The Eagles Have Landed

Shelley and I spent much of last night pinching ourselves, trying to make sure we weren’t in the middle of a vivid dream.  I’ve been dreaming more than usual since we arrived in Italy, nothing over the top, and I’m not sure it means anything.  But last night, fortunately, was not a dream.

We were in Lucca, Italy, and so were Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, and the rest of the Eagles.  They were playing a concert in a piazza in the center of Lucca, and we were there.  We weren’t actually in the Piazza Napoleone, and couldn’t see the band because of the metal fence placed around the concert venue, but we were sitting at an outdoor café maybe 500 yards from the stage and listening to the Eagles play Lucca.

When we decided to make Lucca our home base, we had no idea that this would be among the experiences we might have.  Sometime during the winter, I was online trying to gather information about Lucca when I came across a reference to the Lucca Summer Festival.  At the time none of the acts had been announced, but there was a rumor that Adele might be playing the festival.  That turned out disappointingly to not be the case, but we were excited when we saw that the Eagles would kick off the month-long, eleven-concert festival while we were going to be here.

I have seen the Eagles in concert twice before, both more than 35 years ago.  The first time was one month into my freshman year in college, back in September of 1972.  The band Yes was playing at the Richmond Coliseum, and several of my new college buddies who were fans of Yes convinced me to tag along.  Yes was very good, but I like the opening act even more, a little known band called The Eagles.  They had put out “Take It Easy” and “Witchy Woman” as singles off their debut album, so I had heard of them, but little did I have any inkling that they were headed for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (or that there would be such a thing as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame).  The second time I saw them they were big enough that the backup band was Jackson Browne (who co-wrote “Take It Easy” with Glenn Frey).

The Lucca Summer Festival is different from any concert venue I’ve ever seen.  It doesn’t take place in a stadium, but in a town square in the middle of the old city.  There is a stage, bleachers, and floor seating in the middle of the piazza.  By the time we arrived in Lucca only standing room tickets were available, and we thought about purchasing them but I was worried about how my knees would hold up standing for that long.  We were curious, though, about how they closed off the piazza to those without tickets as well as if we might be able to hear some of the music, so we headed toward the piazza about 7 p.m. last night.  The concert was scheduled to begin at 9, and when we arrived there was a line waiting for the gates to open.

I had read somewhere about people listening to festival concerts at the cafes surrounding and close to the piazza, and we found a table at bar Astra and had dinner and beers.  We weren’t sure if we would be able to hold our table for two hours or if the café would force us to leave, but by the time it was 8:45 we realized we were good to go.  We ordered two more beers and for dessert had baba, which is sponge cake saturated with rum.  While we were waiting we observed the behavior of the Piazza Napoleone pigeons, who are both more at home and more entitled than their Piazza dell’Anfiteatro brethren.  Several of them hopped up on tables and demanded service.

We weren’t sure how well we would be able to hear the concert, and were hoping that it would drown out the Pit Bull videos being shown inside bar Astra.  At 9:15 we heard a cheer from inside the concert fences, but it was a false alarm, probably a walk across stage by a roadie (the same trick that’s been pulled at every concert I’ve ever attended, perhaps by the same roadie at every one of them).  Five minutes later, we heard back-to-back-to back cheers, and knew that the Eagles had landed.

As we sat there, two thoughts crossed my mind.  The most constant was how cool it was to be sitting at a café in a small city in Italy listening to an Eagles concert, and I may have said that to Shelley after every song.  It’s an experience I would never have imagined when we planned the trip.

I also wondered which of us, the Eagles or me, would have been more surprised had someone told us back in 1972 that I’d see them in concert again 42 years later.  All of them are older than I am, which makes them old enough to be receiving Social Security.  In the 1970s rock and roll was a young person’s business, and it wasn’t clear that given the rock star lifestyle that many rockers would make it to 40.  It was also before the concept of Classic Rock had been developed, so the idea that there would still be a market for any 1970s rock and roll band 40 years later, or that one could be a rocker in one’s 60s, was still incomprehensible.  In 1972 the parallel experience would have been to go to a concert by a pop music star from 1930 such as Rudy Vallee and his Connecticut Yankees.  It’s a sign either of the enduring power of rock and roll or the enduring power of the Baby Boom generation.

What a cool night, both unexpected and memorable!