The Eagles at the Sphere: Come for the visuals; stay for the music

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim, I had to stop for the night

I first saw the Eagles in concert on October 22, 1979. The location was the Chicago Stadium, the old arena where Michael Jordan got his professional basketball start. It was a no-frills show. Nothing but the band up on stage playing their instruments and singing their thirty songs. The only thing unusual was that Jackson Browne joined them onstage for two of his tunes.

It was a typical concert for those days. There weren't any multimedia visuals—those were years away. I don't think anyone seeing that concert could imagine the presentation I saw last Friday night.

There was plenty of hype surrounding the immersive visuals and incredible acoustics at the Sphere in Las Vegas. When it opened with a U2 residency in September of 2023, the hype increased. It’s now sixteen months later. The Eagles have been doing a thirty-two-show residency at the Sphere that began last September. On Friday, I finally had the opportunity to see if the venue lived up to all the hype.

First, you have to get to the place. It was a long walk from the strip. When you finally get to the venue, you do a lot of looking around to find your gate and then your seat section. If you're in one of the upper levels, you'll take an escalator to reach it. The second escalator was one of the scariest sites I’ve ever seen. It was so steep it seemed like it was straight-up vertical—and also very long and crowded. I don't do those very well. Good thing there was an elevator—I don't know why more people didn't take it.

But, when you eventually get to your seat, that’s when the magic begins. The pre-concert visuals include almost every Los Angeles landmark you can imagine. At the edge is a scene of the Pacific Ocean with waves moving in and out of the sand. While you're checking out the sites, the background music is classic rock from contemporaries of the Eagles. Totally appropriate!

As it gets close to the start of the concert, a clock is superimposed on a cloud. It begins the countdown…

5 4 3 2 1 SHOWTIME!!

It begins with the guitar intro to “Hotel California.” Yeah, you've heard the song a thousand times, but you never get tired of those guitars. NEVER!! And along with the music comes the visual effects. I've never seen anything like this in my life —and I can almost guarantee no one else watching this has seen it either. It’s spellbinding.

Next comes “One of These Nights” followed by “Lyin’ Eyes” with more engrossing visuals. It’s so intense that it comes close to overshadowing the music. I told the woman sitting next to me that this was the type of show where you wished you were still taking drugs and at the same time, you were so glad you weren't. It’s an old-time Pink Floyd laser light show on acid! When Don Henley said it took a year to build the graphics, you believed him.

And here’s the thing about the music…the venue is equipped with one hundred sixty thousand speakers and amplifiers. Yes, you read that correctly. 160,000! If you're a regular concert-goer, you most likely have a place or two where you love the acoustics. I have two of those and neither one comes close to what I heard on Friday night. They set up the sound so that everyone could have an almost perfect listening experience no matter where they were seated.

It wouldn't be an Eagles concert review if I didn't talk about the band:

The last time I saw the Eagles in concert was in 2018. It was two years after the death of founding member Glenn Frey. It was originally announced the band was going to shut it down but time helps to heal grief and cynically, so does a lot of money that could be made by going out on the road.

To help replace Frey, they added his son Deacon and country music star Vince Gill. But the gig of 2018 had a strange feel to it. Don Henley played a laid-back role as opposed to being the frontman and leader of his—and yes, the Eagles are his— band. He left that role to Joe Walsh. Joe’s big, crazy-man personality worked fine that night but it’s not what those of us who had seen Eagles in the past were used to or expected.

That completely changed last Friday night. Right from the start, Don Henley took control. His actions let you know that he was in charge of this group and it was his band. Sure, other members got their chance to talk. Joe Walsh went on a sort of funny rambling rant about how being at this concert was going to change our lives for the better. Timothy B. Schmit had a few words telling us how great a guitarist Joe is. He’s right but I wish they gave Tim a little more to do. But Henley told us early on that there would be little said. We were going to get two hours of music and pictures that would make us forget what was going on in the world—surprisingly, the only political comment of the night—and that’s what we got.

If you've ever been to an Eagles concert, you know they are the furthest thing from a jam band. Everything is perfectly structured and perfectly rehearsed. Nothing is improvised. Whether you like that or not, in the environment of the Sphere, it’s what works. The music and vocals exactly match up the visuals.

Word on the street is this tour is the finale for the Eagles. We’ve heard that from plenty of other artists and then they back down on it. We’ll see. No one in the band is over seventy-seven years old. Yeah, they’ve been doing this for more than fifty years, but still, they’re fairly young in the classic rock world. There’s a lot of life left in these guys, either as a band or as solo artists. I don't see it happening. In their own words, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.