Eagles Dig Deep for Summer Tour
Author: G. Brown
Publication: Denver Post
Date: May 9, 2003
Abstract: Quickie interview that talks mostly about Hole in the World and the upcoming tour.
The Eagles' summer concert outing, whimsically billed as the 'Farewell I' tour, kicks off tonight in Richmond, Va. Don Henley, the Eagles' drummer/singer, says he expects to perform favorites from throughout the band's history - and a new song that was recently recorded.
Those sessions should result soon in the Eagles' first full-length studio album of new material since 1979's 'The Long Run.'
The four-month tour stops at the Pepsi Center on June 24; tickets go on sale through Ticketmaster on Saturday. (See Ticket Source on Page 11FF for details).
Earlier this week, Henley was in scramble mode at his home in the Dallas area, on his way to an outing with his daughter before hopping on a flight to Los Angeles to shoot the new song's accompanying video. He spoke with The Denver Post while packing his bags.
Question: What's the title of the new song?
Answer: 'Hole In The World' - not 'Ho'; 'Hole.' I guess you could call it an uptempo ballad. The track is very sparse. It's really a vocal record - there's four- and five-part harmony on there. I hate to say this, but it's almost like a Boyz II Men kind of thing. Some people have compared it to 'Seven Bridges Road' with a beat.
It's something that I started writing shortly after 9/11. It doesn't address that tragedy directly, but you might say that it's a plea for peace and understanding. People will be able to take it in any number of ways. But it's all about the vocals.
It's not indicative of what the album is going to be like. The album will have an infinite variety of stuff on it. This is simply one of the songs that's in the mix. And it happens to be the first thing we finished!
Q: For the video, will you avail yourself of water, fire, thighs and the other visual delights available to the post-MTV generation of musicians?
A: There are no naked girls, sorry. No choreography. Just four aging rock stars in a recording studio. It'll be fairly simple, more like a documentary (of) the recording process, us singing and playing the new song.
Q: Will there be any other new material in the live set?
A: We're just going to do this song. We don't want to give too much of the store away, because it will be recorded and bootlegged, and it will be downloaded. So we thought, 'Well, we can give them one; that's OK.' I think we're going to release it as a single on a DVD with the video.
Record companies, in their infinite wisdom, stopped putting out singles a few years ago - their reasoning was that it detracted from album sales somehow. And now there's a great clamoring both from the consumers and distributors, because singles bring people into the record stores and because albums are so (bad) these days that there's usually not more than one good song on them anyway, so people will buy that. So there's a great demand for record companies to start issuing singles again.
But it can't just be one song - you have to put a video or two songs on there. So that's why we're rushing to make the video. We may experiment and put the single out there ourselves, without having it released on a major label, and see what happens. It would increase our bargaining power. And give other people ideas.
Q: The Eagles have sold roughly 120 million albums worldwide. Can whatever you come up with hold up to the standard of your catalog?
A: It may be impossible. People may be more attached to the past, in terms of how they connect with our hits. New music may not mean as much to them. On the other hand, it all comes down to the songwriting. I think it's in the power of the song, and if we write a few good ones, we'll be OK.
I don't know if we're going to sell numbers like we did before, because I don't know where we fit in at commercial radio formats these days or exactly who's gong to play us. But Fleetwood Mac's out there (with a new album and tour), and it's going to be interesting to see how that does - we're kind of keeping an eye on that.
Q: The Eagles' most recent Denver appearance was at the grand opening of Invesco Field at Mile High in August 2001. Aren't you glad to be playing indoors this time around?
A: We had a very bad experience there in your new stadium. We used the best sound company in the world, the one that most rock 'n' roll acts use, the Clair Brothers. That stadium is just built in such a way a There's no way we could have known that there was a dead spot in the back. We tried our best to get around it, but the fact is that some people couldn't hear.
We refunded an enormous amount of money to people. We tried to make it right with all our fans, and we certainly would have appreciated it if the stadium had borne some of the responsibility, but they didn't take any.
We won't be playing any more stadiums - ever. It's just not a good venue for music. We much prefer playing indoors, actually. You don't get rained on; you don't get cold. The crowd can feed off itself - the applause and the cheering rattles around the building, and it creates a nice aura of excitement. And you can use your lights.
I hate playing outdoors in the summertime, because we've got literally hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in lighting equipment, and it doesn't get dark until the show's half over.
Q: The Eagles were last on the road in 2002. Besides the new song, how will the 'Farewell I' tour differ?
A: We're going to dig out a couple of gems from the vault that we haven't performed in years, and do those as well. I'm not going to tell you what they are.
Q: Puh-leeeze?
A: Uh, I've got a plane to catch.
