Eagles Join Parade of Acts on Final Tours With a ‘Long Goodbye’

Eagles are touring for the last time. Again.

The band, whose country-tinged rock hits in the 1970s like “Hotel California” and “Life in the Fast Lane” made it one of the biggest-selling acts of all time, announced the Long Goodbye on Thursday, booked as the group’s final tour.

The tour — featuring the core Eagles members Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit, along with Vince Gill and Deacon Frey (whose father was Glenn Frey, an original Eagle) — is set to open at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 7. That is the first of an initial batch of 13 dates mostly on the East Coast through Nov. 17, with Steely Dan as the opening act. In a statement, the Eagles floated the possibility of longer runs at each venue, saying they would “perform as many shows in each market as their audience demands.” The tour is expected to continue into 2025.

As longtime Eagles fans know, this is not the first time the band has signaled a sunset run. Back in 2003, it embarked on a tour called Farewell I. But there is good reason to believe they may be nearing the end. Glenn Frey, one of the group’s founding members, died in 2016. Henley, the only member from its founding in 1971 who is still in the band, is 75; in an appearance before a Congressional committee in 2020 about copyright law, he said he was “in the final chapter of my career.” (Or maybe not. Bob Dylan, who is 82, is on a tour planned into 2024, and the 86-year-old blues guitar hero Buddy Guy is on his own goodbye outing.)

Farewell tours have a way of winding on for years, and can be huge moneymakers. Kiss did its first in 2000 and has had more than a dozen tours since then; its End of the Road Tour started in 2019 and has dates booked through December. Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour began in 2018 and set to to finally conclude this weekend in Sweden, with at least $910 million in ticket sales, according to Billboard.

Among others now on their self-described final tours are Aerosmith, Foreigner, the punk band NOFX and Dead & Company, featuring original members of the Grateful Dead with John Mayer.