The Eagles at Santa Monica Civic, June 1973

On June 21st, 1973, two months after the release of their second album, Desperado, the Eagles played Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, CA.¹ Opening the show was fellow Asylum artist, David Blue. During the course of the concert, the four original band members, Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon, Glenn Frey and Don Henley, performed all of the songs from their latest album in sequence. Two songs were accompanied by a thirteen-piece string section. The concert also featured an appearance by a future Eagle. With a capacity audience full of excited fans, fellow musicians and friends, it was quite an event.

“With interested stars backstage and in the audience (including an unnoticed Joni Mitchell in Section C, row four, seat four), the Asylum recording artists put on a show that will long be remembered.” –Randall Davis, Arcadia Tribune, July 5, 1973

---

_{Ad from the Los Angeles Free Press, June 15, 1973:}

---

_{The Eagles at Santa Monica Civic, June 21, 1973.}

---

The opening act that evening was fellow Asylum artist, David Blue, who also wrote “Outlaw Man” for the Desperado album. A folk-singer, Blue was pals with the likes of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Performing with Blue during his opening set was future Eagle Don Felder, who had recently joined his touring band. It was a gig his friend, Bernie Leadon, had helped him secure. Felder and Leadon had known each other since their days in Gainesville, Florida. Leadon had introduced Felder to Eagles, manager, Irving Azoff. When Blue was looking for a slide and mandolin player for his touring band, Azoff suggested Felder. In his memoir, Felder described what it was like to be on stage at the Civic that night, with his old pal Bernie Leadon watching in the wings:

“Within a few weeks, I was standing on the stage at the Santa Monica Civic Center with David Blue, playing accompaniment, with my old buddy Bernie Leadon standing in the wings watching me, ready to go on with his own band. It felt like a dream come true, Bernie and me on the road together at last, each one of us doing OK. Every night after the gig, we’d hang together like the old days, drinking a few beers. The more I saw of the Eagles, the more they seemed like a really nice bunch of guys. I was happy Bernie had found himself a good group.” –Don Felder, Heaven & Hell: My Life With The Eagles, 1974-2001.

_{David Blue and Don Felder onstage at the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park, August 31, 1973}.²

---

The Concert

For the first half of the concert, the Eagles performed the entire Desperado album in sequence. Allan Parchini of the L.A. Herald-Examiner described it as something audiences had not yet seen since the onset of the country-rock revolution:

“The group, seen frequently here, unfolded a totally new live set which pushes the so-called rock-country ‘revolution’ as far as it has yet gone toward a transformation into a theater-like medium.”

The Eagles set the mood for the concert by using sound effects and performing in front of a western backdrop.

“The Eagles came on with Navajo-type blanket grill cloths on their speakers and a backdrop of an old Western town complete with foothills, general store and a saloon. Various sound effects were used such as crickets, galloping horses and a thunderstorm.” –Randall Davis, Arcadia Tribune, July 5, 1973

The Western backdrop most likely the same one that was used a few months later when the band performed “Doolin-Dalton/Desperado Reprise” on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. The Kirshner show was also filmed at Santa Monica Civic.

---

Robert Hilburn of the L.A. Times felt the payoff of the show was witnessing how well the Eagles worked together as a band:

“Part of the reward of the concert was seeing how well the group works as a unit: the disciplined, purposeful instrumentation (two guitars, bass and drums, with occasional banjo or piano substitutions) and the way the lead vocals are passed from one member of the band to another (sometimes in the same song the way the Band so often does) to bring out just the right shading of the lyric.”

---

Randy with his gold Fender bass at the Santa Monica Civic:

Randy had two lead-singing performances during the show, “Certain Kind Of Fool” and “Tryin’,” plus “Saturday Night” which features his memorable bridge section (“She said tell me, oh tell me.”)

The Desperado section closed with the last two tracks on the album, “Doolin-Dalton (reprise)” and “Desperado (reprise).” As the songs began, the Western backdrop was raised to show a 13-piece string section, which accompanied the band for the finale. Afterward, all the band members except Randy changed into t-shirts and returned to the stage for six more songs.

“After a brief intermission, the Eagles reappeared in funkier garb than the quasi-western outfits they had worn for the first part of the show…” –Allan Parachini, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, June 23, 1973

The closing section of the show mimicked their usual concert set at that time. They played six songs from their first album, the self-titled Eagles, including an extended version of Randy’s “Tryin'” and a lively version of “Earlybird.” Following the last song “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” which brought a standing ovation, they returned to the stage with an encore of “Chug All Night.”

” It may have taken a while, but the Eagles has lived up to those expectations and more. It’s an exciting, rewarding band.” –Hilburn, Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1973.

_{The Eagles returned to the stage, with three clad in t-shirts, for the closing numbers at Santa Monica Civic:}

---

Reviews

Allan Parachini, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, June 23, 1973:

“One of the brightest rays of hope in music today, this group of Eagles–Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon, and Don Henley–offers unparalleled music to audiences increasingly jaded by continuing Hollywood schlock.”

---

Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1973:

“Though the songs can stand independently, they contribute to a general theme that expresses some of the struggles and joys of young men trying to achieve their goals and desires. The songs are set in the Old West but are obviously designed to reflect on current attitudes and lifestyles.”

---

Randall Davis, Arcadia Tribune, July 5, 1973

“These boys have it. They are better than Poco. They’re even better than the Flying Burrito Brothers were and only the Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds ever had this same strong Los Angeles feeling for country-tinged, harmony-flavored rock.”

The show at Santa Monica Civic was the final date of a nearly two-month-long Spring tour. Except for a handful of appearances over July and August 1973, the Eagles would not perform again until a European tour with Neil Young in November. See a full listing of their 1973 concert dates in my Concert Archive.

Notes

1. This was the Eagles’ second appearance at Santa Monica Civic. The first was one year earlier on July 2nd, 1972 when they opened two nights in a row for Procol Harum. They would play the Civic two more times while Randy was in the band.¹ The day before this 1973 concert, on June 20th, the Eagles taped an appearance for ABC’s In Concert series at UCLA’s Royce Hall (the episode aired in August). ↩︎
2. The Eagles played the Schaefer Music Festival on August 1-2, 1973. ↩︎