If you’re the type of person who visits theme parks for the sudden, intense rush of motion simulators, the Sphere will act like cotton candy on your brain. For those of us who prefer slow, old-fashioned rides and choose to remain in control of our adventures in outer space, I strongly suggest you stay away. Sure, most of the $2 billion dome’s other-worldly graphics don’t induce vertigo or trigger anxiety. But at any moment you may feel like your head is where your feet should be and your toes have touched the top of the wrap-around screen. Strangely enough, when I drag myself out to a concert, I want to focus on the music. I welcome energetic showmanship, dynamic staging, and video supplementation that’s engaging. But I don’t need distractions, pseudo-psychedelic trips, or wondering why I didn’t bring Dramamine.
Night number thirty-five of the Eagles’ “farewell” jaunt to Las Vegas came with many positives. The set design that greeted fans when they found their seats was the best I’ve ever seen. Behind a small stage, the IMAX-type system projected an homage to LA. I don’t know how the Eagles secured the rights to display copyrighted imagery from SoCal institutions, but I assume credit is due to their overlord, Irving Azoff. As insiders know, Azoff took on all comers fifty years ago and chomped them into little pieces, like they were caps on his trademark cigars. In addition to becoming the top power broker in a town full of them, he and his wife, Shelli, have remained loyal to Angeltown. One of the establishments he bought off the chopping block, the Apple Pan, was represented by its red-and-white sign, although I didn’t spot the name of the other eatery he saved, Nate ’n Al’s. It may have gotten lost among the depictions of other colorful icons from the city: Tower Records, Canter’s, Barney’s Beanery, El Coyote, the Beverly Hills Hotel, Guitar Center, Musso & Frank, Dan Tana’s, Pink’s, Capitol Records, the Troubadour, the Cinerama Dome, Whiskey a Go Go, the Hollywood Bowl, Griffith Observatory, and the Hollywood sign. Way off to the side, waves lapped on a white sand beach. Overall, a brilliant artistic tapestry.
I won’t pretend not to harbor any bias. I saw my first Eagles show at the Forum in 1980 and didn’t expect them to repeat that frenetic coke-and-lude-fueled night of fury. That concert reached dazzling heights, but I can’t say for sure; I was just as baked as the band. In later days, I came to crave more than the exact track blueprints the group replicated in its performances. Note for note never fit my idea of a special evening, even if the group nailed each phrase with consummate perfection. Also, the Eagles have always lacked personality, so decades ago they pushed wild Joe Walsh to the front to pump up the crowd’s energy. Their forte is the master craft of record making. Despite that excellence, I’ve never thought of the Eagles as a must-see act.
The Sphere has ample parking, an ultramodern interior concourse, and padded captain seats. Best feature, by far: the sound. It’s the purest I’ve heard in a venue of that size. Unlike basketball arenas or stadiums, I didn’t notice empty space between transmission and reception. Instead of sound waves dissipating into the ethers of a cavernous space, the melodies filled my ears with unprecedented warmth and immediacy.
Shortly after the 8:30 p.m. start time, ethereal sounds accompanied celestial images and the lush acoustic strings of “Hotel California” kindled heartstrings. The all-encompassing illustrations evoked a Disneyland Haunted Mansion vibe, but the band didn’t alter the song’s instantly recognizable patterns. On a sparse platform, the players found their marks. Everything starts and ends with the last original Eagle standing, drummer and occasional guitarist Don Henley. His taut groove paved the way for the other members: guitar hero Joe Walsh, bassist Timothy B. Schmidt, sweet-voiced Vince Gill, Deacon Frey—Glenn’s son—and newcomer Chris Holt, the replacement for ailing veteran Steuart Smith.
After the acrimonious departure of lead guitarist Don Felder in 2001, the Eagles were still a formidable force, in large part due to Felder’s replacement, Steuart Smith, who’d moved over from Henley’s solo band and who matched Felder’s technical wizardry, no small feat. In failing health, Smith departed earlier this year and now the group doesn’t administer the same sharp bite. They were also joined by longtime drummer Scott Crago, Will Hollis on synths and keys, and Michael Thompson on piano. It was hard to tell with certainty, but they all appeared to sing.
