The Eagles At The Capital Centre, March 1977: A Closer Look

Using screenshots from The History Of The Eagles documentary, as well as photos and videos from other sources, I’m going to tell the story of the Eagles’ two-night stint at the Capital Centre in Largo, MD on March 21st and 22nd, 1977. We’ll follow the band from their departure in Manhattan on the morning of the 21st to their arrival in D.C a few hours later. A soundcheck at the Capital Centre, both concerts, including a separate performance to an empty house, as well as a more in-depth look at the existing concert footage. This is my theory on how the events may have taken place.

New York City to Washington, D.C., March 21st, 1977

Prior to the Capital Centre, the Eagles had played three nights in New York, beginning in Uniondale on the 15th, Madison Square Garden on the 18th, and Rochester on the 19th. They had a day off on the 20th. On the morning of the 21st, the Eagles departed for Washington D.C. The photos below show the band leaving The Drake Hotel in Manhattan, traveling to the airport, then jetting to D.C.:

According to the tour itinerary, the band stayed at the Watergate Hotel in Washington.

The Capital Centre

Built in 1973, the Capital Centre was the home venue for the Washington Bullets basketball team and the Washington Capitals hockey team.

Below: Capital Centre seating chart. Note the blue and red seating areas, which match the images in the photos below.

Soundcheck

Prior to the band’s arrival, the arena is setup for the show. The floor, which is usually a hockey court, is turned into floor seating.

This shot of the stage from the back shows the band’s equipment and Henley’s drum set. The curtain, with the image of the front cover of Hotel California, will be silhouetted behind the band when the title track is played for their opening number.

More soundcheck images from March 21st, 1977.

The images of Randy at the Capital Centre soundcheck show him playing a white Rickenbacker 3001. A different bass than his usual maple Rickenbacker 4001, which was his preferred bass for the Hotel California tour.

Backstage

The band harmonized on a version of “Seven Bridges Road, left, and “Lyin’ Eyes”:

Below: Randy stretches backstage, then talks to Joe as they walk out of the room.

This tracking shot of the band walking to the stage on March 21st contains some outtakes not seen in History Of The Eagles, including a shot of Randy, with beer in hand, doubling back to talk to someone, probably a roadie.

Concerts

The Capital Centre was the fifth stop on the Eagles’ 1977 Hotel California tour, which had kicked off a week earlier in Springfield, Massachusetts. This would be Randy Meisner’s final tour with the band. Read more about his departure here.

Randy performing “Take It To The Limit” at the Capital Centre, March 21, 1977.
Photo by Deborah Becker

The Washington Star included a very detailed review of the first night’s show. Charlie McCollum’s article included all 18 songs that were played in chronological order.

The Capital Centre shows are unique because audiences were treated to a rare performance of “Try And Love Again,” written and sung by Randy for the Hotel California album. The song had also been performed two nights earlier in Rochester. These are the only documented performances of the song. Also performed was “Take It To The Limit,” which Randy “turned into something special with his chilling vocal work,” according to McCollum. Both songs were performed almost back-to-back during the first half of the show, with Glenn Frey singing “Lyin’ Eyes” in between.

Since the Eagles rarely changed their main show for the Hotel California tour, I think it’s safe to assume that the setlists for both nights were similar. The only difference being the encores. The usual encore lineup for the 1977 tour was “Witchy Woman,” “Best Of My Love,” and “Take It Easy,” in that order. Sometimes a song was added or removed. For the Capital Centre, “Best Of My Love was removed the first night and “Tequila Sunrise” was added. For the second night, the band went with their usual encore lineup, as per the concert’s review in The Baltimore Sun (below).

Baltimore Sun review of the second night:

Telscreen

The Capital Centre was the first indoor arena have a large four-sided videos screen called a “Telscreen,” that hung from the ceiling in the middle of the arena.

The Capital Centre’s Telscreen can be seen in these screenshots from History Of The Eagles:

During the concerts, a cameraperson was stationed at either side of the stage, with a third perched in the back of the arena. There was also a crew of people in a control room who decided which shots would be shown on the four screens.

