Don Felder looks back at Hotel California
Eagles song a blessing, curse for co-writer
Long after he made his peace with the Eagles, Don Felder walked onto a stage at the United Nations and plucked the opening few notes of Hotel California.
The assembly of more than 400, most of whom were dignitaries from other countries, stood and applauded.
“I realized how big the global impact of that song is,” said Felder, 65, who co-wrote Hotel California and was a lead guitarist in the Eagles for two terms, 1974-1980 and 19942001. “It’s a classic case of the sum being greater than the parts.”
Hotel California, the album and the song, are towering achievements in popular music. By a long distance the bestselling and best artistic statement by the Eagles, Hotel California is institutional in its place in 20th-century culture. In the months that followed its release in December 1976, the album sold 250,000 copies a week.
But talk about a blessing and a curse, Hotel California also marked the beginning of the end for Felder and his life as an Eagle. He would make one more full studio album with them, The Long Run, in 1979 before the group split for the first time the following year.
He was there when the Eagles reunited for the Hell Freezes Over album and tour in 1994, and hung on for another agonizing seven years.
Felder was fired in 2001 after a dispute with Eagles management and its founders, Don Henley and Glenn Frey. He later took the band to court for breach of contract and lost royalties. Henley and Frey, who were often referred to as “The Gods” by other members of the band, counter-sued when word got out that Felder was writing a tell-all book. The cases dragged on for five years until, in 2007, they were settled out of court. Felder’s book, Heaven and Hell: My Life in The Eagles (1974-2001), finally hit bookstores in the U.S. in April 2008 and shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
It was the first time the story of the rise of the notoriously tight-lipped band had been told.
For Felder, who failed high school English, it was a personal triumph and a cathartic experience.
“When I left the Eagles in 2001, during that same 12-month period I went through a divorce from my first wife of 29 years.
“Everything I really knew as far as a personal identity, including being a husband, a father, a homeowner, a career as a member of a band and an organization like the Eagles, all of it was taken away.”
Felder said he took stock by embarking on daily meditations and jotting down what he remembered since childhood.
“I needed to find out what had happened to my life and how it had affected me.”
Felder was born in Gainesville, Fla., and shared a storybook musical upbringing with the likes of Stephen Stills, Tom Petty, Duane Allman, and future Eagles partner Bernie Leadon. Stills was in Felder’s high school band, the Continentals, while Petty was his guitar student. Allman taught him how to play slide guitar, a skill he would bring to the table on the very first Eagles album he played on, On The Border.
“I went from an impoverished childhood in a little house in north central Florida to an international sensation in just a few years,” Felder said.
As recounted in Felder’s autobiography, the saga of the Eagles was like a morality play of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Drugs, he claims, ruined the band. That and an addiction to a lifestyle that spun out of control.
There were soaring highs, not solely drug-related, and plummeting lows. The making of Hotel California forms the core of Felder’s book, and rightly so. As the one who came up with the original idea and chord structure, he was at least an equal partner in its success.
But it didn’t buy him acceptance within the inner circle. Increasingly, he was shut out of the decision-making.
It was a bitter pill for a musician of his pedigree, who was known in the band as Fingers for his prowess on guitar.
“Whenever I hear Hotel California on the radio or play it now, I find myself thinking how remarkable it was that it could have become the global phenomenon that it is, and that someone with my humble upbringing was a part of it.”
Felder credits his second wife, Canadian real estate broker Kathrin Nicholson, for helping him sort out his life.
“When I was going through all that stuff with the Eagles in the 1970s, I was the only one who was married with kids,” he said. “I had to keep myself physically and mentally in shape. That helped me to deal with the lawsuits and all the nonsense later on.”
Felder said the recent documentary, History of the Eagles, shows Frey has yet to come to terms with the anger he feels toward former members.
“It’s too bad. Life is too short to be that angry that long.”