Long After Leaving the Nest, These Eagles Still Soar
Author: Tom Zucco
Publication: St. Petersburg Times
Date: March 29, 1993

Maybe it was because Glenn Frey's parents had made the trip from Fort Myers to see the show. Maybe it was because Frey and co-star Joe Walsh are the perfect foils - Frey is slick and polished, Walsh is something straight out of Alice in Wonderland.

Or maybe it was simply because they love their music and, even though they're both 40-something, they don't want to fade into rock history just yet.

This much we know: What happened Saturday night inside the USF Sun Dome, amid the spilled beer and the haze from cigarettes both legal and otherwise, was rock at its best. Frey and Walsh, two former members of the Eagles who went their separate ways 13 years ago, reunited for a 2 1/2-hour performance that had most in the nearly sold-out arena swaying, clapping and dancing in the aisles.

Backed by an 11-member band, including a solid horn section, Frey opened with a sizzling version of Long Hot Summer and never turned down the heat. His  voice was still strong - not quite as forceful as it was 20 years ago, but whose is? And it didn't matter. When he picked up an acoustic guitar and hit the opening chords of Peaceful Easy Feeling, the crowd sang most of the lyrics for him.

After six songs, Walsh ambled onstage wearing jeans, a multicolored jacket and a half-collapsed Mad Hatter top hat that couldn't begin to restrain his tangled mass of blond hair. With his worn face and his glasses askew, he looked like Granny Clampett at Woodstock. But he spoke for a lot of people in  the crowd that night, especially when he sang his classic, Ordinary, Average Guy.

Every Saturday we work in the yard.

Pick up the dog do.

Hope that it's hard.

Neither performer ventured too far off the path. The extended guitar solos were few and restrained. But there's little time to freelance when there's so  much material. Frey and Walsh knew what the crowd wanted, and they delivered:  25 songs from the Eagles and the James Gang (Walsh's former band), plus their  individual hits, from Lyin' Eyes to Walk Away to Desperado to Rocky Mountain  Way.

And through it all, it never seemed as if this was just another show in just another town.

Three times the crowd demanded an encore. And three times Frey and Walsh willingly obliged.

It was that kind of a night.