Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (15 page)
Read Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles Online
Authors: Don Felder,Wendy Holden
Tags: #Arts & Photography, #Music, #Musical Genres, #Popular, #Rock, #Biographies & Memoirs, #Arts & Literature, #Composers & Musicians, #Entertainers, #Memoirs, #Humor & Entertainment, #Theory; Composition & Performance, #Pop Culture
BOOK: Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles
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An idea can grow
in your head like a seed. Planted by Bernie ten years earlier, nurtured over the years, and watered liberally by our latest encounter, the thought of moving to California and trying to make a go of it developed into a full-fledged organism in my brain. Bernie was living proof of what could happen—airplay on national radio, a tour with a famous country-rock band, musical success, and, with it, fulfillment and happiness. The whole music scene in Los Angeles had really blossomed from the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys, evolving into something acknowledged by the world as unique. Before then, most American music came out of the East Coast, Detroit, or Atlanta.
in your head like a seed. Planted by Bernie ten years earlier, nurtured over the years, and watered liberally by our latest encounter, the thought of moving to California and trying to make a go of it developed into a full-fledged organism in my brain. Bernie was living proof of what could happen—airplay on national radio, a tour with a famous country-rock band, musical success, and, with it, fulfillment and happiness. The whole music scene in Los Angeles had really blossomed from the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys, evolving into something acknowledged by the world as unique. Before then, most American music came out of the East Coast, Detroit, or Atlanta.
The concept of moving west wasn’t so scary anymore either. I’d left Gainesville, lived in New York, and seen a bit of the States. I’d encountered drugs on a daily basis and not been lured into heroin addiction, as all the teenage propaganda had warned me I would. My career in Boston was going nowhere. I could suddenly see that what Bernie said made sense, and I knew I had to go. The hard part would be convincing Susan.
“Honey, maybe Bernie’s right,” I ventured cautiously one morning over breakfast. “Maybe I should go out to L.A. for a while and take a look around. I could hop on a train and leave you here with your parents and your job and the apartment for a while, until I find some work, and then I could send for you.”
Susan glared at me from across the table. I knew what was coming. She didn’t want to leave Boston, and she didn’t want to live in California. I braced myself for the outburst. “No way!” she said, firmly. “If you think I’m letting you loose on all those California girls on your own, you’ve smoked more weed than is good for you. If you go, I go.”
Within two months of meeting the Eagles at Boston University, we’d made the decision. I called Bernie and told him, and he promised to make some inquiries about session or band work for me. “I can’t believe you’re finally coming, man,” he laughed over the telephone line. “Get your ass out here, Don. You’ll never regret it.”
I handed in my notice at my various jobs, and Susan left Harvard. We held a yard sale and sold our furniture and most of our clothes. I decided to sell my beloved gold Les Paul I’d bought from a jazz session player in Boston; I took it to New York, where I hoped to get a better price for it. I went into several guitar shops, but the best I was offered was $150. Susan took me by the hand and led me outside the last shop we tried. “Don’t sell it, Don,” she said. “I know how much you love it. We don’t need the money that bad.” So I kept it, and now it’s worth several hundred thousand dollars.
We went to U-Haul and rented the largest trailer they had, to attach to the back of our old six-cylinder Volvo. Whatever we couldn’t fit in, we sold or gave away. We’d saved exactly one thousand dollars in cash, which we hid in the car, but we had no clue how we’d manage for money once that ran out. Undaunted, we packed our clothes, musical instruments, kitchen equipment—and, of course, Kilo, our dog—said an emotional good-bye to friends and family, and set off.
It was the summer of 1972, and we were headed three thousand miles across America for the City of Angels to what seemed like the Promised Land, chasing an impossible dream. I felt heady with excitement and fear. This was it—my last chance. If I didn’t make in California, I was going to have to get myself a real job. My whole future lay before me like a rug. Tentatively, I prepared to cross it.
Driving across America
with Susan toward the mystic landscape of California was all that I’d hoped it would be and more. The last time I’d taken the road west, I’d been nine years old, standing up and hanging onto a rope in the back of my dad’s 1942 Chevy. Now I was twenty-five, with a guitar in the back of my car and a beautiful wife by my side, who was prepared to give up everything she knew and loved just to hold my hand on this big adventure. We were so crazy about each other, we felt indestructible.
with Susan toward the mystic landscape of California was all that I’d hoped it would be and more. The last time I’d taken the road west, I’d been nine years old, standing up and hanging onto a rope in the back of my dad’s 1942 Chevy. Now I was twenty-five, with a guitar in the back of my car and a beautiful wife by my side, who was prepared to give up everything she knew and loved just to hold my hand on this big adventure. We were so crazy about each other, we felt indestructible.