Time for a short, honest tribute to the supremely talented Don Henley. For all his intellect, artistic prowess, and dedication to philanthropy, his persona doesn’t play well on stage. He’s overly serious and stiff, and when flashing his considerable wit he comes off as cocky. But it hardly matters. With his generation-defining timbre, earnest delivery, and blue-collar work ethic, he can say and do anything he wants and I’ll pay.
“One of These Nights” followed the first song, brought to life by glamorous Hollywood party and street scenes, with the capable Chris Holt copying the iconic Don Felder solo, although Holt lacked Felder’s (and Smith’s) gusto and dexterity. Let’s face it, at this stage of their historic career, soon to approach sixty years, why take chances? In two hours you get twenty hits—so what if they’re all tunes you’ve heard a thousand times? They did add a flourish or two. For example, “Witchy Woman” started with a drum beat that made me think they were about to launch into Henley’s solo hit “Dirty Laundry.” But the only Henley solo song they broke out was a bland “Boys of Summer.” Predictably, Joe Walsh revived his James Gang smash “Funk #49” and jammed on his own “Rocky Mountain Way.” But did we really need another stale version of “Life’s Been Good”? Of course, it would’ve been better—for me—if Henley had gifted us with one of his own monster singles, “The Heart of the Matter” or “The End of the Innocence.” That would’ve given the patrons a bigger thrill than Walsh’s hackneyed three.
While I’m at it, I would’ve loved to have heard Vince Gill and his rich tenor croon through the Glenn Frey parts handled by Glenn’s son Deacon, although Deacon’s presence and professionalism lent an authentic sense of sentimentality. Also, I would’ve enjoyed one of Gill’s country-rock classics. The powers that be—which I’m guessing is one person named Henley, guided by guru Azoff—probably thought Eagles fans wouldn’t tolerate a Gill song, even one influenced by the Eagles themselves, such as “Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away.”
In their penultimate tune, I forgot about the astronomical ticket prices, trippy presentation, and bizarre distractions of the weird Sphere. The noble Don Henley, clad like a count in solid black, white hair gleaming, stood alone on the stage. Fully locked into the present moment, he offered a tender reading of a mournful “Desperado.” We soared on his velvet voice into the snowless sky and felt the sun that wouldn’t shine. We remembered our pain and hunger, while we knew we, too, weren’t getting any younger. He didn’t rely on camouflage, gimmicks, or illusions to defy gravity, space, or time. Henley’s seminal rasp reminded us all that, while we may no longer be fledglings, our weather-beaten wings still yearn to fly.
Over the years, I’ve found that rock ’n’ rollers play their most inspired shows when riding high on the momentum of a fresh album that stands among their best work. In 2024, Pearl Jam proved the veracity of that statement with their energetic concerts promoting Dark Matter. On August 12, 2025, at YouTube Theater in LA, Counting Crows again validated that perspective with an impassioned performance centered around their new release, Butter Miracle.
YouTube Theater, to my surprise, felt smaller than its 5,000-seat capacity. The distance from the back row on the sole balcony to the floor didn’t seem far. While its plain, gray-walled interior will never get it confused with the Pantages and its ornate Art Deco intricacies or the Shrine Auditorium’s Moorish Revival carvings, the YouTube comes off pristine but not sterile. Of course, it’s better to sit up front. Sidenote on concerts in newer venues: in the second row on the floor, where we sat, we were still twelve feet or more from the stage. A barricade shields a camera well, where bored security guards wait, which precludes the thrill you used to feel when vibrations shot up your elbows as you rested them on the stage base. Yes, technology helps—who doesn’t love upgraded sound systems and large, clear video screens?—but the creaky theaters from yesteryear still exhibit an endangered warmth, charm, and intimacy.
