The Eagles Suit Up to Fight Multiple Sclerosis

Posted on May 11th 2009 2:00PM by Steve Baltin
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The Eagles donned suits and hit Los Angeles' Century Plaza Hotel on Friday, affording a rare opportunity to see the biggest-selling American band in history in a hotel ballroom. For this benefit to fight Multiple Sclerosis, the band looked to match the tone of the evening. "We wanted to do songs that were positive and full of hope," Don Henley said from the stage. "But we realized we don't have very many of them."

They managed to find a few optimistic songs from their repertoire to engage the star-studded crowd, which included Dustin Hoffman, Jewel, Kim Kardashian, Amanda Bynes and Avril Lavigne, who told Spinner she came out to support host Nancy Davis, the L.A. woman who's put the Race to Erase MS event on for the past 16 years after being diagnosed with the disease herself. A sing-along version of 'Take it to the Limit' even got a few couples dancing in between the dinner tables.

The show wrapped with opening act Michelle Branch, who said during her set, "Like so many people in this room I know a person with MS," then spoke of finding a cure for her four-year-old daughter's generation, joining the Eagles for Bill Withers' classic 'Lean on Me.'

If Henley, who chastisted the crowd a bit for talking during their set, was looking for the spirit of the event, he needed look no further than the live auction before the perfomances, where one couple paid $270,000 for a custom-made Lamborghini. That is the giving spirit.

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