Not one to be known for underestimating his own importance, Don Henley took in his surroundings Saturday night and acknowledged that the Eagles — the hit-making, money-making, faux-band-in-“Almost Famous”-inspiring Eagles — were. It was not at all what the thousands of people before him came to see.

“We’ll be the house band tonight,” he said, one of nine small-looking men onstage under Sphere’s cavernous lighted dome. ‘Do you remember the old silent black and white films, where the organist played music for the film? That is what we are: we are the organist.”

With two concerts last weekend, the Eagles became the fourth act to play the state-of-the-art venue – following U2, Phish and Dead & Company – just behind the Venetian resort on the Las Vegas Strip. By now you’ve heard about Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot video screen and its seatback haptics, and about the $2 billion that the building’s brains, Madison Square Garden Entertainment Chief Executive James Dolan, spent to bring it all together almost exactly a year ago to bring life.

But if 12 months of TikTok and Instagram clips have arguably softened the initial shock of the place, Henley was right to guess that Sphere visitors still come here to be amazed. On Saturday night, the second of 20 Eagles performances scheduled through January, the people were ooh-ing and aa– before the music even started as they were met upon entry by a massive photorealistic mural that merged dozens of landmarks from the band’s hometown of Los Angeles, including the Chateau Marmont, the Griffith Observatory, the Paramount Pictures gate and of course the Troubadour , where Henley and Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey met in the early 1970s as members of Linda Ronstadt’s road band. (Inevitably, you can now buy Eagles hoodies and backpacks in a meticulous mock-up of the Troubadour at the Venetian.)

The group’s two-hour show provides plenty of extra eye candy, not least a scene set in “In the City,” in which you step out of a kind of grimy panopticon of tenements and float over a green landscape that is depicted in almost lurid shades of green. and blue. “I hope you brought your Dramamine,” Henley said, as the mostly middle-aged crowd laughed loudly. He then joked that next weekend he might have the venue replace the floor seating with armchairs.

The Eagles will play 20 shows at Sphere through January.

(Chloe Weir)

Still, Eagles’ Sphere’s production is certainly a less elaborate visual spectacle than its predecessors, with quite a few songs – ‘One of These Nights’, ‘Witchy Woman’, ‘Lyin’ Eyes’, ‘Tequila Sunrise’, ‘Seven Bridges ‘. Road” – accompanied by variations on a windswept desert vista, a mossy forest or a starry sky. The result was more atmospheric than storytelling: at times you felt like you were watching a band perform in front of the world’s highest-resolution screensaver; other times, like during an underwater ballet on the set of Henley’s “The Boys of Summer,” you wondered if the Eagles had repurposed footage from a lost ’80s perfume commercial.

Which as an approach makes perfect sense. For Sphere, the Eagles’ relatively low-key show shows that the venue can host acts who don’t necessarily want to spend a lot of time and money (as U2 and Dead & Co did) to reinvent the live concert experience. For the Eagles, the show follows a long-standing focus on music that goes beyond everything else — a mentality Henley nodded to as he welcomed the audience by pointing out with genuine-seeming excitement that Sphere is home to 164,000 speakers.

“We’ve been playing these songs for you for 52 years now,” he added, and you understood that, more than the splendor on Sphere’s wraparound screen, the Eagles have actually become the house band for the band’s cherished memories. fans, containing an emotional power that no special effect can ever match.

Indeed, this Vegas residency comes amid a so-called farewell tour that the Eagles launched in late 2023 and which they have vowed to continue to extend as long as audiences show up. After Frey’s death in 2016, the 77-year-old Henley is the only original member left in the group, which also includes bassist Timothy B. Schmit and guitarist Joe Walsh (both Eagles since the mid-’70s) and a few fill-ins. ins for Frey in country star Vince Gill and Frey’s 31-year-old son Deacon. Last week, JD Souther, who co-wrote several of the Eagles’ signature songs, died at the age of 78; Randy Meisner, another founding member known for his lead vocals on “Take It to the Limit,” died last year at the age of 77.

The Eagles’ Sphere residency follows previous performances by U2, Phish and Dead & Company.

(Rich Anger / Atmosphere Entertainment)

Onstage, Henley introduced Deacon Frey as “one of the reasons we’ve been able to keep this legacy alive,” and if the weight of that intro startled the younger musician, you couldn’t tell: Frey’s vocals on “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Take It Easy,” in particular, was warm and soulful, even if it lacked the hint of an edge his late father added to the Eagles’ rich hippie-country rock sound.

As always, the Eagles’ playing was masterful all evening: bright and strumming in ‘New Kid in Town’, tense yet chilled in ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’, extravagantly smooth in ‘Hotel California’, which they opened with just in case anyone came in questioning the band’s wide range of hits. Every time the players lined themselves up to blend their voices in five- or six-part harmony, Sphere’s crystal-clear sound system lets you hear each part both on its own and as part of the whole – just the kind of technology you can get with it sure the breakthrough drew Henley to Vegas (in addition to the chance to charge a premium for tickets).

On Saturday, Henley took a moment at the very end of the show to toast Souther, whom he called “a great man – smart, funny, witty” and who he said “loved a good meal and a good martini, who loved laughed, loved the beautiful girls.” Souther co-wrote the next song, Henley added, which would also be the Eagles’ closer, and as the band performed “Heartache Tonight,” Sphere transformed into a giant jukebox that seemed to draw in the crowd — and the Eagles seemed to pull. – deep inside.

Cool trick. Apt one too.