The first tune Counting Crows cranked out, the hard-charging “Spaceman in Tulsa,” should be the biggest smash of 2025. For me, it’s the song of summer. If radio stations ruled the airwaves like they did back in what we older folks call “the day,” with huge impressionable audiences that wielded enormous influence, this single would sell a zillion copies. It’s infectious, with an irresistible melody, and supported by edgy guitar and honeyed harmonies. Butter Miracle is a masterwork, full of catchy tunes lifted by lyrical poetry. It’s the band’s most accessible string of songs since 1996’s Recovering the Satellites.
Singer/songwriter Adam Duritz painted musical images like a performance artist, rather than a raw rock vocalist. He planted himself front and center like a dramatic actor channeling intense emotions from the essence of the deep. He poured his soul into every syllable and failed to strike a false note in the two hours he owned the stage. His spellbinding presence wasn’t due to showmanship, since he didn’t move much, but came from his profound sense of gravity. Much credit goes to the consummate professionals surrounding him for decades: to his left, guitarists David Immerglück and David Bryson, and to his right guitar man Dan Vickrey. In the rear, Jim Bogios pounded the drums, keyboardist Charlie Gillingham tinkled the ivories, and Millard Powers held the bottom down on bass. Most of them are multi-instrumentalists and they all sing. They’re tight, extremely well-rehearsed, and didn’t miss a beat. None of the guitar players will make you forget Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page. But they know just where to place their tasty sharp leads and how to stoke the steam engine for Duritz to drive their bluesy folk-ballad train. It’s a superior demonstration of talent, dedication, and synergy.
“Spaceman” was followed by the title cut of their fourth album, Hard Candy, and a bouncy “Mr. Jones.” Not one to sing a line he can’t believe, Duritz altered his famous sentiment to “I don’t want to be Bob Dylan.” They smoothly balanced five new songs with older faves, like “Omaha,” and an epic thirteen-minute “Rain King,” which rose, fell, and rose again, evolving into a powerful spiritual anthem. Near the end of the evening, Duritz took a seat behind the keys to wail his way through a passionate rendering of “A Long December.”
Overall, a memorable dive into the depths of the Duritz wellspring. I highly recommend any chance to see this band now at its peak. But whether you make it or not, I implore you to get a copy of Butter Miracle. Like comfort food from a bakery, it’ll fill your heart with sweetness and stimulate fond memories. As the opening cut says, “With Love, From A-Z.”
Under perfect circumstances, in a pricey box seat, the preshow hang at the Hollywood Bowl confers a magical vibe. Optimism abounds under a canyon breeze, the sun drops to the sound of wine glass clinks, and the crowd revels in a rare SoCal sense of community. On a normal night, it may prove more memorable than the headliner. But Joni Mitchell’s homecoming concert, on Saturday, October 19, was anything but normal. It was miraculous.
Let’s not mince words. Joni’s lucky to be alive. In her post-aneurysm state, forced to relearn basic living skills, let alone musical abilities, the resumption of her career took on a supernatural quality. Not many can own an audience merely by sitting in a Baroque armchair, like royalty. When the turntable on the stage spun around and Joni’s regal blue gown faced the sea of humanity, the adoration was palpable. Multigenerational love roared like a giant ocean wave.
Never one to succumb to the demands of the “star maker machinery,” Joni made it clear from the start she wouldn’t mindlessly sail through a greatest hits set list curated to please critics. Opening with the superhip “Be Cool,” from 1982’s Wild Things Run Fast, she picked tunes that spoke to her in this special time and place. The instigator of her renaissance, Brandi Carlile, sat by her side in the faint light of a stained-glass lampshade, more emcee than bandleader. The “Joni Jammers” came off more like the Joni Orchestra, with two dozen distinguished members that at various times included Marcus Mumford, Jon Batiste, Annie Lennox, Taylor Goldsmith, Lucius, the twins from Brandi’s band, Phil and Tim Hanseroth, and too many others to list, all perfectionists in their own rights. Carlile expressed the prevailing sentiment when she declared that she was “overjoyed” we were all there.
