Live Review - Eagles, "History of the Eagles" Tour, London O2 Arena (17th June 2014)

The Eagles land in London for the first of several nights at the O2 Arena. Billed as the “History Of The Eagles” tour, evidently to tie in with the rather excellent documentary of the same name, the first half of the show in particular feels more like a Broadway show than your average rock gig. They take you chronologically through the first few years, relating stories and background information, sometimes directly and sometimes rather bizarrely, through filmed on-screen narration.

In theory it starts rather nicely with just Henley and Frey on-stage together in a sitting-on-flight-cases kind of way, but there's addition instrumentation coming from...somewhere. Band members gradually get added, Schmidt, Walsh, and a return to the fold for Bernie Leadon which is lovely to see. Bernie was a member of The Flying Burrito Brothers back in the day, so you can't argue with that. He was on the first four Eagles albums and left the band in a blaze of glory in 1975, pouring a beer over Glenn Frey's head; I can't say I blame him.

Frey's ego precedes him, but he does little on-stage to warrant it. The night seems to belong to Don Henley who is in fine voice, and heavily featured throughout. When Joe Walsh gets a chance to let rip, he brings some fire and energy to otherwise rather sedate proceedings. Not that there's anything wrong with a Eagles concert being relatively sedate, of course.

They're undoubtedly a talented bunch of guys, which is why it's somewhat frustrating to see five additional musicians on-stage with them. It doesn't seem necessary. This is compounded particularly when they let the session guitarist play featured solos; are you really telling me Walsh or Leadon couldn't play something equally worthy?

Leadon is dismissed for the second half of the show, which is overall a bit more raucous, covering ground from Hotel California and The Long Run era, with some solo Joe Walsh thrown in for good measure (although if they're going to dip in to solo territory, surely Henley's “The Boys of Summer” could blow the roof off?). A track from the reunion-era “Hell Freezes Over” record provides an ideal bathroom break. Talking of newer material, it's interesting to note that this “History” show includes nothing from their 2007 effort, “Long Road Out Of Eden” (maybe because it sucks).

A friend of mine commented to me after the show that they appreciate their audiences expectations. I guess this is true, although they pitch the show pretty heavily at the casual fan. It's full of hits which, if you're only going to see the band once, is fine, but they do little to encourage you to come back. The prohibitive ticket prices don't help, but it's also the feeling that they're doing to same thing every night; playing the same songs, telling the same stories, cracking the same jokes. I'm glad I went, but I have no intention of going again.

Henley proclaims during the show that they're not touring because they're bored, they do it because “it's the best flipping job in the world”; looking at the ticket prices it's certainly among the better paid ones. You wish though that everything felt a bit more... real, maybe? It's possible that the documentary has soured my perception of them, but it's hard not to think of Frey and Henley in particular, as calculating businessmen rather than passionate musicians.

I doubt many went home too unhappy though. The last encore brings Leadon back to the stage for a few songs, and they launch into “Take It Easy”; what's not to like? They covered a lot of ground, and they played for ages too. Their voices still blend beautifully. It's one for the bucket list, but time to move on to the next one.