The Eagles Concert – An Evening’s Peaceful Easy Feeling
Something different - my column in my local newspaper. Nothing political this time!
The Eagles Concert – An Evening’s Peaceful Easy Feeling
Brian C Joondeph
Taking a pause from writing about my travels to interesting or unusual locations (Turkmenistan coming up), often one can find adventure close to home. For those who love music, growing up listing to AM and FM radio, rather than the myriad streaming services of today, a concert is a step back in time, a walk down memory lane.
For me, each song conjures up memories of what I was doing when that song was popular. Many memories are linked to sounds and smells, for example, a particular aroma reminds me of my parents’ house or mom’s cooking. Music is much the same, each song a reminder of people and events long ago.
After a dearth of concerts due to COVID and the busyness of life, our first recent concert, about a month ago, was Lionel Ritchie, with Earth Wind and Fire as the warm-up band. What’s remarkable is that these singers are in their 70s. They may not move like they did 50 years ago, but their voices make up for any arthritis or the aches and pains after life in the fast lane of rock and roll.
Lionel has a long list of hits, dating back to his Commodore days, and he didn’t disappoint. His voice was still easy like Sunday morning and we could have listened to him all night long. Ditto for Earth Wind and Fire, still shining stars.
A few weeks later was the Eagles, both concerts at Ball Arena, formerly the Pepsi Center. Steely Dan was the planned warm-up band for the Eagles but Donald Fagen was instead in the hospital in New York. Sheryl Crow stepped in in grand fashion. She was a youngster in comparison at only 61 years old but played all her many hit songs, reminding us that every day is a winding road.
Then came the Eagles, but with two new band members. Founding members Glenn Frey and Randy Meisner are already gone, a fate hitting many groups from the 60s and 70s who are slowly losing band members.
Replacing them on tour are country star Vince Gill and Deacon Frey, Glenn’s son, who wasn’t even born when his daddy was singing Desperado and Lyin’ Eyes. He filled his father’s musical shoes wonderfully.
Timothy B Schmidt, Joe Walsh, and Don Henley still have their pipes and sang their many hits like they did 50 years ago. They wound up the show at the end of an encore with their iconic Hotel California.
Music has a grip on us, locking in memories from long ago. As they sang, “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.”
Don Henley summed up aging well with this comment, “It’s more fun being 20 in the 70s than 70 in the 20’s”. Perhaps, but age is just a number, and this gang still knows how to take it to the limit yet still take it easy 50 years after they began writing and singing songs.
Tickets, while pricey (what isn’t these days), are readily available on Ticketmaster. It’s possible to get good tickets at the last minute as we did for Lionel Ritchie, rather than planning a concert months in advance only to find out that everyone’s fickle schedules change, as happened with my kids who couldn’t attend at the last minute. It must be the Rocky Mountain way.
For a nostalgic step back in time, enjoy a concert and some music from a bygone era and notice how we all, including the bandmembers, are dancing on the ceiling through the passage of time and age.
Thank you for this apolitical post, Dr. Brian. I listen to the classic vinyl station on Sirius radio in my Subaru Crosstrek. Played often is The Eagles. Living in AZ I was delighted to visit an element of pop culture that has become a destination in itself. “Standing on the corner Winslow Arizona” immediately calls to mind the Classic Rock song Take it Easy, made famous by the Eagles. The town of Winslow has embraced the song and created a park commemorating the song. As a pianist with a trio consisting of two flautists and myself, we embrace the fact that the American melody lingers on in the Great American Songbook—the loosely defined list of significant jazz standards and popular songs composed between the 1920s and the 1950s until the advent of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s and 1960s. Its impact remains with Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, and Paul McCartney, in their versions of a cultural tribute. The Songbook illustrates degrees of human mood, feelings of optimism or pessimism, depth of affection, and solutions to the problems that never can be solved.