On the long journey coast to coast across America, the cheap motels and diners we found along the way didn’t eat into our savings too badly. Kilo sat in the back like a silent hitchhiker, hanging his head out the rear window for air, the wind lifting his big floppy ears. We headed southwest and traveled the nearly three thousand miles in marathon shifts, taking turns at the wheel. The Volvo dash was such that Susan couldn’t rest her left foot up on it while cruising, so she did her share of the driving conventionally. Those endless highways, with little to distract or entertain, rekindled some nostalgic memories of Jerry and me and Mom and Dad driving across America in those rose-tinted days when we all got along.
Our journey felt symbolic. We were following the trail carved by thousands of prospectors before us, heading west for gold, through the Rockies, through deserts and prairies, under open skies and towering cacti, toward fertile valleys full of orange groves offering the chance of a better life. Jack Kerouac had defined the notion of crossing America in his 1957 book,
On the Road,
but for Susan and me, the passage was even more spiritual. It was the first real test of our marriage, and we’d come through it. In a lesser relationship, I could have gone off to L.A. alone and never sent for her, or she could have chosen never to come. My final stab for musical success might well end in disaster, but my wife believed in me enough to abandon her own hopes and wishes in support of mine.
On the Road,
but for Susan and me, the passage was even more spiritual. It was the first real test of our marriage, and we’d come through it. In a lesser relationship, I could have gone off to L.A. alone and never sent for her, or she could have chosen never to come. My final stab for musical success might well end in disaster, but my wife believed in me enough to abandon her own hopes and wishes in support of mine.
We arrived in L.A.
travel-weary, and Susan somehow navigated us through the maze of freeway spaghetti that surrounds the city, until we were on Highway 10, heading for Topanga Canyon, a remote area in the Santa Monica Mountains to the far northwest, where Bernie lived. His address at Skyline Drive turned out to be just what it said. It could only be reached by a series of dramatic snake turns on narrow mountain roads with no guardrails between us and oblivion. They were almost impossible to negotiate with an old Volvo pulling a trailer. I didn’t even know if the brakes still worked; there hadn’t been much call for them in Boston. We drove up and up until we could go no more, and finally we reached Bernie’s little one-bedroom house, right on the peak of the canyon with the most amazing view across L.A., from downtown to Catalina.
travel-weary, and Susan somehow navigated us through the maze of freeway spaghetti that surrounds the city, until we were on Highway 10, heading for Topanga Canyon, a remote area in the Santa Monica Mountains to the far northwest, where Bernie lived. His address at Skyline Drive turned out to be just what it said. It could only be reached by a series of dramatic snake turns on narrow mountain roads with no guardrails between us and oblivion. They were almost impossible to negotiate with an old Volvo pulling a trailer. I didn’t even know if the brakes still worked; there hadn’t been much call for them in Boston. We drove up and up until we could go no more, and finally we reached Bernie’s little one-bedroom house, right on the peak of the canyon with the most amazing view across L.A., from downtown to Catalina.
“Hey, guys! How you doin’?” he greeted us with a grin as he opened the door. “You made it! Great! Come on in.” In the hallway, right behind him, was a suitcase and a backpack, ready for loading into his car.
“Going somewhere?” I asked.
“Yeah. Oh, sorry, man, didn’t I tell you?” he said, scratching his corkscrew curls. “I’m going on the road with the Eagles tomorrow.”
“For how long?” I asked, anxious about finding work and being in L.A. without knowing a single solitary soul.
“Just a couple of weeks,” he said, “but make yourselves at home. You and Susan can crash on the floor until you find a place of your own. If I were you, I’d start looking tomorrow. That floor’s pretty unforgiving.”
Trying to get comfortable on an assortment of lumpy cushions on a hardwood floor that night, I couldn’t sleep for worrying what I’d brought Susan to. I’d made her give up her well-paid, rewarding job at Harvard and travel clear across the country to sleep on someone’s floor with a guitar-playing loser who had no work and even fewer prospects.
I finally drifted off, exhausted by our long drive, only to be woken at dawn by Kilo whimpering piteously in the corner. Just as I was about to tell him to be quiet, there was the strangest of sensations. The glass in the window rattled in its frame, and then there was a sound like someone knocking violently on the front door. Within seconds, the entire house was shuddering in great spasms, from the roof shingles to the nails in the floorboards. Susan and I clung to each other for dear life, wondering what was happening. When it finally stopped, after what seemed like forever, Bernie came running out of his bedroom, wearing only his underpants. “Hey, did you feel that?” he asked, his eyes bright. “That was a big one!”
“What was it?” Susan asked, her face ashen, as Kilo scurried to her for comfort.
“It was an earthquake!” he exclaimed, laughing at our ignorance. “Welcome to California.”
