Music
Don Henley
SSE Hydro, Glasgow
Stuart Morrison
five stars
A TRULY entertaining set of Americana from openers JD and the Straight Shot featured tracks form their new album, Ballyhoo, and nicely warmed up the punters for the main event.
The headliner's show opened with a startlingly abrupt, but powerful, rendition of Seven Bridges Road, with the whole band, all ten of them, plus Henley, harmonising to perfection, before scurrying off to their appointed stations and launching into a blistering Dirty Laundry.
Tracks from his 2015 album, Cass County, formed most of the first half of the show, with his three backing singers taking the parts sung by guest vocalists on the album. Excellent when singing together behind Henley, they really shone when they were each given the chance. Laura Johnston, in particular, tugged at the heartstrings in reprising Trisha Yearwood’s vocal in Words can Break Your Heart, but both Lily Elise for Martina McBride in That Old Flame and Erica Swindell for Dolly Parton in When I Stop Dreaming, were excellent.
A real surprise was a note-for-note cover of Everybody Wants to Rule the World, described by Henley as "particularly apt". There were hits a-plenty, though and a stunning New York Minute stunned the crowd into silence, before Boys of Summer and End of the Innocence brought them to their feet. It was fitting, following Glenn Frey’s untimely death in January, that Eagles material received a substantial airing here. One of These Nights, The Last Resort, a rocking Life in the Fast Lane and of course, Hotel California, were given faithful readings. "It has been a difficult year," Henley told us, before closing proceedings with a beautifully poignant Desperado. Not a dry eye in the house.
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