The massive venue that the Eagles almost turned down playing: “It’s very different onstage”
The biggest rock bands in classic rock history have always had a hard time adapting to the modern way of recording.
These are the kind of musicians where every note seems to drip off of them, and when Joe Walsh talked about the Eagles entering the next phase of their career, he had some reservations about their sound being compromised when they took the stage.
But it’s not like the band couldn’t pull off what they could back in the day in the 2000s. Sure, a handful of songs may have had to be lowered in key now and again, but compared to every other band that has to take liberties with what they’re singing half the time, every single line that comes out of Don Henley’s mouth feels like it could be an album take, which is helped by the fact that Walsh hasn’t lost a step as a guitarist.
And while it’s disheartening knowing that Don Felder is no longer in the group and Deacon Frey has had to take over for his old man whenever they go onstage, it still feels like a celebration of the music that soundtracked the 1970s for so many people. Steuart Smith does a respectable job playing off of Walsh whenever they play the ‘Hotel California’ solo, and when they got Vince Gill, they found someone who could have easily played circles around nearly every person in the band.
The California rockers are one of the few bands that checked everything they could off of their musical bucket list, but time only makes for more challenges when they take the stage. The band were still a well-oiled machine in many respects, but where does one possibly go after they’ve played some of the most iconic venues ever made? Simple: start taking over venues that no one has ever tried before.
There might be more daring artists who try to hit every single continent they can whenever they play, but playing in The Sphere in Las Vegas was the obvious next step for the band. U2 had pioneered the idea of what could be done with those massive screens behind them, but according to Walsh, he was not willing to sacrifice any of his playing for the sake of a few accessory lights and trippy visuals.
Most musicians can give people that feeling without that kind of stimulation, and Walsh talked about the band considering pulling out of the gig because of the new technology, saying, “It’s very different onstage. There are some non-musical things that we have to put up with to make it all work, and we’re OK with that. We’ve had to learn how to do it. At first, it was maybe a deal-breaker, but we’ve learned how to do it.”
If you think about what the band were known for, though, the visuals are probably the exact thing they needed. They had already developed a reputation for “loitering” onstage, so since they weren’t the most engaging performers, it was better to throw something on the screen that could get people interested while they were taking in everything from ‘Already Gone’ to Walsh’s ‘Life’s Been Good’.
And don’t think for a second that any massive animation was going to stop Walsh from being the resident class clown of the group. Humour was the most natural part of his playing half the time, and even if he looked a lot smaller compared to those massive screens, he could always be counted on to make the most corny dad joke you’ve ever heard or take the piss out of himself and the rest of his bandmates.
