The Eagles Plan 40th Anniversary Tour for 2012

Joe Walsh, guitarist for mega selling classic rock band the Eagles, has announced that the group plans to tour next year to celebrate its 40th anniversary as a group.

The band has been touring sporadically over the past four years since the release of its most recent album, Long Road Out of Eden, which was released in October 2007. Walsh says the band will put together something different for this next tour that will be different from their recent tours and commemorate the time the band has been together.

Everybody’s seen our show, so we have to put together something new,” Walsh told Rolling Stone recently. We’ve been archiving so much stuff from the band’s early days, concert footage and interviews and stuff. Those will be the visuals to go along with the songs. We’ll also revisit some old songs and some new stuff.”

Though no dates have yet been announced, Walsh says the tour likely will take place in the latter half of 2012. The band’s last scheduled performance will be tomorrow night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

The Eagles were formed in 1971 in Los Angeles and became the most popular act of the southern California country rock scene of the 1970s that also included the Doobie Brothers and Jackson Browne. The band released its first album in 1972, and the self-titled record featured the now classic hits “Take It Easy,” “Witchy Woman” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling.”

In 1976, the band released Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), an album that has become not only their best-selling album, but also one of the best-selling albums of all time in the United States. The Eagles broke up in 1980, but reunited again in 1994 for the Hell Freezes Over tour, and subsequently released a live album recorded during the tour. The tour was named for Don Henley’s recurring statement at the time of the break up that the Eagles would get back together, “when hell freezes over.”