DON FELDER

As guitarist with the Eagles during the stratospheric success of their 1970s golden era, Don Felder fretted some of the most searingly memorable licks in rock – and co-wrote a little song called Hotel California along the way. He talks to Guitarist about how the song was born, his difficult break with the band, and a painstakingly recreated replica of the Les Paul he played on that solo…

For a guitarist who has performed in one of the biggest-selling bands of all time, Don Felder has maintained a pretty low-key presence in the world of rock. Born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, he spent teenage years jamming with Stephen Stills and later played guitar in Crosby & Nash’s touring band – he even taught a young Tom Petty how to play. But a personal introduction to the Eagles, set up by hometown friend Bernie Leadon – then a member of the group – led to the biggest break of Felder’s career, when he was invited to join the band in 1974. As Felder admits in his frank autobiography, Heaven And Hell:

My Life In The Eagles, being in the band was sometimes a rough ride, as the pressures of hit-making, clashing egos and the excesses of the road all took their toll on tempers and relationships. Yet through it all, the group

was able to make some of the most sublimely memorable songs in the country-rock canon – including their biggest hit of all, Hotel

California: a six-and-a-half-minute rock epic as cool as the desert breeze that retains its darkly delirious power today. Although he departed from the group in 2001 amid acrimony over his status in the band – since settled – Felder remains proud of his work with the Eagles. He took time out to tell

Guitarist how the West was won…

The acoustic intro to Hotel California is recognisable almost from the first chord. How did you write it?

“I had rented a house on the beach in Malibu that summer and we were writing songs for what was going to become the Hotel California album and we’d just come off One

Of These Nights, which was a very successful record for us. But we were under the gun to come up with a lot of ideas, so I had put together a reel of say 16 or 17 song sketches – in this little reel-to-reel four-track TEAC tape recorder in my back bedroom. And I was sitting on the couch on a July day – in cut-off shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops – playing guitar and just goofing around in this rented beach house in Malibu.

“I looked out at the California sunshine sparkling on the Pacific Ocean and my two little kids were playing in the sand on a swing-set out in front of me, and I just started playing those chords – that introductory progression. I just played it over and over. And I thought, I have to go record some of this before I forget it.

“And so I ran into my back bedroom and turned on the TEAC and played about five times through the chord progression, then turned it off and went out to join my kids. A few days later, I was looking through this reel of songs I was going to submit to the rest of the band and I thought, I like that, I’m going to finish it. I had a Rhythm Ace drum machine, which was kind of the early stages [of drum machine technology] – I laid down a track on that, put bass on it and tried to envision what Joe Walsh and I could do.

“This was the first album with Joe and I where we could do some harmony guitar stuff and trade off solos, and I wanted to write something that would have some interesting guitar stuff on it. So I pretty much overdubbed everything that you hear on the record now on this little four-track studio, except for a couple of Walsh licks at the end.”

What was the next step?

“I did a quick mix of it, put it on a cassette with the other 16 songs, gave a copy of it to everybody in the band and said, ‘If anybody’s interested in writing or finishing one of these songs for the record, let me know’. I gave a copy to Randy [Meisner], to Joe and to Don Henley. Then, a few days later, I got a call from Henley and he said, ‘I kinda like the one that sounds like a Mexican reggae song – that kind of Spanish thing’ – and I knew which track he was talking about instantly. We started talking about it, and Don and Glenn kind of came up with the idea…”

What was the inspiration for the song’s lyrical theme?

“We’d talked about the fact that nobody from the band was from California. We’d all driven into California at night and, on the horizon, you could see the lights of Los Angeles from about 100 miles away as you’re approaching for the first time. And you have all these images that are in your mind: palm trees and movie stars and success and Hollywood Boulevard – all those images of California. And Henley said that would be a great idea to write this song about the concept of California, the excesses of Hollywood and all that stuff. So he and Glenn [Frey] took the track and ran off and started scribbling away on pads and came up with what I think are some just great lyrics.”

How did the initial studio sessions for Hotel California go?

“We got in the studio to record the whole track in E minor… with the exception of the solos, you know, the basic track. And then Don went out to sing some of his lyrics on amicrophone, but he sounded kind of like Barry Gibb in that really high falsetto [laughs], because the key was too high. So I went and sat in the studio and dropped it into D minor, then it went to C minor and then I went, ‘Okay, how about A minor?’ And he said, ‘Nope, that’s too low’. So we wound up having to re-record the track in B minor, which is not a really fun key to play guitar in. I mean, we can do it, but it’s just not everybody’s favourite key.”

Did you and Joe Walsh knock ideas about freely during those sessions?

“Yeah, we did. We were in the studio in Miami to record the guitar solos, the harmony parts and all that stuff. I’d left the cassette demo, which I’d made about a year before that, in Malibu. I thought we’d just set up and plug in, and I’d play a lick and Joe would play a lick – knock it back and forth. But Henley stopped us when we started doing that and said, ‘That’s not like the demo; that’s not right. You have to play it like you did on the demo’. And I said, ‘I don’t remember what I played on the demo – that was over a year ago’. So I picked up the phone and had to call my housekeeper in Malibu, and tell her where the cassette was. She put it in one of those little Panasonic blasters, played it and held the phone up to it. We were recording in Miami, and I had to sit down and learn what I’d just made up on the spot a year before. But your first thoughts are quite often your best.”

