22 May 2018, Moda Center, Portland, OR
It was a wild crowd at the Moda Center in Portland last Tuesday night. Boisterous, talking, singing, hollering, on their feet, snapping every moment of the show on their mobile phones, videoing away despite omnipresent burly security men. Rarely did they take the cue to quieten down. At one point Don Henley looked as though all he could do was surrender to it. So he smirked and said, “Must be the coffee.”
27 October 2017, Little Caesars Arena, Detroit, MI
Going all the way to Detroit for 48 hours to see Glenn Frey’s son play with the band his late father had founded 45 years before was an emotional experience. Coming just one month after seeing – and reporting on – the Eagles at the Classic Northwest in Seattle, I elected to hold off posting a report and photos on the Detroit show. But seven months later, as I was writing about the band’s Portland show, I found myself referring back to this night.
It was 40 years ago today that Chicago’s original and most brilliant lead guitarist, songwriter and vocalist, Terry Kath, died here in Los Angeles. He shot himself in the head. It was a horrible, ghastly accident; he thought the gun was unloaded. He was eight days short of his 32nd birthday.
The news came through to me in Sydney as I lay in bed on a summer morning during school holidays in January 1978.
30 September 2017, Safeco Field, Seattle, WA
I was a conscientious objector and then was most contrite. I made a huge deal about not wanting to see the Eagles continue without Glenn Frey, especially in such a colossal and overly expensive way, so I decided to boycott the Classic West Festival that played right in my vicinity in Los Angeles in July. And then on the day I was hopelessly depressed about not being there, on missing what was going to be a historic event…
or: The Interview You Do When You’re Not Doing An Interview
23 July 2017, Dallas, TX
Sitting in the front row at Don Henley’s Runaway Tours Q&A in Dallas the day after his 70th Birthday Concert, I could almost have been at a press conference, except that most of the questions being asked at this fan event were more thoughtful, and for the most part more educated, than anything the average journalist would ask.
22 July 2017, American Airlines Center, Dallas, TX
Don Henley decided to invite us all to his birthday bash and so off to Texas in the midsummer sweltering humidity of Dallas I went. My name is Debbie, after all, so any excuse to do Dallas…
15 July 2017. Dodger Stadium, The Classic West, tonight, starring the Eagles, and I was not there.
My summer concert season has been in full swing and I have a backlog of at least seven reviews and reports to write with a lot of great photos from great shows. And yet here I am on a warm Saturday LA night writing about a show I didn’t even go to. An absence that has caused me much more anguish than I expected. An absence I will regret always.
