all that stuff. ‘Do I really quit this great-paying gig
to join a band that might break up.’”
In the end it was Graham Nash who persuaded
him. “He said: ‘You don’t want to be a sideman for
the rest of your life, go join that band.’”
So that’s what Felder did. The poverty he had
grown up in would soon become a distant
memory, and, for good and bad, his life would be
changed irrevocably.F
elder was sitting
on the couch of
a rented beach
house in Malibu when
he came up with the
idea for what would
become the most famous American rock song in
history. It was July 1975, and he was 18 months
into his stint with the Eagles. They’d notched up
their first No.1 with that year’s One Of These Nights,
Felder’s first full album with them, and were on an
upward swing that would soon gather pace like
none of them could have imagined.
Maybe it was the sun glistening on the Pacific
waves, or the sound of his infant children playing
on a swing on the beach, but a hypnotic chord
pattern came into his head. He played it, then
played it again, and then again, four or five times.
He’d been doing this long enough to know the
glimmerings of a great song when he heard them.
And this sounded like it could be a great song.
A few weeks later he played a demo of his idea
to Don Henley and Glenn Frey, and they loved it.
Henley christened it Mexican Reggae, a working title
that perfectly encapsulated its sound. Henley and
Frey took the song away and wrote a set of semi-
mystical lyrics that nailed the cultural, spiritual andmetaphysical confusion of mid-70s America.
Mexican Reggae become Hotel California, although
Felder’s imprint remained, not least in the
magnificent twin-guitar solo that sent the song
arcing into 30 million desert nights.
For someone from his background, the fame
and wealth that came with the Eagles’ success was
previously unthinkable. But it came at a cost. The
fact that he had a wife and young kids meant he
kept away from the
worst of the excesses
that the band became
synonymous with.
In his 2008
autobiography, Heaven
And Hell: My Time In The
Eagles, Felder details his fractious relationship with
Henley and Frey, the band’s alpha males,
sarcastically calling them “The Gods”. Today he’s
sanguine about the turmoil of life as an Eagle.
“It wasn’t about ego,” he says, not entirely
convincingly. “It was really about pushing the
quality of the singing and the writing and the
playing. Just pushing it up notch after notch.”
He flat out refuses to talk about the point where
it all started to go wrong with the band. “Let’s keep
it bright,” he says tersely. But it’s all out there
anyway: how personal animosity and heavy-duty
drug use combined to turn an already toxic
atmosphere terminal.
The end came during an Eagles show at Long
Beach Arena on July 31, 1980, when a furious
Glenn Frey threatened to beat up Felder as soon as
the band got off stage (there’s some remarkable
footage around that shows an incandescent Frey
hurling a bottle at the guitarist’s speedily
departing limousine).F
elder’s post-Eagles career got off to a flyer.
He wrote the theme tune for the cult 1981
animated film Heavy Metal, played guitar on
albums by Stevie Nicks and Diana Ross, and, in
1983, released his debut solo album, Airborne. And
then Don Felder largely stepped away from music.
“I made a conscious effort to stay home and be
a father to my children,” he says. He made packed
lunches and drove carpool, was commissioner for
a little-league baseball team and a soccer coach. It
was a comfortable life, a world away from his old
existence with the Eagles. He occasionally made
appearances on film soundtracks and played the
odd session gig, but mainly he stayed out of the
limelight. When Don Henley offered him a spot
as his touring guitarist in 1985, he turned it down,
partly because he didn’t want to be away from his
family and partly because the 5,000 dollars a week
seemed like a fairly derisory sum.
All that changed in 1994, when country star
Travis Tritt covered Take It Easy for an Eagles tribute
album. At Tritt’s request, Felder and his former
bandmates got back together for the video.
“We’d tried, unsuccessfully, several times to
reunite,” he says. “But it finally came together around
that video. We were all the same room, hanging out
and shooting pool and telling jokes. It was like: ‘Hey,
this isn’t so bad. We could do this again.’”
The inevitable reunion came a few months later,
heralding the Eagles’ money-spinning Hell Freezes
Over tour. “It was joyous,” Felder says. “Happy.
Ve r y wa r m. ”
But this great American soap opera thrived on
drama, and by 2001 Felder was once again out of
the Eagles. A dispute over royalties escalated into
a series of law suits and counter-suits, eventually
settled out of court. In 2008 Felder published his
autobiography, which featured unflattering
portraits of his old colleagues. It reopened old
wounds wider than ever before and closed the
door on his old band. Felder has never played with
the Eagles since. In the middle of his dispute with
the band, his marriage broke up. “I lost my band
and my wife,” as he put it.
His belated second solo album, 2012’s Road To
Forever, was the sound of a man finally ready to
re-enter the ring after having taken a psychic
battering. His latest album, American Rock’N’Roll,
ups the game. For Felder, the all-star approach
captures the spirit of the old days.
“Back then we’d be in this complex in Miami,
five different studios all connected by the long
hallway,” he says. “The Eagles would be in one,
Chicago in another, the Bee Gees in another, Stills
or Clapton in another. You’d walk down the
hallway to get a sandwich, and someone would
say: ‘Felder, what are you doing here? You gotta
play on this record’, and you’d work until four or
five in the morning.’”
American Rock’N’Roll is never going to scale the
same heights the Eagles did, but Felder says that’s
not the point. Instead it’s a way of closing the circle,
of paying tribute to where he came from.
“Music has been a stabilising force in my life
since I started playing when I was ten years old,” he
says. “It’s gotten me through hard times, through
destitute poverty growing up in Florida, through
nearly starving in New York, through all the ups
and downs. It’s been the one constant. It’s been my
one passionate lover.”American Rock’N’ Roll is out now via BMG.“It’s been a good journey.
An interesting one.”
Don FelderDon Felder flying high with
the Eagles in the 70s.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 53DON FELDER