Eagles soar in harmony

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From their sales (120 million) and their ticket prices (£75 for last night), to their usual venues (Twickenham last Saturday; Cardiff's Millennium Stadium and Glasgow's Hampden Park to come on this 'Farewell' tour which nobody sentient believes actually is a farewell tour) and their set lengths (150 minutes excluding an interval), The Eagles deal only in the grandest of scales.

Their influence is boundless, their importance immense. In the early-Seventies, they merged country's twang with rock's urgency, to popularise country-rock and live lives of excess as Eagles egos spiralled out of control.

Nowadays, things are very different and not merely Frey dedicating Lyin' Eyes to 'my first wife, Plaintiff' or the surprise appearance of new songs, the simple-minded recent single Hole In The World and the infinitely superior Crosby, Stills & Nash-esque No More Cloudy Days, both of which may appear on a long-promised new album.

Age has caught up with these wax-faced multi-millionaires, not least the newly tubby Don Henley, for whom the effort of combining singing with drumming threatened to tip him into coronary territory. For most of the set, Scott Crago actually drummed while Henley caught his breath on gentle percussion.

Meanwhile, Timothy B Schmit displayed a woman's voice trapped in a man's body on I Can't Tell You Why and Joe Walsh may have been slightly slurry, slightly scary and resembled an overgrown baby, but his clown act on Life's Been Good, his wry portrayal of an out-of-touch rocker, raised a chuckle.

More importantly, time has not overly dimmed what once made The Eagles great: their fabulous harmonies and their ability to evoke the mythically empty freeways of California's Pacific coastline.

Hotel California, the song that thinks wine is a spirit, had a new trumpet introduction, but was as majestic and mysterious as ever (what 'colitas' is and why it smells 'warm' must, alas, remain elusive), while the beautiful closer Desperado was as near to heart-felt as these ultra-professionals could ever be.

Admirable, if rarely loveable.

The Eagles