Concert review lacked that peaceful easy feelin’

HAVING read your review of The Eagles at Lansdowne Road (Irish Examiner, June 12), I wondered if your reviewer and I were not at the same concert.

His sweeping generalisations included this: “You also realised how similar many of the songs sounded: copycat introductions, standard issue harmonies and “deep” lyrics about being rich and unhappy”.

Classics such as Take it Easy, Peaceful Easy Feelin’, Tequila Sunrise, Heartache Tonight (need I go on?) do not display any pretensions about deep lyrics, and certainly not about being rich and unhappy. Perhaps your reviewer was talking about Hotel California and Life in the Fast Lane, neither of which has a copycat introduction. Hotel California opened with a trumpet.

How anybody could see a copycat introduction to Hotel California (double-necked guitar) and Desperado (piano) is beyond comprehension. And as for “standard-issue harmonies”, they would be standard for the Eagles, but vocal gymnastics to the rest of us.

The bands's members are “cynical pensioners” (they are actually all under 60) taking a “desultory gallop through its extensive list of greatest hits”.

It was anything but a gallop. What your reviewer failed to note was that the band hit the stage at 8pm and left at 11pm, with a 25-minute break. That was two hours and 35 minutes of accomplished playing, hit after hit, not a note out of place.

Apparently “the highlights occurred when the solo hits were trotted out and individual band members almost looked like they had fun — without the others”.

Many of these solo hits have been incorporated into The Eagle's gigs for many years now — Life’s Been Good, Joe Walsh’s 1978 hit, appeared on The Eagles Live album of 1980. If they were highlights, then your reviewer obviously slept through the roar that greeted Lyin’ Eyes, Take It To The Limit, Heartache Tonight and all the songs I have already mentioned, especially Hotel California.

On a final point, the band have no stage presence (apparently because of their “notorious antipathy towards each other”). They introduced many of the songs with a joke and one of the biggest cheers of the night came when Don Henley expressed a wish that the next US administration would do a better job that the current one.

Perhaps your reviewer was asleep for that, too. The musicianship was outstanding (Joe Walsh on guitar in particular), the harmonies were perfect and the set was long. Yes, they are doing it for money — but when it’s that good, who cares? I, for one, enjoyed every single moment and considered it real value for my money.

But I take offence to someone doing a review without mentioning a single song title.

Just listen to the music, man.

David Lenihan

Carrignavar

Co Cork