-style for the jumbo screens, with crane shots and all, it was a glorious night for the band, the crew, the fans and the standard-elevating BEC-Tero Entertainment.

The ecstasy wasn’t seamless, though. There’s no point trivially bemoaning the absence of “Best of My Love”, which the Eagles haven’t played for some time, but the evening’s pacing, for one thing, was bizarre.

Not only was the third tune, the theatrically arranged “Wasted Time”, oddly placed so early on - in an off-kilter, 10-song opening set punctuated with a 15-minute intermission - the stage remained dark for long pauses between each piece as the musicians regrouped, thus chopping up the momentum.

Impact’s acoustics were tested, even with the best sound equipment money can fly in. You could clearly hear every shimmering voice on near-whispered tunes like “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Tequila Sunrise”, but there was always a thudding phantom accompaniment.

And Henley seemed to be struggling throughout. The Eagles are all aged 57 or so, but Henley currently seems to have a bit of a Matthew Perry bloat going on and had little energy to spare beyond replicating his share of the hits note-perfect.

He abandoned his drums often, and not just to come out front for a vocal, and where Frey talked to the fans, played some guitar solos and danced a bit, Henley was barely there.

All that was forgiven, of course, by the time he closed the proceedings with a gut-wrenching “Desperado”, and to be sure, his own solo hits “Dirty Laundry” and the operatic “Sunset Grill” were among the night’s other highlights.

Not so “Hotel California”, which despite a lovely Mexican trumpet intro and terrific dual guitar work, received - perhaps inevitably - an anticlimactic rendering.

Following Frey’s dubious defence of the ticket prices the week before (“We’re a legend”) and the band’s ban on cameras, concerns that this would be an Egos, not an Eagles, concert proved unfounded, although their individual hits made up much of Friday’s show.

Henley also had his clever No 1 single “The Boys of Summer” and 1984 solo jump-up “All She Wants to Do is Dance”. Frey mined his own disco phase for “You Belong to the City”, which fortunately Joe Walsh stepped in to save at the end.

Ah, Joe Walsh. Wotta guy. Already a major solo artist before he joined the Eagles in 1975, he was a smart addition, always guaranteed to blast through the laid-back quasi-country with pure, high-volume guitar joy and vocals designed to please.

“In the City” let him state his intentions early on in Friday’s show, and after a jazz-inflected “Sunset Grill” lit the fuse later on, getting a few people on their feet, Walsh put on a hard hat and went to work, getting the rest of the crowd up with “Life’s Been Good”, a rollicking testament to fair destiny that even featured sing-along cue cards on the big screens.

Then Walsh reached all the way back to 1970, when he was still with the James Gang, for “Funk 49”, one of the surprise bests of the night. The black-clad back-up brass - Greg Smith, Bill Armstrong, Chris Mostert and Al Garth (formerly of Loggins & Messina) - were swaying in unison like breeze-licked trees and Walsh and drummer Scott Crago opened up a canyon of rock.

After that, Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way” - saved up among the encores - was pure gravy.

Though nothing’s been said thus far in this review about singer-bassist Timothy B Schmit, it was he who generated the evening’s first excitement, eliciting screams with his marvellous falsetto on “I Can’t Tell You Why”. He was utterly charming singing “Love Will Keep Us Alive”, with audience members chipping ion on the chorus.

And it was he who ensured the purity of the Eagles’ harmonies throughout the concert, from “Already Gone” to “Take It Easy”.

It was unfortunate, then, that he didn’t get to sing “Take It to the Limit”. He’d likely have done a better job than Frey who, after introducing it (“My wife calls it the ‘credit card song’) as a composition by Randy Meisner - whom Schmit replaced in 1977 - didn’t even try to hit Meisner’s high notes.

(Interestingly, Henley may have done a better job too - apparently he was singing the song on the American tour.)

Has The Nation apologised yet for its front-page caption last Thursday, when someone, clearly not a fan, said the fifth band member, Don Felder, wasn’t present for the Bangkok press conference? There was a good reason for that, of course: Felder left the Eagles three years ago.

No worries, though: his magical guitar phrases are being duplicated to a tee by Stuart Smith, who might as well join the band. As it was, Smith stayed a good few paces away from the fab four, but from stage right engaged in non-stop sonic sensationalism, not only faithfully rereading Felder (even with a double-neck guitar on “Hotel California”) but overtly marching onto axe-hero turf in his own right.

Rounding out the back-up ensemble were keyboardists Mike Thompson and Will Hollis, and together this (mostly) younger eight-man crew - the magnificent brass adding so much muscle and texture - provided the warbling thermals that kept the occasionally winded Eagles aloft - and soaring magnificently - 30 years on.