“Harlem in Havana” came next, the opening cut from Joni’s sixteenth album, 1998’s Taming the Tiger. Hardly vintage, but it kept up the pace. For Joni lovers of a certain age, the title number off Hejira recited the swift passage of our days. It touched Carlile, too, for she, a relative youngster at 43, exclaimed, “We just heard Joni Mitchell sing “Hejira!” Pumped-up listeners screamed, and I felt a surge of grateful disbelief. “Cherokee Louise,” another rarity, worked well, but the better known Hejira single “Coyote” strayed off-track. After that, Joni took us on the sing-along journey of “Carey.” Her voice no longer hits those high notes, but Carlile covered the melody. Joni, like the rest of us, for better and worse, isn’t the person she was back in the day. Like the Pinot Grigio she sipped, her pink is mixed with gray.
Throughout every moment, Joni used her cane to accentuate the beats. With her right arm extended, she tapped out messages in a secret code, a painter sketching contours for rhythmic patterns only she could see. A stream of throaty chortles from Joni punctuated the evening, as if she couldn’t control her glee. That joy spread quickly, row by row, seat by seat.
Until Carlile took control and said “Joni is about to destroy us.” I wouldn’t typically buy into such hyperbole, but it turned into an understatement when the wise matriarch gave her elegiac read of Blue’s “A Case of You.” The world-weary melancholy in Joni’s late-in-life low alto sank her—and my—sadness Mariana Trench deep. That song alone turned the unconscionable price of admission into a bargain. It froze the clock, transported us to the heavenly gates, and reclaimed our lost hope and faith. It transcended the fifty-three years since Blue gave permission for other artists to slice open their veins, bleed into vinyl, and share human feelings without shame.
Brandi Carlile, a brilliant woman with a catalog of beautiful songs, probably hasn’t yet achieved her creative peak. But the gift she has given us, the return of Joni Mitchell, stands as her greatest contribution to culture. As the night air cooled and the sweaters came off seats, we heard “Both Sides Now,” “Raised on Robbery,” “California,” and even Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing.” Fans aged eight to eighty-eight raised their cellphone lights during “Shine,” merging into a unified sense of incandescent celestial energy, and it didn’t seem corny in the least.
When Joni bid goodbye with “Circle Game” and the turntable flipped around on the stage, it brought us back to where we started: to the stardust, to the golden, to the garden, where we once dared to believe. To the canyons, to the ladies, to sunshine hours and beads, filled with forgotten promises of universal love and peace.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Virtually every review of the Rolling Stones’ 2024 Hackney Diamonds tour focused on the band’s age. Yes, it’s a newsworthy point but one that’s already been made—a thousand times. Critics brought it up before the Stones turned thirty. The better question: What does the octogenarian status of the performers mean? To them, to us, to the process of aging.
For me, it delivers one of the few unbroken promises from the 1960s and 1970s. In those decades, the youth of America flirted with ecstasy. Fueled by the psychedelic zeitgeist of colorful times, creative forces inflamed intimations of immortality. As the years peeled away, however, sanguine hopes devolved into selfish personal greed. Instead of the spiritual uprising John Lennon screamed about in “Revolution,” the counterculture regressed to its materialistic mean. Even the Beatles, the flower-power emblem of love and peace, bowed to commercial pressures and infighting. Who would’ve thought one libido-driven blues band from Dartford would prove the power of music, art, and staying true to your dream?
Well, me. Maybe that’s why Stones’ concerts feel like victory laps. The group, as well as their fans, has been maligned since the mid-Seventies. They’re too commercial, the songs sound the same, the songs sound too different, their lyrics don’t cut deep like Bob Dylan’s poetry. Mick Jagger dresses and dances weirdly, can’t sing, mimics himself, has turned into a parody. Keith Richards, an even-money favorite to OD, stood atop everyone’s death pool scratch sheet. Even their jazzy drummer didn’t play standard rock beats. They hadn’t released a good album since Tattoo You in 1981. All of which is a vile batch of disprovable BS.
