If you have attended an Eagles concert in the last 10 years, it’s likely that the band’s latest stop in St. Louis — Tuesday at Enterprise Center — was essentially the same show you’ve already seen: The setlist, the running order, the video backdrops, even the stage banter were all nearly identical. This set was, however, a bit shorter than on previous tours; the Eagles were here just 14 months ago in the same arena playing the entire Hotel California album, among other hits, and this time they kept things tighter to make room for opener Steely Dan, limiting the 20-song, two-hour concert to nothing but the band’s biggest songs.
Of course, that’s precisely what everyone in the audience paid quite handsomely to hear. Bassist Timothy B. Schmidt recently reflected on how the last time the Eagles played new material in concert, touring behind their final studio album, Long Road Out of Eden in 2008, the audience didn’t respond favorably. So now the Eagles deliver only what the fans want: Timeless classics that make up one of the most inescapable songbooks in popular music history, played and sung meticulously. All killer, no filler.
Before heading out on this tour, appropriately billed as the Long Goodbye, Don Henley noted that the number and location of shows would be based on demand, and from the looks of the packed arena in St. Louis, that demand continues to be robust.
“We’ve been playing these songs for you for 52 years now,” Henley told the crowd, noting also that the band brought no production embellishments along for the ride. He said they planned to play “without any fireworks, no inflatables, no confetti cannons, no butt-waggin’ choreography. Just a bunch of guys with guitars.” The statement came off as a point of pride, a we-don’t-need-no-stinking-pyro boast from a band that is all about the enduring songs, the perfect harmonies and the elegant guitar solos, a throwback to anti-spectacle concerts of yesteryear, back when the music was all that mattered.
Also old-school was a strictly enforced no-video policy. While cell phone photography was tolerated, taking video of the band drew the attention of ushers and other security personnel, who continually shut down glowing phones all over the arena. A pre-show announcement had forbidden video recording, but it’s the first time in the iPhone era that I can remember an arena concert in which the staff prowled the aisles nailing offenders throughout the entire show.
The night opened, yet again, with “Seven Bridges Road” with its phalanx of acoustic guitars and stacked harmonies, as the five official current Eagles plus guitarist Steuart Smith, who ought to be an official sixth member by now, formed a straight line of strummers and singers across the stage, an impressive feast for the senses, no matter how many times you’ve experienced it. Obviously, the crowd at an Eagles concert is bound to get a little more geriatric each year, and these fans preferred to remain seated for most of the evening, singing along as the mellow familiarity of “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Witchy Woman” washed over them.
Instrumentally and vocally, the band has never sounded better. They’ve always been one of the great oohing and aahing vocal groups of all time and what a few thousand performances of these songs do to make it all pristine. Henley, who stuck to the drumkit and other percussion for most songs, has lost no vocal range at 76, still hitting those falsetto lines at the end of “One of These Nights” and recreating the vocals on “Boys of Summer” with extraordinary fidelity. Instrumentally, the Eagles now feature three superb guitarists, and Smith is the band’s secret weapon on the road, playing most of the evening's guitar solos, while long-time touring members keyboardist Will Hollis, pianist Michael Thompson and drummer Scott Crago are all uniformly first-rate.
OK, so now I’ll quibble a bit. I know I will need to clear some space for hate mail for this, but I’ve never quite warmed up to Vince Gill as a member of the Eagles. Yes, he’s a fine singer with a supple tenor who can make his way around “Lyin’ Eyes” and “New Kid in Town” and “Take It to the Limit” like there’s nothing to it. And that’s the problem — he sings these classics like there’s nothing to it, adding nothing special to the songs. Gill’s vocals are vaporous, he has no stage personality, he brings none of the band’s old Cali-hippie cool and he can’t embody the material. Whenever it was his turn, it was fine, but it didn’t feel like the Eagles as much as a longtime CMA host and a maker of Christmas albums covering Eagles songs without coming anywhere close to the tone and drawl that Glenn Frey brought to these songs to make them classics.
Speaking of Glenn Frey, who died in 2016, his other replacement in the band is his son, Deacon Frey, who is nothing special as a musician either. Deacon is back with the band after a hiatus, and he handles the vocals on “Take It Easy,” “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” and “Already Gone” harmlessly but unremarkably, exuding mostly boredom, and his greatest contribution to sparking nostalgia is the way he held his hair back all night with a pair of sunglasses atop his head the way his old man used to back in the longhaired ‘70s.
And an egregious omission: No mention from the stage of original bassist Randy Meisner, who died this past July. Before playing “Boys of Summer” late in the set, Henley dedicated the song to Jimmy Buffett. It would have been nice to have a similar spoken dedication to Meisner before Gill sang “Take It to the Limit,” Meisner’s signature song. And I wish they maintained the tradition of letting the bassist sing it: Schmidt sounded terrific on “I Can’t Tell You Why.”
So which Eagle got the biggest rise out of the audience? Joe Walsh, of course. Everybody loves Joe, and he dominated the last half of the show. Of the 20 songs played throughout the night, four of them were Joe Walsh (or James Gang) solo hits — “In the City,” “Life’s Been Good,” “Funk #49” and “Rocky Mountain Way” — and these songs supplied the night’s most rocking moments, finally getting the fans to their feet. Walsh may come across as a drunkenly afflicted muppet when slurring through his spoken intro to “Life’s Been Good” (“I’ve been to St. Louis a few times,” he said. “Some of them I remember, some of them I don’t. According the police reports, I had a pretty good time”), but his piercing tenor vocal and his blistering guitar attacks — tearing into the famous “Life in the Fast Lane” lick, tangling with Smith on the “Hotel California” outro and lacing “Heartache Tonight” with slide runs — prove that Walsh, at 76, is still at the top of his game.
After an emotional (for the crowd) but rote (for Henley) reading of “Desperado” with Henley back at center stage, the audience became the star of the show during the finale of “Heartache Tonight” as the video camera roamed the arena, catching fans smiling and clapping and singing along. It was an appropriate ending to the Long Goodbye as the fans delighted in these indelible songs.
That affectionate embrace was what this night was all about, and the Eagles were able to take it to the limit one more time.
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