Living Legends II: Eagles @ Twickehnam 17 June 2006

I’ve blogged before about the benefits of going to see legendary performers.

Well, yesterday The Eagles were back in town (London, Twickenham Stadium) — having resurfaced from the grave, or hell, or wherever they’ve been. As a longtime fan, I of course relished the opportunity to see the impossible.

Well, what can I write about perfection? Only this: By the middle of their second set (in their admirably long and stunning performance: hit after hit after spectacular hit, performed flawlessly, and even a couple of great tunes “written in this century,” as they noted wryly), as they ramped up from mellow country rock to driving wailing rock, Joe Walsh, Don Henley, and most of the others even smiled, and finally appeared to be enjoying themselves! That made a big difference: perfection without an element of fun is no fun.

And the crowd thought so too, rising to their feet increasingly as the performances loosened up. Multiple encores, Hotel California with all those guitar parts and vocals that you would imagine could only be done in a studio with multiple recording sessions, but of course The Eagles have all the lead guitarists and lead singers who can simply do it live (no wonder they split up: what a fearsome array of headlining talent to keep bottled up together!). And finally, closing with Deperados, with mobile phone/cameras glowing in the air to replace the matches and lighters of last century… ah…

Earlier in the evening, in a posting from ‘Nemesis to go’ the following interesting observation was made:

A little earlier, I passed Twickenham rugby stadium on my bicycle.

Some sort of event was obviously going on. Crowds of respectable middle-aged people in easy-wear casual gear were strolling casually up to the entrance gates. Families had obviously made an occasion of it: mums and dads were shepherding well-scrubbed children along, to the indulgent smiles of fellow attendees. It was all very nice and…well, respectable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much pastel-coloured leisurewear in one place in my life.

There were no posters up; I could see no information to tell me what was going on. I could hear some smooth, singalong-y music coming out of the stadium: it had a vaguely gospel feel. I assumed that some sort of religious gathering was happening. The stadium is often used for big Jehovah’s Witnesses events – this didn’t look like one of those (for a start, nobody was wearing a suit), but I thought perhaps I’d stumbled on the annual convention of the Christian Family Church Of Niceness, or something.

Well, as one of the ‘respectable middle-aged people’ in the crowd, I can’t say that Nemesis’ description was far off – but hey, we had a great time!

UPDATE: some other reviews in, all ecstatic unless noted otherwise:

• Aprosexic (“one of the best gigs ever”)
• Kitchy (“brilliant”)
• orange_angel_kc (“I am sooooooooooooo happy!”)
• Is this the world? (“a fairly lacklustre affair”)
• Damian Oxborough (“incredibly polished”)
• James Goodhead (“some of the finest minutes of live muisic I have ever heard”)
• Marc Lee in The Telegraph (“Eagles soar to rapt applause”)

Technorati Tags: eagles, concert, review, twickenham

(Hmm… keep meaning to do reviews like this using the Structured Blogging WordPress plugin – but I’ve tried it before and not liked it… more on that later)