Remember When the Eagles Launched an Unlikely Reunion Tour?

The Eagles stunned fans and even themselves when they reunited in 1994. The band regrouped for a reunion tour they humorously titled the Hell Freezes Over Tour that launched on May 27, 1994 — thanks in no small part to a country star.

The Eagles split acrimoniously in 1980 following the interminable and contentious sessions for The Long Run, struggling through the mixing of their Eagles Live record to fulfill a contractual obligation even though they weren't on speaking terms. The band members all went on to varying degrees of success and failure as solo artists, with Don Henley and Glenn Frey scoring the biggest hits of the group. Henley and Frey had repeatedly said that they would never reunite, but that changed toward the end of 1993, when the Eagles' former manager, Irving Azoff, decided to release an Eagles tribute album featuring country artists revisiting the group's biggest hits via his label, Giant Records.

Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles featured covers from Vince Gill, Clint Black, Alan Jackson, Trisha Yearwood and more, and Travis Tritt led the album with his energetic cover of "Take It Easy." When the song became the lead single and the label asked Tritt to film a video, he floated the notion of reuniting the Eagles for the clip — and much to everyone's surprise, they all said yes. On Dec. 6, 1993, Tritt and the Long Run-era Eagles lineup of Henley, Frey, Don Felder, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit assembled on a video set to shoot the clip, which featured Tritt and the band members all laughing and shooting pool.

That shoot went so well that the band began talks to get back together, and the Eagles reunited officially in April of 1994 to film an MTV special. Those tracks became their Hell Freezes Over album, and the band launched their Hell Freezes Over Tour on May 27, 1994, with a gig at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Irvine, Calif.

The album and tour were both hugely successful, re-launching the band to a new generation. The Eagles have continued on in various lineups ever since, surviving both Felder's departure and Frey's death in 2016 to keep performing their iconic songs all over the world. Beginning in 2017, Vince Gill and Glenn Frey's son, Deacon Frey, joined the Eagles lineup, dividing up Frey's vocal and guitar duties on his songs. The younger Frey announced his departure from the Eagles in April of 2022, but the band is continuing to tour with Gill.

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