Joe Walsh has detailed the challenges that come with playing at the Las Vegas Sphere, including one issue that was nearly a “deal-breaker” for the Eagles.
The beloved band began their residency at the state-of-the-art venue in September. The dazzling performances – which are part of the Eagles ongoing farewell tour – have added another chapter to the group’s incredible legacy. Still, the Eagles were forced to adjust in order to make the Sphere shows work.
“It’s very different onstage,” Walsh admitted during a recent conversation with Rolling Stone. “There are some non-musical things that we have to put up with to make it all work, and we’re OK with that. We’ve had to learn how to do it. At first it was maybe a deal-breaker, but we’ve learned how to do it.”
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Probed as to what the biggest technical issue was, Walsh was forthright.
“On the Sphere there’s 160,000 speakers behind the screen,” he explained. “No matter where you sit, you have speakers pointing at you, so they don’t have to be really loud. To do that, computers have to delay it a little bit from what we’re doing. Because it goes to everywhere in the Sphere and comes out of these speakers all at the same time, there’s a delay there to process that.”
“If we’re aware of that, we can’t play,” Walsh continued. “It’s like singing the national anthem at a baseball stadium. [The sound from] right field comes right back at you, and then left field comes back at you, and then center field. There’s three of you and you don’t know which one you are.”
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To combat the issue, the Eagles enlisted special in-ear monitors, ensuring that the band hears itself and nothing else.
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“It’s all there, and everybody hears everything at the same time,” Walsh noted. “And adjusting to what we do is different than 30 years of touring that we know about.”
Eagles will continue performing weekends at the Sphere through 2025. The final concert of the residency was originally scheduled for late January, but the band has extended their stay due to popular demand. Their closing gig is now set for March 15.