 by Roger Catlin, The Hartford Courant   "Hartford, we're here," Glenn Frey said, two songs into the Eagles' three hour show, 27 song show at the Meadows Music Theatre Saturday. "The band that wouldn't get back together - now the band that won't go away." The Eagles have been playing pretty much the same comeback set for two years now. But while fans here balked at the $96 top price for a 1994 show at the Hartford Civic Center that was ultimately cancelled, just under 16,000 showed up Saturday, paying $79 and $39 to attend a benefit of Don Henley's beloved Walden Woods. Henley had almost less to say about his cause than Frey. But he had an excuse - a raw throat that made his sweet, raspy vocals sound raspier than usual. It is telling that the Eagles - who also include Joe Walsh, Don Felder, and Timothy B. Schmidt, accompanied by four support musicians - no longer talk on stage about resuming or continuing the band. Indeed, the major change in their set is to throw out all but one of the four new songs they recorded on their otherwise live "Hell Freezes Over" album. Only "Love Will Keep Us Alive" was kept in, since it was a moderate hit on adult contemporary radio - and gives Schmidt his only other lead vocal than "I Can't Tell You Why". The Eagles have faced the fact that oldies are the reason people have been paying crazy prices to see them. And to accomodate them, they have added another - "Peaceful Easy Feelin'" - to the favorites they have already been performing. It was a smooth, crowd-pleasing show, to be sure. By now the band is tight, but because Hartford was just the fifth show this year, there was still a bit of spark in their performance. The relatively small crowd - kept down by cool weather and a drizzle - got to marvel at the multitalents of the band, especially in the second half of the show, when they reeled out solo hits, from Henley's "Boys of Summer" to Frey's "You Belong To The City", to ever-goofy Joe Walsh's "Funk 49", oddly the first song to get the crown on it's feet. Some my regret not attending Saturday. It may have not been an event like the last time the band played Connecticut - drawing
69,000 to the Yale Bowl in 1980 in what is still the state's biggest rock show. But it may have been a last chance. It appears the
Eagles' long run is about to end once more.
The song list for the Eagles Saturday was: First set:
Second Set:
Encores:
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