Joe Walsh Says Sphere Residency Was Almost a “Deal-Breaker” for the Eagles

Coming off a successful 2024, the Eagles recently announced plans to extend their Las Vegas residency at Sphere into 2025 due to “overwhelming demand.” The concert series allows the rock legends to continue their legacy after a highly successful career spanning multiple decades. However, according to guitarist Joe Walsh, the state-of-the-art venue required some adjustments even for these seasoned pros.

Joe Walsh Says Sphere Residency Was an Adjustment for Band

With timeless hits like “Hotel California” and “Take It Easy,” the Eagles certainly know about touring. However, the additional visual and technical elements that come with the Sphere residency were almost the band’s undoing, Joe Walsh said.

“It’s very different onstage,” Walsh recently told 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.”

Elaborating, the “Life’s Been Good” singer explained that the Sphere has 160,000 speakers behind the screen.

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“No matter where you sit, you have speakers pointing at you, so they don’t have to be really loud,” he said. “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.

Joe Walsh continued, “If we’re aware of that, we can’t play,. 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.”

[RELATED: Vince Gill Talks Eagles, Playing Las Vegas Sphere: “The Most People I’ve Ever Been Ignored By” (Exclusive)]

How Did They Make It Work?

Delayed speakers can make for quite a disorienting onstage experience. Fortunately, the Eagles use special in-ear monitors to ensure they can hear themselves clearly.

“It’s all there, and everybody hears everything at the same time,” Joe Walsh said. “And adjusting to what we do is different than 30 years of touring that we know about.”

Featured image by David Fisher/Shutterstock