Below: the Telscreen cameramen can be seen filming the band during Randy’s performance of “Take It To The Limit” from the March 21st show (Photo: Deborah Becker)

The Capital Centre owned the rights to the Telscreen footage, however bands could purchase tapes of the concerts. The only stipulation was that they were not allowed to “rebroadcast the concerts in their entirety for commercial purposes, but excerpts could be used for promotional spots, such as commercials or record label demos.” (Billboard, January 31, 1976)

Despite this, bootleg videos of shows made from Telscreen footage have been in circulation over the years, including the Eagles concerts at the Houston Summit and Seattle Kingdome, which also had Telscreens. Perhaps one reason there is no bootleg of both of the Eagles Capital Centre shows is that the band purchased the tapes of the concerts.

Although the Capital Centre concerts were shot in-house, the Eagles also brought along their own camera crew, who followed the band behind-the-scenes. It was also the band’s camera crew who set up scaffolding in the arena on the afternoon of the 22nd and filmed the the band performing to an empty house. Dave Mitchell, who worked at the Capital Centre at the time, recalled that there was also a mobile recording studio truck backstage:

“The day of the second show, scaffolding was set up in front of the stage for a film crew, and a mobile recording studio truck was backstage. They performed a number of songs to an empty house.” (Dave Mitchell, Flickr post, January 17, 2016)

The Eagles performing “Lyin’ Eyes” to an empty house.
Photo by Dave Mitchell (used with permission):

In this shot from the opening of “Rocky Mountain Way” in History Of The Eagles,” you can see the same film crew right in front of the stage:

Altogether, there were three recordings made of the Eagles at the Capital Centre, with the band wearing the same clothing for each performance. Among these recordings are Randy’s performances of “Try And Love Again,” which have never been shown.

Each of the six songs that were included in the bonus concert footage from the History Of The Eagles documentary were spliced together from these three filmed performances (the audio may have been spliced together as well). If you look closely at the performances, you can sometimes see subtle differences from shot to shot.

For example, these screenshots from Randy’s performance of “Take It To The Limit” were taken only seconds apart. However, you can see that Randy’s hair is different in both. In the image on the left, his bangs are full on his forehead, on the right they are parted slightly. He also has a little curl or flip in his hair next to his bass strap.

I believe the image on the left is from March 21st and the right is from March 22nd.

The documentary also provided two separate takes of Randy’s big final note on “Take It To The Limit.”

Glenn’s hair also changes from shot to shot throughout the footage. Below are images from his performance of “Lyin’ Eyes.” If you watch closely, his hair goes from hanging down naturally in the front to being pulled back by sunglasses.

ENCORES

The band backstage between encores. Probably the March 21st show.

The band takes a bow after the encore performance of “Best Of My Love” on March 22nd (the only night the song was performed).

As the band walks out, we get a nice shot of Randy’s amp, with the “Nothing Runs Like A Deere” sticker, and his Rickenbacker bass on the stand.

The Eagles Have Left The Building

Below, the band is hustled away to their limos after the show. Notice Randy in the front in the middle photo:

Meanwhile, Irving Azoff (with back to the camera) and the roadies round up girls in the audience for the after-concert party called “The Third Encore.” The hand-picked attendees were given passes to the party in the form of a special button with “3E” printed on it.

Additional Footage

Most of the footage taken at the Capital Centre went unseen for the next 36 years. However, a video of “Hotel California,” along with some of the backstage footage, including the rehearsal of “Seven Bridges Road,” was shown on the USA Network’s Night Flight program in August 1985. This version of “Hotel California” is somewhat different than the one seen in History Of The Eagles. There are several nice shots of Randy. Like the HOTE concert, this video was also spliced together from different performances. This is most noticeable with Joe’s bandanna, especially during the dueling guitar sequence near the end. Sometimes it’s way up on his forehead, sometimes it’s down closer to his eyes.

“Take It To The Limit”

Lastly, a post about the Eagles’ Capital Centre shows wouldn’t be complete without Randy’s stunning performance of his signature song:

All footage and images from History Of The Eagles are ©Alison Ellwood, Jigsaw Productions, 2013.