When a band is together for more than 40 years, it becomes hard to scrape up any more ‘firsts’ to experience together. On Monday, The Eagles dealt with a sad one: the first death in the band, as guitarist Glenn Frey succumbed to illness at age 67.
But four years ago, they had a more triumphant first: their first time to ever perform in the Middle East. April, 2012 witnessed the boys in top form in Dubai. 20,000 people came out to see them, a sell-out show at the Sevens Rugby Stadium.
“It was a very strange day. We had this epic sandstorm that almost thrashed the entire venue in the morning, and around lunch time, we weren’t sure if we’d be able to pull off the show that night,” said Thomas Ovesen. At the time, Ovesen was the head of concert organisers, Done Events; he’s now the CEO of 117Live.
Miraculously, Eagles night turned out to be “one of the calmest” possible in Dubai, as the wind subsided for the duration of the gig.
“I think it was [drummer and co-lead vocalist] Don Henley who opened the show by saying, ‘It has taken us a long time to make it here, but from one desert to the other…’,” Ovesen said, recalling the Texas native’s words. “Everyone knew it that it was probably the last time they would see the band on a tour.”
Frey is survived by a wife and three kids, and had brought his family down with him for a mini-vacation.
“They were here for just over two days. He just seemed like an extremely nice person. The band members themselves, obviously, have gone through phases where they couldn’t work together, and then when they came here, you could tell they all — and particularly Glenn Frey and Don Henley — had their own solo projects, but it was always about [the Eagles],” said Ovesen.
“I think Glenn Frey referred to the Eagles as the mother ship. So he would go off into the pod of his solo project, but he would always return to the mother ship.”
During their Dubai stay, the guys stayed on different floors of the same hotel. But keeping separate schedules meant little to their camaraderie on stage.
“It was clear that they wanted to perform together. They didn’t spend a lot of time together offstage. They hung out in different restaurants with their own family members. But fifteen minutes before show time, they all gathered up outside their individual dressing rooms,” he recalled.
“And then they went on stage, and it was like that’s what they always do. They’re the tightest band.”
Despite six No. 1 albums, six Grammy Awards, and a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the band came offstage with modesty on their tongues.
“They were just hanging around, asking us if we thought the show was great — you could tell they were sincerely interested in the feedback from the audience,” said Ovesen.
“And then they split up, went into their individual cars, back to their individual floors in the hotel, and probably didn’t see each other again until they went on stage in the next city.”
Though the band’s last album, Long Road out of Eden, was released in 2007 (it was their first since The Long Run in 1979), they released a documentary titled History of the Eagles in 2013. They went on a North American and European tour to support it, and Henley said it “could very well be our last”. They wrapped up in July of last year.
“I’m in my early 40s, so I think I was probably more of a Rolling Stones fan,” admitted Ovesen. “Until I got into the music industry, and I realised how the Eagles had taken that country and folk music into the mainstream, and what they had meant to music.”
