<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When former Boston Red Sox star Bill Buckner passed away in May of 2019, every news report I read or heard said something along the lines of, \u201cBill Buckher\u2019s career should be remembered for a lot more things than the ground ball that rolled through his legs and lost the World Series for the Sox.\u201d\u00a0 Okay, I agree with that wholeheartedly, but yet that mistake was the one touchstone all the reports used to help us remind us who Bill Buckner was. Don Felder is a lot like that: \u201cHey, isn\u2019t he the guy that Glenn Frey threatened to punch out after a concert? Didn\u2019t he cause the Eagles to break up?\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t he the guy who got kicked out of the Eagles – twice?\u201d I won\u2019t get too high and mighty about the Bill Buckner thing because I have repeated the \u2018Frey-Felder feud leads to the end of the Eagles\u2019 story myself (<\/span>FTV:\u00a0 Eagles Abide 4-24-19<\/span><\/i>).\u00a0 Just like Buckner\u2019s life story, there are a lot more pieces that fit into Don Felder\u2019s puzzle.\u00a0 Misplacing one or two shouldn\u2019t detract from Felder\u2019s career (much, anyway), but his involvement with the Eagles makes those particular puzzle pieces rather large and therefore, highly visible parts of the big picture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The east and west coast were glamourized as hotbeds of the emerging 1960s music scene.\u00a0 It turns out there was a third coast involved and one can not overlook the tremendous number of great bands that came out of Florida during that same period.\u00a0 Hailing from Gainesville himself, Felder was well acquainted with the talented musicians coming out of the Florida scene. Felder found his fame outside of Florida, but the Florida boys were a brotherhood and kept in touch even after many had dispersed to New York, California, or someplace in between.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That Felder became a musician at all is a small miracle.\u00a0 His family wasn\u2019t dirt poor, but they lived on the border line between the have-nots and the almost-haves in Gainesville.\u00a0 He picked up his first beat up acoustic guitar (minus a couple of strings) from a neighbor who traded it to Felder for some cherry bombs.\u00a0 Lessons were out of the picture (too expensive) so the ten year old Don Felder sat down and listened to records. He found he could replicate what he was hearing without knowing much more than how to string and tune the guitar, something showed to him by another neighbor.\u00a0 Felder told Dave Everley in <\/span>Classic Rock Magazine (CMR 263, June 2019)<\/span><\/i>, \u201cI could hear something over and over and figure out where that person was playing on the neck of the guitar.\u00a0 I could just see it in my head. Even today, I can hear something two or three times and play it.\u201d His inspiration for picking up the guitar?\u00a0 Elvis, of course.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of his first encounters with another Florida musician took place when a kid from his school showed up at a frat party with his acoustic guitar.\u00a0 Felder remembered the encounter for <\/span>CRM:\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>\u201cHe started playing and singing, and his voice was so good and his playing, rhythm-wise, was so great that I said:\u00a0 \u2018You need to be in my band\u2019.\u201d The kid was Stephen Stills and they remain good friends today. That Stills was only a member of Felder\u2019s band (The Continentals) for a year isn\u2019t as important; \u00a0 Stills had his own path to follow. Stills replacement when he left was a transplanted Californian named Bernie Leadon. Leadon was old enough to have a driver\u2019s license so, as Felder tells it, \u201cThat was useful.\u201d\u00a0 Leadon and Felder would each have a history with the Eagles, but that was future stuff. They still had musical paths to blaze in Florida.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The competition included a rough and tumble bunch in Jacksonville called My Backyard who (many members later) morphed into Lynyrd Skynyrd.\u00a0 Daytona Beach had The Escorts who used to routinely beat Felder\u2019s group in battle of the bands competitions. Felder didn\u2019t take it too hard:\u00a0 \u201cIf I was going to lose a contest like that, I couldn\u2019t think of anyone I\u2019d rather lose to.\u201d Did I mention The Escorts featured Duane and Greg Allman?\u00a0 It was one big family with Felder\u2019s band crashing at the Allman Brothers mother\u2019s house when they had gigs in the area. Duane showed Felder how to play the slide guitar, another thing he would carry forward to the future.\u00a0 Felder remembers, \u201c[Duane was] still the best slide player I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d Then there was a younger school kid named Tommy who came into the Gainesville music store Felder was working. Tommy was planning to switch from bass to guitar and took a few lessons from Felder.\u00a0 Eventually, Tommy formed a band called Mudcrutch who would migrate to California, dissolve, and then partially reform as Tommy\u2019s backing band, The Heartbreakers. Add Tom Petty to the roster of Florida bred musicians mentioned above and you have all the makings of the third hotbed of music that could stand toe to toe with NYC and CALI (not to mention the vibrant scene in Michigan, but that is another story for another day).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the Felder-Leadon band dead-ended, Bernie went back to California and Don headed for New York City, circa 1970.\u00a0 They stayed in touch. Felder was going in a more Jazz-fusion direction and hooked up with a band called Flow. Struggling musicians living in a squalid part of town, the members of Flow were trying to figure out if they would starve or freeze to death first.\u00a0 To survive, they risked life and limb to take the bus to Harlem so they could get the sixty cent yellow rice with black beans special at a Chinese-Cuban restaurant. In this neighborhood, they stood out because they were the only white people in sight. Failing to make a dent in the NYC music scene, Felder relocated to Boston.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Working at a recording studio, Felder began learning the producer – engineer end of the business.