We found a crummy little second-floor apartment
in a Hispanic section of Culver City, just off Washington Boulevard, at a cost of $110 a week. It was furnished but had no yard, and dogs weren’t allowed. Once we’d unloaded the U-Haul and moved Kilo into a back bedroom where the landlord couldn’t see him, we started trying to make it, like everyone else in L.A.
in a Hispanic section of Culver City, just off Washington Boulevard, at a cost of $110 a week. It was furnished but had no yard, and dogs weren’t allowed. Once we’d unloaded the U-Haul and moved Kilo into a back bedroom where the landlord couldn’t see him, we started trying to make it, like everyone else in L.A.
Susan found a job working as a secretary and bookkeeper for a wholesale food company. I cut off some of my hair and greased it back to try to look respectable. Wearing a jacket and tie, I went to the Manpower secretarial agency and told them I could type.
“How are you with the IBM Selectric?”
“Fluent,” I heard myself lie. Well, how hard could it be when you could play a few musical instruments and had worked in studios?
I made up some companies I’d worked for in Boston, using part of the real names of the studios—Ace Trucking, Triple A Recruitment—and the agency eventually sent me to IBM. I lied on my employee information form and was given a job packing training manuals for their latest computer products. I also took a second job, running a photocopying machine for an accounting firm. The combined pay was just enough to pay the rent. In the evenings I toured the bars and clubs and picked up a few jobbing gigs.
Bernie came back from tour and started to make some inquiries for me about work. Through the grapevine, he heard that J.D. Souther, Glenn Frey’s songwriting companion from Longbranch Pennywhistle, was looking for a guitarist to go on the road with him. J.D. had just put out a solo album called
John David Souther
on Elektra Records, on which Glenn had played guitar. He was also working closely with fellow Geffen protégés Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Jackson Browne. I went along for the audition, nervous as hell, and it showed. My performance wasn’t that great, and furthermore, I couldn’t play pedal steel, and they needed someone who could. They hired a guy named Ed Black instead and went on the road without me.
John David Souther
on Elektra Records, on which Glenn had played guitar. He was also working closely with fellow Geffen protégés Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Jackson Browne. I went along for the audition, nervous as hell, and it showed. My performance wasn’t that great, and furthermore, I couldn’t play pedal steel, and they needed someone who could. They hired a guy named Ed Black instead and went on the road without me.
Then Bernie told me that Terry Lee, an English singer and guitarist whom I’d heard play and who’d been likened to Clapton but with a better voice, was looking for someone for a new album. “Great!” I said. “Where do I find him?”
“They’re rehearsing over at Studio Instrument Rentals in Hollywood,” Bernie told me. “Get your ass over there.”
SIR was a rehearsal hall I already knew well. The Eagles often rehearsed there, and whenever they did, Bernie would call me up and invite me to drop by and jam with them. He, Glenn, and I would have a blast playing music and hanging out. In those days, studios had no security, and musicians would just open the door, walk in, and sit down. With my guitar and amp in hand, I did just that, once I found out exactly which studio Terry Lee was rehearsing in. Without introducing myself or saying a word, I walked in while his band was playing onstage, plugged my guitar and amp in, and was ready to play.
The band stopped playing. “Hey, man, what you doin’?” one of the sound engineers asked.
Terry Lee stared at me incredulously. “Who are you?” he said.
“My name’s Don Felder,” I said. “I’ve heard you play, and I think you’re a great singer, and I want to play for you.”
Terry Lee stared at me for a moment, and then smiled. “OK, Don Felder. Let’s hear what you can do.”
For the next hour, I played for them and jammed with them, and we got on really well musically. Finally, the session ended, and they told me, ever so politely, that they’d already found a lead guitarist and my services weren’t required. As they watched in silence, I unplugged my amp, picked up my guitar, and walked out.
With my job at IBM,
some session work, and Susan working at the food company, we were struggling—but I could sense there were prospects in L.A. and that I was in the right place for something to happen. I was far more inspired and positive than I had ever felt sitting in Boston making jingles.
some session work, and Susan working at the food company, we were struggling—but I could sense there were prospects in L.A. and that I was in the right place for something to happen. I was far more inspired and positive than I had ever felt sitting in Boston making jingles.
Kilo was very unhappy, however. There was no yard, and he was left alone in the apartment all day long. We came home one day and found he’d shredded one of the cushions in the recliner seat the day before the landlord was coming to pick up his rent, which he did on the first of every month. We threw a big sheet over the couch so he wouldn’t see the damage. When the landlord was on his way over, Susan would either hide Kilo in the back bedroom with the door closed or take him for a long walk.
We lived in that apartment for six months. Our only friends were our next-door neighbors, a French couple named Marina and Jacquie Luade. He was a mechanic with Citroën, and she was a housewife. The first time we met, Marina looked at me and smiled. “You’re the one who walks with rhythm,” she said.
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