Eagles bring a nostalgia-laden evening to the BST Festival in Hyde Park

“Our mission tonight is to give you a two-hour vacation” (from the headlines and chaos in the world today) Don Henley announces at the start of the concert in Hyde Park. “They’ll still be here tomorrow.” And that’s a promise they live up to: presenting a nostalgia-laden evening consisting of the band’s greatest hits, the Eagles offer the enthusiastic audience plenty of escapism in a powerful package of prowess.

Indeed, a lot of the band’s timeless hits stem from a different era and conjure a bit of a holiday feel, including Tequila Sunrise with its calm, almost tranquil rhythms, and Henley’s The Boys of Summer, which is greeted with thunderous applause. But this also invokes some more melancholy attitudes – as guitarist Joe Walsh says about halfway through the show, he enjoyed himself a lot more “being 20 in the 70s than being 70 in the 20s”. 

This melancholy is emphasised well by some of the band’s more heart-wrenching songs, such as their Take It to the Limit (that speaks of yearning desire) the brokenhearted Best of My Love. Nevertheless, to keep the upbeat vibes of the opening, there are plenty of easier-going numbers to maintain the listeners’ enthusiasm. In the City brings an insane guitar solo from Walsh and Peaceful Easy Feeling is performed marvellously by Deacon Frey, the late Glenn Frey’s son. 

After 50 years, it’s of course still great to see the Eagles on-stage and doing so well, and, as such, it is hardly surprising that they play it comparatively safe at this point: with crowd-pleaser after crowd-pleaser, these are all of the classics the audience have come to expect. Fittingly, the band finishes off with several songs in the encore, including Rocky Mountain Way, Desperado and, of course, Hotel California – to which the audience immediately jumps up and down in utter euphoria and sings along to every word.

Michael Higgs

For further information and future events visit BST Hyde Park 2022: Eagles’s website here.

Watch the video for the single Hotel California here: