• Hemeroteca.Eagles: last refuge of the old regime
  • 2016.Muere Glenn Frey, singer and guitarist of the Eagles

Only five minutes after the concert began, the audience was already raising their arms with triumphant gestures, howling and kicking looking at the flying saucer-shaped dome of Madison Square Garden , and looking far beyond, at their youth, at their memories , to a memory that seemed to identify the guitar solo length of 'Hotel California' with old dreams and adventures, also with fears and disappointments. With the life. They found in this music the cartography of their own existence.

Don Henley , the high jaw, very few words, said it clearly later when he greeted the audience for the first time after an hour and a half of concert: "We want to offer you something familiar in these uncertain times. Life is like a box of chocolates, but some have a small guide that explains exactly what you will find inside each one of them. We are like that box. "

The Eagles gave their audience what the public expected from the most beloved rock band in the United States. They were as transmitters of their own songs. As mediums. They were interpreted very well, with a crystal clear cleaning note by note, with the precision of a work ethic addict, and an unbeatable sound in which all the elements were intertwined, and there were up to five guitars that had to be balanced, in addition to keyboards, and, suddenly, in 'Wasted time ', an orchestra of 46 musicians , a whole ocean of violins that suddenly emerged behind the group when they lowered a black curtain.

People really enjoyed: exclusively white middle-aged public that by age could perfectly have been conceived one night in 1976 while 'Hotel California' was spinning at 33 revolutions per minute.

It was last Friday, in the first of the three concerts that the Eagles are offering in New York in a small and very special tour of the United States in which they are interpreting their most emblematic album in full: 'Hotel California' is the third best-selling album in history in the US, with more than 26 million copies (42 million worldwide, approximately 400,000 in Spain), surpassed precisely by its 'Greatest hits' (1971-1975) 'and by ' Thriller 'by Michael Jackson .

The 'show' began with a man disguised as the guardsman of a train station that entered the side of the stage when the lights went out. He took a vinyl copy of 'Hotel California' from his bag, put it on a plate, the crowd really roared , then the big curtain that covered the stage was lowered and the group appeared and at night Joe's guitar began to play Walsh , dressed in a frock coat, the blond hair, the insane look.

With its three concerts with all tickets sold, the Eagles will perform for 60,000 people at Madison , an estimated figure that is however only half the capacity that Californians plan to reach in the only two concerts on this tour in Europe: August 29 and 30 at Wembley Stadium in London.

In New York we saw two concerts in one, actually: after interpreting the nine songs of 'Hotel California' in the same order as in the original album, this national emblem of the music of the 70s (formed in 1971, dissolved in 1980 and refurbished in 1994) he took a break and then used to leave none of the attendees dissatisfied. "We're going to touch everything we know," Henley announced.

This exhaustive review of the repertoire of his seven albums was alternating 'country-folk' with cotton harmonies, campero rock and 'hard rock' clasicote: 'Take it easy', 'One of these nights',' Tequila sunrise ',' Love will keep us alive ',' Heartache tonight ',' Desperado ',' The long run '... All punctually accompanied by the orchestra, by a choir of 22 singers and a wind section. The trip reached 32 songs and lasted a total of three hours and 20 minutes.

Everyone in the large band had moments to show off and like each other. Don Henley went from the battery to the electric and acoustic guitars, and his voice endured remarkably until the end . Charismatic and serious man, he contrasts with the eccentric Walsh, an old-school guitarist who likes to leave his mark on every single and every 'riff'. Beside them and bassist Timothy B. Schmit, as carniseco as his pulse with the bass, was also Deacon Frey, son of Eagles co-founder and Henley's artistic partner, Glenn Frey, who died in 2016. In his memory were some of the loudest cheers of the night.

It is very appropriate that it was a concert for nostalgia being that one of the central themes of 'Hotel California', a very ambitious album that was published the year in which the 200th anniversary of US independence was celebrated. His ambiguous lyrics and panoramic guitars were intended to capture both the mystique of the 'American dream' and its shadows, the loss of the innocence of the ' hippie ' generation and the tension between illusions and reality. Issues and feelings of a bittersweet time perhaps now longed for.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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