May 15, 2008 2:13 PM

Don Felder interview - the long version

Guitarist Don Felder's acrimonious, lawyer-filled dismissal from the Eagles ended an era for the band -- and for him. Felder recently wrote an autobiography, Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles, that lays bare the dirt and division in the band. He spoke recently on the phone about the early days, the good-old days, songwriting and his regrets.

What was it about Gainesville in the late '60s and early '70s that produced so many musicians? The Allmans, Tom Petty, Stephen Stills, you, Bernie Leadon and more grew up together.

I don't know if there was just something in the water or something in what we were all smoking. It didn't seem strange at the time to have a lot of people who were playing in different bands and hanging out together. We were just friends. Later a surprising amount of that same group of people went on to become internationally successful. It never dawned on me that it was an unusual thing to have a bunch of friends who were great musicians.

The most fascinating part of your book are the tales of songwriting, especially Hotel California.

I rented this beach house in Malibu in '74 or '75 and was sitting on the sofa in a pair of swim trunks looking out over the sand there and the Pacific blue water and gorgeous sunny skies. My two little kids were on this swing set, just a glorious day. Ihad an acoustic 12-string and just started picking away on that progression, that introduction...I got up and ran to the back bedroom and had an old reel-to-reel four-track TEAC tape recorder. I just put down that 12-string chord progression, turned it off and went out and played with my kids. A couple of days later I was putting together tracks for the Hotel California record and I went and listened to that. I played a bass part, I had a little drum machine that I played, and played almost all the guitar parts close to what's on the record.

How about the guitar solos?

When I was writing for that record, knowing that Joe (Walsh) was in the band, I tried to write for two lead guitar parts. I wrote things like Victim of Love that would have a slide guitar part, plus another part. This track for Hotel has those harmony guitar parts. When we got in the studio in Miami and started to set up to record those guitar parts, I just threw on those things off the cuff when I'd laid down the demo. When we got in the studio I was going to plug in and make up another solo. I started playing and Henley said 'Stop, that's not it, that's not right. Play it like the demo.' I said 'I don't know what that was. That was a year ago. It was something I just made up on the spot.' He'd been listening to it over and over. So I had to call my housekeeper back in Malibu and she took it and put it in a little blaster, held the phone down to it and played it to us in Miami. We took the phone and recorded it on another cassette so we could hear the part I had to sit down and relearn the solos.

Where did it go from there?

When it was done I remember sitting in L.A. and listening to the record and Henley said 'That's going to be our single.' I said 'You gotta be kidding me.' AM radio in the '70s you had to be 2 minutes and 45 seconds. You couldn't be over 3 minutes.That track was 6 minutes long, it was slow, it stopped in the middle, you couldn't dance to it. I said 'That's not the right song. It's definitely an album cut.' He said 'No, it's going to be the single.' The record company just went along with what we chose. There'd been a big train-wreck prior to that on the song Best of My Love. They'd put it out and the record company had edited the single to get it down to that two minutes 45 second length without approving the edit with the band. We heard it on the radio in some rent-a-car we were driving in the Midwest and went 'What the heck happened?' Henley went through the roof. Irving (Azoff, the band's manager) or someone had this gold record mocked up with Best of My Love on it and a hacksaw inside the glass. They sent it over to Joe Smith at Elektra Records and had it epoxy-ed to the wall in the hallway so they couldn't take it down. It was our way of saying 'Don't do that again.'"

What are your favorite guitar moments?

I really liked the uniqueness of tracks like Those Shoes. Joe was a brilliant talk-box specialist. He'd made that his signature with Rocky Mountain Way. I said 'I'd really like to use that on an Eagles record. How do we do that without doing just another bluesy shuffle?' What if we treated the instrument like two trumpets, playing this harmony line? I really liked that. It was new and different for the Eagles to use a new tone like that. The Sad Café, personally I did nine acoustic guitars on that song, including four or five acoustic guitars playing the solo.

Do you keep up on the band? Did you listen to the new album Long Road Out of Eden?

A friend had it in his car and started playing a couple of cuts... I was sadly disappointed as he went from cut to cut. In my humble opinion they have one of the greatest rock 'n' roll guitar players alive today in Joe Walsh;I admire and respect him immensely. And he is just non-existent on the record. I think he does one song.

What was the reaction after you left the band?

That whole situation has felt to me very much like a family that you took to the airport, put on an airplane, waved goodbye, watched them take off, and got a call later that the plane had crashed and everyone is gone. It's a really kind of unusual feeling to have so many relationships severed. I mean just brick-wall severed, including the crew, the band members, the management, the PR company. There were a lot of people around that organization that I'd been close with for 30 years. To just have everyone slam the door like that, it's harsh.

Why the title Heaven and Hell?

When I was young, my mother used to drag me into church every Sunday. I still have the bruises on my ear to prove it. In the '70s I was really drugged into sin. My whole life had this dichotomy of being heaven and hell. I grew up in a real innocent little place. On one side I had all this success, all this fame and money. The other part was really hellish, a really evil, dark, sinister, venomous, really difficult place to be. Now that I'm out of that I'm so much happier with my life. I've met a lot of people in this world that have been blessed with great success, great fortunes, great fame, and are still very unhappy people.

Did you have any ethical qualms about breaking confidences about what people said and did 30 years ago?

I just told the truth as I saw it, as I remembered it. You can't stop someone from telling the truth. I tried to be as honest and truthful not only about myself but about everyone who was there. Like any story or divorce, there's his side, her side and the truth. This is as close to the truth as I could get without pulling any punches, especially about myself. It's me, with all my ugliness, my warts, everything. My sins and evils, so everyone could see it. That's the truth. I didn't try to paint them in some ugly and bitter way and make myself out to be the shining star. That's just crap.

Any regrets?

I miss them as people. Despite the differences and the arguments and the bickering there were a lot of good times I shared with those people. My ex-wife, we're the best of friends ... I wish I could arrive at that place with those people in the Eagles. Unfortunately, to quote Don Henley in that song Heart of the Matter, it's all about forgiveness. Some people can and some people can't.

Posted by Mark Brown at 2:13 PM | Comments (5)