On July 10, 2024, when the first chords of “Start Me Up” reverberated beneath the fixed-position open-air roof at Sofi Stadium, the hassles of a gargantuan show paid off. If felt like a gold medal ceremony for surviving seven decades.
Without a doubt, a concert at a stadium is the worst fan experience. It’s not the traffic, the hundred bucks to park, or the tantalizing smell of the street vendor hot dogs you know will kill you if you dare take a bite. It’s the trek inside with a zillion zombies crowding your space. It’s the drunken fools in Pit B spilling beer on your shirt and enlisting your toes as their dance floor. Additionally, the reckless dad at the front of the stage who hoists his daughter to his shoulders without regard for the nobodies behind him—or her ears—and the tobacco smoker who doesn’t care if his cancerous cloud wallops your face. It’s like attending a championship soccer match inside a zoo while stuck in the middle of a security line at LAX.
Worse, 75 percent of the fans—probably higher—bought a royally expensive out-of-sight seat. If you’re so inclined, you could drop thousands of dollars to relax in a private suite, but you’re miles away from the action. The only decent spot is the pit, and then you’re stuck in a sea of stinky humanity. Somehow, the Stones transmit the enormous energy it takes to captivate the crowd, despite the unfriendly confines.
At $800 for floor entry, the 2024 Stones concert took on the tone of a guilty pleasure. But the joy that started on the stage soon spread to every inch of the monstrosity called Sofi. It’s like the old joke about divorces; the reason they’re so expensive is, well, because they’re worth it. If I didn’t hear it with my own ears, I wouldn’t believe the band could still sound so crisp, powerful, and bright. I never expected to see Keith and Ronnie Wood so clear-eyed—dare I say sober— locked, but not loaded, into each fleeting note. What they lacked in late-life dexterity, they more than made up for in intensity, something Mick has always excelled at.
During “Wild Horses,” Keith summoned every ounce of mojo from his swollen arthritic digits. Deep lines on his face creased as the song sunk into sentimentality. Over the years, the lyrics have grown rings, like sturdy oak trees. “Let’s do some living after we die,” indeed. Again, the Rolling Stones proved to be masters of design, phrasing, and pacing. There’s all the other musical groups that have been, and ever will be, and then there’s the Rolling Stones. Only the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world can sound loose and tight, raunchy and sweet, at the same time.
New drummer Steve Jordan beat the skins with a vengeance during “Paint It Black,” Southern Rock legend Chuck Leavell put his best foot forward on “Honky Tonk Woman”—literally, on the keyboard, and authentically anchored the melodies. In the closing moments of “Tumbling Dice,” I missed the rumbling beat of the late Charlie Watts but screamed along with Mick when he sang, “Keep on rolling,” aware of its cosmic synchronicity.
“Miss You” always pleases the crowd, but its substitute, “Midnight Rambler,” gave Mick a chance to blow his mouth harp, prance, and sing in a cardiovascular feat elite athletes couldn’t surpass at this year’s Summer Olympics. Who woulda thunk it. Of all the heroes of our youth, the freakin’ Rolling Stones turned out to be the ones to materialize our visions of self-actualization, to manifest the hints of eternity we sensed as denizens of the New Age. If the Stones can perform with such ferocity at age eighty, then reality isn’t restricted to what we perceive. The magic of music presents unlimited possibilities. With universal melodies, we reach the highest vibrational states.
The show recharged my road-weary rock-and-roll battery. The band’s soulful supplications served as a bulwark against my mortality. But it wasn’t only me and my Baby Boomer cronies. More so than for other legacy acts, like Bruce Springsteen, I noticed a vast turnout from all age groups. Thousands of teens, men and women in their twenties and thirties, dwarfed those over sixty and seventy. We heard twenty songs in two hours, enough to satiate, though dozens of favorites were left unplayed.
I know these guys are worth billions and have satisfied every material world longing, but we owe them a message of appreciation: Thanks for being true to yourselves, the tunes, and us. Thank God you, like Dylan Thomas, did not go gently into that good night.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.