Review: Eagles returned to Charlotte for one more goodbye, but with a surprise opening act

Has someone ever told you goodbye before, driven off and then circled back to say it one more time?

That’s what the Eagles — one of the legendary rock bands of the last 50 years — did with Charlotte.

In November, just five months ago, they stopped in at the Spectrum Center and played a sold-out show in their “The Long Goodbye” tour. Then they left, but not before lead singer Don Henley teased a potential return.

That return came Saturday night, when the Eagles came back to Charlotte to play almost exactly the same show — a crowd-pleasing, two-hour, 20-song set that featured note-perfect renditions of most of their biggest hits of the 1970s and ‘80s.

“We’re back,” Henley said from the stage, 20 minutes into the show. “We’re glad to be back here. We saw you late last year. We wanted to do two nights for you then. But we couldn’t get this building (for a second night), so we came back. We brought 15 semi tractor-trailer trucks down here from Toronto, where our last gig was.

“It’s good to play for an audience that listens and appreciates. We’ve been playing these songs for you for 52 years now. And in case we don’t see you again, I want to thank you on behalf of the band and the crew, for all your support over the years.”

That was the closest thing the night contained to a farewell speech. Henley is 76 years old now, as are fellow Eagles Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit. This is billed as their “final” tour, but it’s wise to leave a little wiggle room, as Henley did with that “in case” phrasing.

And when you’re playing this well, at this age, no one is going to begrudge the Eagles doing a final-final tour in a couple of years if they want to.

Much like five months ago in Charlotte, this concert also didn’t include “Steely Dan.” In November, that was because bandleader Donald Fagen was suffering from an undisclosed illness, and the Doobie Brothers subbed in as the opener.

Fagen had since gotten better and returned to the stage, and Steely Dan opened for the Eagles only last week. But then another, different health scare followed.

As current Eagle Vince Gill announced at 7:53 p.m. Saturday, just as the show started: “We had an emergency illness in the Steely Dan camp. Donald’s wife is very ill and they couldn’t make it tonight.”

An email had gone out to Eagles ticketholders with that information on Friday — it hadn’t specified who was ill exactly but had said Gill would now open the show. But a fair number of fans hadn’t gotten the message. The guy just behind me was talking about how great Steely Dan was going to be just before the lights dimmed.

The reason Gill made the announcement about Fagen’s wife, though, was that he had become the show’s new opening act. And — no surprise here given that he was a major country music star before joining the Eagles eight years ago — Gill ably performed his own acoustic set. Then he did the entire Eagles set, too. Give that man a bonus.

Joked Gill before his solo set: “I hope you guys will be OK with hearing a little bit of hillbilly music. ... Don (Henley) asked me, “Are you kind of popular in North Carolina?” I said, “Dude, I am huge in North Carolina.”

Although Gill performs hits like “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Take It To The Limit” at every Eagles show, the fact that he was also doing the last-minute acoustic set was a big deal in his own household — so much so that his wife, the Christian singer Amy Grant, decided at the last minute herself to fly down to Charlotte to watch. And although he apologized repeatedly for Steely Dan’s absence, Gill proved to be a superb substitute.

As for the Eagles: I’ll use a line that ESPN’s Jay Bilas often uses about the UNC-Duke basketball rivalry. It always delivers (although, to be fair, it was N.C. State who did all the delivering in the ACC Tournament, which finished up right about the time the Eagles were checking into the “Hotel California,” with N.C. State’s upset win over UNC. I saw several Wolfpack fans happily monitoring the game on their phones).

The Eagles are like that. They always deliver. They were terrific. Highlights included the “Seven Bridges Road” concert opener, with harmonies that sounded as seamless as ever, Deacon Frey (the son of original Eagles member Glenn and uncannily similar musically) performing several of his dad’s old songs and Walsh acting like the crazy Uncle Joe he is on “Life’s Been Good.”

Perhaps I’m not the most objective reviewer of the Eagles, given the first record I ever bought was “Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-75.” I was 12 years old and paid $7.50 for it, at a Kmart in Spartanburg. I’ve been a fan of most of their work ever since, particularly their golden decades of the 1970s and 1980s. There was a point Saturday when Henley was belting out “The Boys of Summer” — which he dedicated to the late Jimmy Buffett — when he hit upon one lyric that stuck with me.

The words:

“Don’t look back, you can never look back.”

But what’s the fun in that?

The Eagles are a nostalgia act, and still a startlingly good one. They make a very good living by looking back, and they also know their audience and its limitations. The announcement “Do not stand if it blocks the view of others” was made repeatedly before the show began.

A number of concerts I’ve been to over the past year don’t have seats set up at all. For this one, most fans were seated around 80% of the time.

The average age of the fans in the building Saturday night ranged in age from about 40 to 70. Lots of reading glasses. Lots of gray hair. My 20-year-old son, a college sophomore who accompanied me to the show, was one of the exceptions. We raised him right, obviously, because the Eagles are among his favorite bands.

As the group launched into “Tequila Sunrise,” his favorite Eagles song, he looked at me, smiled and said: “This is something else!”

And it was.

Eagles’ setlist

1. Seven Bridges Road

2. Take It Easy

3. One of These Nights

4. Lyin’ Eyes

5. Take It to the Limit

6. Witchy Woman

7. Peaceful Easy Feeling

8. Tequila Sunrise

9. In the City

10. I Can’t Tell You Why

11. New Kid in Town

12. Life’s Been Good

13. Already Gone

14. The Boys of Summer

15. Funk #49

16. Life in the Fast Lane

Encores

17. Hotel California

18. Rocky Mountain Way

19. Desperado

20. Heartache Tonight