Eagles Fans Flock to Irvine for Band’s Reunion Tickets

Amy McGlone stood despondently in the parking lot of the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Saturday morning, resigned that she had no hope of getting a ticket for one of the May reunion concerts by the mellow rock band, the Eagles.

The number McGlone had drawn two hours before the box office opened at 9 a.m put her 2,636 spots behind the first ticket-buyer--and each person was allowed to purchase as many as eight tickets.

But three hours later--after a kind soul offered to buy $115 tickets for her, putting her in the fifth row--the Laguna Niguel resident was singing a different tune.

“We got orchestra seats. I’ve got goose bumps,” she gloated to anyone listening. “We’re going in a limo now. I’m so excited.”

With nearly 3,000 people camped out in the Irvine Meadows parking lot as early as 5:45 a.m. and untold numbers trying to buy tickets by phone, all 60,000 tickets for the four planned Eagles shows on May 27, 28, 29 and 31 were gone by 12:30 p.m., along with 15,000 more for a hastily added fifth show on June 1.

While Saturday’s buying frenzy did not approach the intensity of last week’s historic run on tickets for singer Barbra Streisand’s concerts at Anaheim Arena--the first three of which were sold out in 30 minutes--the well-known group’s appeal was nevertheless impressive.

“To sell more than 57,000 tickets in about three hours is incredible,” said Matt Curto, the amphitheater’s general manager. “We’re very pleased to be the facility to start off the Eagles’ reunion tour. We’re all looking forward to it.”

A sixth Southern California show planned for June 2 at the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion in San Bernardino sold more slowly, with a couple hundred seats still left by late Saturday afternoon. That venue holds 35,000 people, 20,000 more than the amphitheater.

Some die-hard Eagles fans, like Lou and Eric Sundeen, both 27, of Carson, and their friend, Gail King, 29, of Irvine, showed up when the amphitheater gates opened at 5:45 a.m. But their early arrival didn’t guarantee them seats.

To keep the crowd from pushing, shoving, and cutting in line, numbers were handed out at random to everyone who arrived before 7 a.m. The Sundeens and King were about 500 spots away when a crowd-control worker shouted through a megaphone, “Ladies and gentleman, all seats are sold. The Eagles are sold out.”

“I guess maybe we should have gone to my office to use the speed-dial phone” in an attempt to secure tickets from the Ticketmaster ticket agency, Lou Sundeen said. Her companions sadly nodded their heads.

Now their only chances to hear “Hotel California” live would be to pay a ticket resale agency twice a ticket’s face value or numb their fingers trying to win radio station call-in contests.

The Eagles fans, whiling away the hours waiting in the cold and, later, bright sunshine, played cards, read romance novels and frantically dialed cellular phones, trying to crash the busy Ticketmaster telephone lines.

Boston native Brenda Cone, 37, who eventually bought the $75 terrace seats that brought her to the amphitheater at 6 a.m., found the festival-like atmosphere amusing.

“This is such a California thing,” Cone said as she watched people strike up conversations with complete strangers and notify worried friends over their cellular phones that they had finally gotten through.

Cone cherishes the T-shirt she still has from an Eagles’ Beantown concert in 1976, which she remembers as a “wonderful night. It was a blast.”

She said she expects the Irvine crowd to be a more “mature and responsible” than the rowdy, beer-drinking, and dope-smoking college kids who packed that show 18 years ago.

“This time,” she said, “it’s to go listen to the music, relive some memories and appreciate some great musicians who I never expected to get back together.”