Sunday, November 2, 2025
Wow! What a concert!
I’ll start by admitting that I am not a huge music fan, I don’t go to shows frequently, and I have never sung or truly played an instrument. With that disclosure made, The Eagles have been among my favorite musicians as long as I can remember knowing what music was. That is to say: forever.
To see them perform in my lifetime is a treat. And to do it in 2025 is incredible because, for a good portion of my life, hell hadn’t yet frozen over.
For personal reasons, I almost looked to sell the tickets and cancel our trip — so deciding against that precaution made hearing and seeing them at the Sphere in Las Vegas last night that much sweeter. The show and the music were so impactful, that much of these thoughts were written in various texts in the moments after my wife and I walked back to our hotel to have a late dinner.
Holy smokes this performance was amazing.
It opened with Don Henley promising two hours of some of the audience’s favorite songs. To this end, I think they performed only one or two of my top 5 (I always have a hard time picking my favorites) and it was still beyond amazing.
If a video is made from the Eagles’ Sphere residency, I am purchasing it to watch over and over.
Here then are my observations and recollections from the concert:
1) The show was an unbelievable experience. As noted, the Eagles are a top-5 music performer for me (and probably top 3 with the Doors and Paul Simon).
2) The Eagles residency at the Sphere obviously doesn’t include the late Glen Frey. In a poignant nod, his son Deacon has joined the band. And, if you close your eyes, Deacon Frey would make you swear that your were listening to his dad on stage circa y2k.
3) Henley is still amazing.
4) Joe Walsh has lost quite a bit off his fastball (voice), but he still has an excellent slider (guitar).
5) Also not a single person gave an expletive that his voice is mush. He fronted Life’s Been Good and the venue was absolutely jumping.
6) I’m not sure the Eagles can carry a credible 2-2.5-hour show for 19,000 people in 2025 alone. Vince Gill was 100% glue. Imagine dropping Connor McDavid into the Pittsburgh Penguins lineup with Crosby and Malkin. That’s how much Vince Gill added to the Eagles.
7) They could have played another dozen songs and those also would have been hits. Theirs is an impressively deep catalog …
8) … especially considering what they did on their own as solo artists. In addition to Life’s Been Good (which Walsh said “all of it’s true”), they performed Heley’s Boys of Summer and End of the Innocence.
9) To emphasize the remarkable depth of their catalog, Hotel California is one of the most-recognizable songs of all time. I would imagine there were some who attended the concert for that piece alone. Well, the Eagles performed it right out of the gate. Boom. First song of the night.
10) Jumping back to End of the Innocence, during this performance, Henley modified the lyrics of this overtly anti-Reagan song. Perhaps this is just a side note, but there is a contrast that really stood out to me. This concert was performed on the night the Dodgers defeated the Blue Jays for the World Series championship — and the crowd seemed to freely blurt out references to the game (“Go Dodgers!” Or “Go Jays!”) in quiet moments between songs. The final score was even announced from the stage. In this context, it felt notable that a crowd so engaged in such interjections throughout the night let Henley’s revision to the song passed without reaction. Granted, the change was small, even easy to miss. When Henley got to the line of “… we’re beating plowshares into swords for this tired old man we elected king…” he aimed at President Trump with “… for this mean old man we elected king…”
11) The Sphere is a great venue. If you see something there, be warned about potential motion sickness, but the visuals are insane.