\u00a0 When Leadon\u2019s tales of sunshine and great music finally convinced him to move west, Felder packed up a U-Haul and headed across country with $600 burning a hole in his pocket.\u00a0 Leadon had just joined a country-rock outfit called the Eagles. Glenn Frey had heard Leadon and Felder jamming backstage when the old friends got together on one pass through town and filed Felder\u2019s name under \u2018slide guitar player\u2019 for future reference.\u00a0 Leadon went on tour with the Eagles and Felder hunkered down on Leadon\u2019s floor while he looked for his own gig. He ended up working with a band that was opening for Crosby and Nash. One night, C&N\u2019s guitar player got sick and Felder filled in for him to cover parts that had been written by his old Florida pal, Stephen Stills.\u00a0 He ended up in the backing band for Crosby and Nash. When not on the road with them, he would join Leadon and the boys jamming. Hanging out with the Eagles proved to be the next key piece in the Felder musical puzzle.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Asked to add slide guitar on a track called <\/span>Good Day in Hell<\/span><\/i> for the Eagle\u2019s <\/span>On the Border<\/span><\/i> album, Felder found himself on the phone with Frey the next day.\u00a0 Frey wanted him to join the band, but having heard Bernie\u2019s tales of how volatile the situation could be, Felder was reluctant.\u00a0 Plus he was making $1,500 a week with Crosby and Nash. Coming from the poor side of the tracks in Gainesville, that wasn\u2019t chump change.\u00a0 Graham Nash convinced him to dive right in, telling Felder, \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be a sideman for the rest of your life, go and join the band.\u201d\u00a0 He signed on and within 18 months, the Eagles had their first number one album with <\/span>One of These Nights (1975)<\/span><\/i>, the first full album Felder recorded with them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During the run up to the next Eagles album, he was noodling on the guitar and came up with a nifty pattern that he eventually showed to Frey and Don Henley.\u00a0 Henley dubbed it <\/span>Mexican Reggae<\/span><\/i> when he and Frey sat down and to work up lyrics to go with the guitar part.\u00a0 The working title eventually went away and the song became the title track of the Eagles\u2019 biggest record yet, <\/span>Hotel California.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 The lyrics are a bit of mystical mumbo-jumbo about the state of culture in the late 1970s, but the twin lead guitar solo that Felder and Joe Walsh created is as recognizable and as humable as the chorus.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What caused Frey and Felder to almost come to blows?\u00a0 The usual suspects that affect bands who are wildly successful:\u00a0 Too much money, excess everything, and clashing egos. Felder was married and had young children, so he wasn\u2019t quite as deep in the \u2018excess everything\u2019 part, but by July 31, 1980, the cracks in the band\u2019s foundation were too deep to be repaired.\u00a0 Felder has moved on and told <\/span>CRM, <\/span><\/i>\u201cLet\u2019s keep it bright,\u201d when asked to talk about where the band had gone wrong.\u00a0 Of course, he pulled no punches in his 2008 book <\/span>Heaven and Hell:\u00a0 My Time in the Eagles<\/span><\/i> where he referred to Frey and Henley somewhat facetiously as \u2018The Gods\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On his own from 1981 to 1983, Felder found modest success with his solo work and doing\u00a0 studio work with Stevie Nicks, Diana Ross, and the animated feature <\/span>Heavy Metal.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 After 1983, he removed himself from the music business to concentrate on raising his kids.\u00a0 He did the whole soccer dad, little league coach, make lunches for the kids domestic thing full bore.\u00a0 The Eagles weren\u2019t even on his radar. When Henley asked him to join his solo band, Felder declined in favor of sticking around home.\u00a0 It was country star Travis Tritt who finally got the Eagles together again. The previous attempts at a reunion failed swiftly, but in 1995, Tritt recorded a cover of <\/span>Take It Easy<\/span><\/i> and convinced the band to come together for a video shoot.\u00a0 They had a good time and suddenly began to think about working together again.\u00a0 The whole <\/span>Hell Freezes Over<\/span><\/i> era of the band began and as Felder tells it, \u201cIt was joyous.\u00a0 Happy. Very warm.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By 2001, Felder was out again.\u00a0 In a royalties dispute that turned into a war of suits and counter suits, the \u2018joyous\u2019 feelings of the late 1990s were replaced with something much less \u2018happy\u2019.\u00a0 They eventually settled the case out of court, but this time, the damage was too severe to overcome. The 2008 book drove the final spikes in the coffin lid and Felder hasn\u2019t performed with the Eagles since.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean that he has been sitting at home much because during the last fracas, he also lost his wife via divorce. Music has again proven to be Felder\u2019s grounding point.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On a brighter note, Felder has a new album in the can called <\/span>American Rock\u2019N\u2019Roll<\/span><\/i> and he is pleased with how it turned out.\u00a0 It won\u2019t sell like an Eagles\u2019 album, but it does represent where Felder comes from, musically.\u00a0 \u201cMusic has been a stabilizing force in my life since I started playing at ten years old,\u201d he says now.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s gotten me through hard times, through destitute poverty growing up in Florida, through nearly starving in New York, through all the ups and downs.\u00a0 It has been the one constant.\u201d In the old days, there was a studio in Miami with a long hall and each room would be filled with groups like the Bee Gees, Clapton, Stills, the Eagles, and Chicago.\u00a0 Felder said it was common place for one to walk down the hall and and get pulled into sessions to play on all kinds of music. He took a similar allstar approach with <\/span>American Rock\u2019N\u2019Roll<\/span><\/i> and I for one am anxiously awaiting my copy so we can share it with our listeners.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 We don’t do ads, but here is a peak at the promo materials for Don Felder’s newest album.