One reason why Hotel California’s solo is so memorable is because of your incredible feel for phrasing. Where does that come from?

“My father had a big collection of horn-band music that I grew up listening to: Count Basie, Glenn Miller and Lawrence Welk, he played a lot of horn music. If you listen to the way a sax or a trumpet player phrases, they have to stop and take a breath – you just can’t play a constant non-stop barrage of notes. They choose their notes very carefully and

“And Don Henley said it would be a great idea to write this song about the concept of California, the excesses of Hollywood and all that stuff…” DON FELDER

“The first time I remember being overwhelmed at the magnitude of what had happened to us was when we played in Wembley Stadium” DON FELDER

phrase their melodies in a human amount of time where they stop, take a breath and then play another phrase. So if you listen to the solo on One Of These Nights it’s really like something a sax would play. Also, Those Shoes sounds like two trumpets. They’re melodic in the sense that it’s like something a horn player would play. That’s kind of where it came from.”

The tone on the solo is really sweet – was that straight off the amp?

“Yeah, I still have that amp: it was a Fender Tweed Deluxe. I think at that point it was probably the largest amp I’d used in the studio. On the new record that I’m working on I’m using some slightly larger amps, but not much. There was nothing plugged into it, no echoes or fuzzes – it was just that ’59 Les Paul plugged in with one cable to a Tweed Deluxe and turned up to where it kind of sang without being overly distorted.”

Were there strong creative tensions in the studio – did it affect the recording?

“A lot of the creative part happened outside of the studio; I mean most of my writing took place in my little home studio. I wrote 16 or 17 tracks and two of them wound up on the record: one was Victim Of Love and [the other] was Hotel California. When we got in the studio, we pretty much recorded them almost exactly as I had written them – except for a few things on the very end and the slide solo on Victim.

“Henley would sneak off with cassettes and fill up legal pads full of lyrics and then come and sing, and it was like, ‘Wow, that’s fantastic’. And so a lot of the creative stuff took place outside of that space.

“The tension was about what songs were gonna be on the record – there was also some tension about people being really tardy to sessions because they wouldn’t show up until 2.30 or 3pm. So it was just human irritations more than tensions about creative stuff. But there were a few times, such as when we finally finished the record and we were having a playback party for the record company. They’d been pounding on our door for months and we said, ‘You’ll get it when it’s done’. So we finally invited them over and put up the two-track with all the mixes and I think the last song on the thing, at the time, was Hotel California. Henley turned around and said, ‘That’s our first single’. And I went, ‘God, I think that’s wrong: that’s the wrong format for radio – it’s six minutes long, you can’t dance to it and it stops in the middle. We need to put out something similar to One Of These Nights, which is geared to radio – under three minutes and 30 seconds’. He said, ‘No, that’s it’. I’ve never been proven so wonderfully wrong [laughs]. There were times when we disagreed about decisions and stuff but, you know, he was right [about that].”

You must have played Hotel California hundreds of times live. What is your strongest memory of touring it?

“The first time I remember being overwhelmed at the magnitude of what had happened to us as a result of that song, and that album, was when we played in Wembley Stadium. I think there were 100,000-plus people there. The field was filled up and there were multiple tiers that kind of cantilevered out. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed the delay in sound, where if you see somebody hit a baseball you always hear it after they strike the ball, because sound travels at a slower speed than light? Well, I remember seeing people jump up and down while Joe and I were playing the solos at the end. The people standing closest to the speakers would come down and then 10-15 [rows beyond them] people would come down just a split second later, making a wave of this cantilevered wing or arm of seating. It was impressive.”

How do you feel about your departure from the band today – has time granted you any closure?

“You know, the closest analogy I can draw to that situation is that it’s much like going through a really bad, ugly divorce. And at one time you shared a wonderful experience with those people and you did some wonderful things together. I went through a divorce with my wife of 29 years, which was happening at the same time as my departure from the Eagles [but] we’re still great friends. We call each other; we talk together; we’ve got kids and grandkids together. We have shared a really large part of our lives. I wish I had that kind of relationship with those people who were in the Eagles with me. They seem to have kind of shut their impenetrable steel wall as far as my ability to communicate with them or in any way carry on a relationship is concerned. Why? I don’t know – you would think I’d murdered their parents or something [laughs]. I hadn’t done anything really like that. But that’s just who they are and the way they deal with things. I regret that they are that way and they’re not more accessible. Whether we can work together or can’t work together there’s no reason to harbour that hostility and anger that they have. And I wish them well – I’m having a great time, playing a lot of music, out of that stress machine and making some new music in the studio and having a great time, so I don’t particularly miss it.”