Don Henley, not a guy known for underestimating his own importance, surveyed his surroundings Saturday night and acknowledged that the Eagles (the fake band that made hits and money on “Almost Famous”) weren't exactly what the thousands of people before him had come to see.
“We’re the house band tonight,” he said, one of nine diminutive-looking men on stage beneath Sphere’s cavernous, illuminated dome. “Remember the old black-and-white silent movies, where the organist played the music for the movie? That’s what we are: We’re the organist.”
With two shows over the past weekend, the Eagles became the fourth act to play the state-of-the-art venue, following U2, Phish and Dead & Company, just behind the Venetian resort on the Las Vegas Strip; by now, you’ve heard about the Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot video screen and the haptic technology in its seatbacks and the $2 billion that the building’s mastermind, Madison Square Garden Entertainment CEO James Dolan, spent to bring it all to life almost exactly a year ago.
But if 12 months of TikTok and Instagram videos have possibly diminished the venue's initial impact, Henley was right in assuming that Sphere-goers still come here to be amazed. On Saturday night, the second of 20 Eagles concerts scheduled through January, people were Oh-ing and Ah, yes.-ing before the music even started, as upon entering they were greeted by a massive photorealistic mural that collected dozens of iconic landmarks from the band’s hometown of Los Angeles, including the Chateau Marmont, Griffith Observatory, the gate to Paramount Pictures and, of course, the Troubadour, where Henley and Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey met in the early ’70s as members of Linda Ronstadt’s touring band. (Inevitably, a painstaking mock-up of the Troubadour inside the Venetian is now where you can buy Eagles sweatshirts and backpacks.)
The group’s two-hour show offers plenty more eye candy, notably a scene set to “In the City” in which you soar from a sort of panopticon of a grimy tenement building to fly over a verdant landscape rendered in almost eerie shades of green and blue. “I hope you brought your Dramamine,” Henley said, eliciting big laughs from the mostly middle-aged crowd. He then joked that next weekend he might have the venue replace the floor seating with recliners.
The Eagles are scheduled to perform 20 shows at Sphere through January.
(Chloe Weir)
The Eagles’ Sphere output, however, is decidedly less of a visual spectacle than its predecessors, with quite a few songs—“One of These Nights,” “Witchy Woman,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “Seven Bridges Road”—set to variations on a windswept desert vista, a moss-covered forest, or a starry night sky. The result was more mood-building than storytelling: At times you felt like you were watching a band playing in front of the world’s highest-resolution screensaver; other times, as during an underwater ballet set to Henley’s “The Boys of Summer,” you wondered if the Eagles had repurposed footage from some lost 1980s perfume ad.
Which, as an approach, makes perfect sense. For Sphere, the Eagles’ relatively low-key show proves that the venue can accommodate acts who don’t necessarily want to spend a ton of time and money (as U2 and Dead & Co did) to reinvent the live concert experience. For the Eagles, the show is in keeping with a long-established focus on music above all else, a mindset Henley referenced when he welcomed the crowd by pointing out with seemingly genuine enthusiasm that Sphere houses 164,000 speakers.
“We've been playing these songs for you for 52 years,” he added, and you understood that, more than the splendor on the Sphere's surround screen, what has truly made the Eagles the house band are fans' cherished memories of the band, which contain an emotional power that no special effects could match.
In fact, this Las Vegas residency comes amid a purported farewell tour that the Eagles launched in late 2023 and have vowed to keep extending as long as audiences show up. Following Frey’s death in 2016, Henley, 77, is the only original member still in the group, which also includes bassist Timothy B. Schmit and guitarist Joe Walsh (both Eagles since the mid-’70s) and a pair of Frey replacements: country star Vince Gill and Frey’s son, Deacon, 31. Last week, J.D. Souther, who co-wrote several of the Eagles’ signature tunes, died at age 78; Randy Meisner, another founder known for his lead vocals on “Take It to the Limit,” died last year at 77.
The Eagles' residency at Sphere follows previous shows by U2, Phish and Dead & Company.
(Rich Fury / Sphere Entertainment)
Onstage, Henley introduced Deacon Frey as “one of the reasons we’ve been able to keep this legacy alive,” and if the weight of that introduction scared the younger musician, it didn’t show: Frey’s singing on “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and especially “Take It Easy” was warm and soulful, even if it lacked the avant-garde edge his late father brought to the Eagles’ rich, hippie country-rock sound.
As always, the Eagles' playing was masterful throughout the evening: crisp and groovy on “New Kid in Town,” taut but calm on “I Can't Tell You Why,” extravagantly agile on “Hotel California,” the set-opener in case anyone doubted the band's breadth of hits. Whenever the musicians lined up to blend their voices in five- or six-part harmony, the Sphere's crystal-clear sound system allowed each part to be heard on its own and as a component of the whole—just the kind of technological advancement that no doubt drew Henley to Vegas (and the chance to command a premium for tickets).
On Saturday, Henley took a minute at the end of the show to toast Souther, whom he called “a great man — smart, funny, witty” and who he said “loved a good meal and a good martini, loved to laugh, loved pretty girls.” Souther co-wrote the next song, Henley added, which would also be the Eagles’ closing song, and as the band revved up “Heartache Tonight,” Sphere transformed into a giant jukebox that seemed to draw the audience — and seemed to draw the Eagles — deeper into it.
Nice trick. Very appropriate.
