Haven’t had that spirit here since 1969

“I think a lot of our songs were memos to ourselves,” Don Henley once said of the Eagles’ music. In truth, the best of those ‘70s tunes were memos to an entire generation, and often they were warnings about the slipping away of ‘60s idealism in a world rapidly turning more cynical and materialistic.

In the first of 10 scheduled local arena concerts over the next few weeks, the Eagles, led by co-founders Henley and Glenn Frey, mixed craft and commentary in a passion-filled performance Wednesday at the Arrowhead Pond that lived up to the best of that old idealism.

Time isn’t usually on the side of rock bands. Few groups are as rewarding three decades into a career as they were during their imaginative early years.

And it has been tempting at various points since the Eagles reunited 11 years ago to dismiss the L.A. band. It hasn’t given us even one album of new songs in all that time, and it sometimes seemed to just be going through the motions in its late-’90s concerts.

But it became quickly apparent during Wednesday’s more than 2 1/2 -hour set that the Eagles have been rejuvenated in the five years since they last played here.

The band, which also consists of guitarist Joe Walsh and bassist Timothy B. Schmit, delivered the songs with such conviction -- and sometimes joy -- that even the oldest tunes felt gloriously alive again.

With the help of several support musicians, including standout guitarist Steuart Smith, two keyboardists and four horn players, the Eagles dressed the songs in fuller, more encompassing arrangements and applied vocals that felt wonderfully inspired. The quartet’s harmonies may even be more identified today with Southern California than those of the Beach Boys.

From the beginning of their career, the Eagles, who have gone through numerous personnel shifts, were masters of the pop form -- writing songs (or sometimes finding outside material) so catchy and radio-friendly that many critics dismissed them as too “laid back.”

While the Eagles’ first two albums were more polite and polished than the works of many tougher-edged rock groups, its leisurely country-rock sound and especially its themes quickly became more urgent, mixing elements of blues and harder rock.

Almost immediately, the Eagles saw the dark side of success and changing social values, and they wrote about that temptation and corruption in such tunes as “New Kid in Town” and “Life in the Fast Lane” (clearly a memo about their own excesses).

Listening to the music Wednesday, it was easy to be simply lulled by the seductiveness of the melodies or enchanted by the lovely harmonies. But it’s those themes that ultimately define the Eagles’ legacy.

The band’s creative cornerstone is its “Hotel California” period, when it wrote socially conscious portraits so finely crafted that they were reminiscent in some ways of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tales about an earlier generation.

Like the author of “This Side of Paradise” and “The Great Gatsby,” Henley and Frey saw through the glamour of the time to focus on false idols (mostly material ones) and lost ideals.

At the Pond, the Eagles took us through their various creative stages, opening with the cheery, upbeat “Take It Easy,” written by Frey and Jackson Browne, then soon moved into the band’s middle phase, where the innocence was stripped from them.

After all these years, Frey’s voice still has a sweet, pure quality that makes the underlying tension of “New Kid in Town” all the more moving. Even in the Eagles’ first brush of fame, he and the song’s co-writers, Henley and John David Souther, could see the way their world was changing.

There’s talk on the street; it sounds so familiar

Great expectations, everybody’s watching you

People you meet, they all seem to know you

Even your old friends treat you like you’re something new

The band saved “Hotel California” for the first encore, dressing it up with a trumpet introduction. In the song, which was written by Henley, Frey and then-Eagle Don Felder, Henley sings about trying to break out of the nightmare of the times and return to the innocence.

“Relax,” said the night man

“We are programmed to receive

You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave.”

Not all sections of the concert worked equally well. An acoustic section in the middle felt sluggish, and the high-energy section that followed went on too long.

And neither of the two new songs from the band’s recent concert DVD (Frey’s “No More Cloudy Days” and Walsh’s “One Day at a Time”) felt close to the level of the night’s vintage fare.

But Walsh, who seemed like a questionable fit in the Eagles when he joined in 1975, added an energy and playfulness to the band’s otherwise straightforward stance.

Except for the smallish video screens above and at the rear of the stage, there’s not much flashy about the Eagles’ show. More than most of the veteran touring bands, it rests its case strictly on the music.

In the final moments of the show, the band returned to its innocence for “Desperado,” another signature number.

It took the audience and band back to the early point in the band’s career, when the young musicians could see the storm ahead and wondered whether they could live up to the test. Moving from the drums he played for most of the show to the center stage, Henley sang:

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?

Come down from your fences, open the gate

It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you

You’d better let somebody love you, before it’s too late.

The song serves as a measuring point for the audience too -- a way to look at their own lives to see how their dreams have fared over the years. It’s that shared history that keeps the Eagles’ music -- and memos -- vital.

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The Eagles

Where: Arrowhead Pond, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim

When: Today and Saturday, and Oct. 7 and 21. All shows at 8 p.m.

Price: $25 to $175

Contact: (714) 704-2500

Also

Where: Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., L.A.

When: Wednesday and Sept. 23-24, Oct. 8 and Oct. 22. All shows at 8 p.m.

Price: $25 to $175

Contact: (213) 742-7340

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Hilburn, pop music critic of The Times, can be reached at robert.hilburn@latimes.com.