THE EAGLES - EAGLES TAKE LONG ROAD TO LONDON

EAGLES TAKE LONG ROAD TO LONDON

US band the Eagles performed their first new music in almost three decades to a select London audience last night.

The Californian 70s legends are set to top the UK album charts this weekend with their new album Long Road Out Of Eden, a double CD of fresh songs which has received mixed reviews in the media.

And Glenn Fret, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B Schmit began last night's show at the IndigO2 in Greenwich with four new releases.

But the assembled 2,000 people – a mixture of corporate package-holders, competition winners and fans who had shelled out between £500 and £1,000 to be there – were not disappointed as the band also rolled back the years with some of their biggest hits.

The fifth song of the night got the small crowd at the site of the former Millennium Dome to their feet as the famous strains of Hotel California rang out.

As Frey, one of the band's four lead singers, quipped, the gig was a lot more "intimate" than the connoisseurs of stadium soft-rock are used to, but the crowd appeared to go home happy.

Other hits such as The Long Run, Lyin' Eyes and One of These Nights, were also performed with aplomb, before the band brought the curtain down on the 90-minute gig with a stirring encore of Take It Easy and Desperado.

The band and their promoters have come in for criticism for deciding to make the first airing of their new material outside the US so expensive for regular fans.

But record label Universal insisted the gig was meant to be a private launch of the new album – the first in 28 years.