Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (17 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
3.04Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
One of our next gigs was at the Troubadour, the place where the Eagles had first met. There was an Italian restaurant next door called Dan Tana’s, where we’d eat great platefuls of spaghetti before the show. The Troubadour remained a beacon for new talent. Everyone from Jim Morrison to Van Morrison hung out there, having a few drinks while listening to that night’s turn, or getting up to join in. Don Henley and Glenn Frey still spent most of their evenings there, drinking single longneck Buds, playing music, and working the babes at the bar. Bernie and Randy were regulars too.
 
Joni Mitchell sometimes used to come in to hear David Blue play. I was childishly starstruck every time I met her, but I didn’t hang around long enough to get to know the person beneath the megastar veneer. As I kept reminding myself, I was only at the club for the gigs. My marriage wasn’t going to work if I did anything else. I’d either go straight home to Susan and Kilo, or she’d come to the venue and wait for me. I wasn’t cat-tin’ around town. That was never the plan.
 
Joni asked me to play some guitar in a session for one of her records, which was like a dream come true. I went along to the studio and sat there with her and David and played my beloved sunburst Les Paul for them. Halfway through the session, I placed the guitar on a stand and took a short break. I was so nervous, I hadn’t put it down carefully enough, and, to my horror, I watched it topple over and break at the neck. I fixed it myself with some wood glue and a clamp, but it never really played the same way after that. I don’t know if Joni ever used what I laid down, but—despite busting my guitar—I was happy just to have been asked.
 
David and I traveled to places like Denver and Phoenix for a few weekend club gigs. Drugs were a frequent feature for everyone on the road and, for the first time, I came into contact with cocaine. It wasn’t something I indulged in often, because I couldn’t afford it—a hundred dollars for a gram of blow was way out of my league. Moreover, when your body isn’t used to it, a little bit of that stuff goes a long way. One night, David gave me a bottle that had a quarter of a gram in the bottom of it, which was very generous. I snorted a little and flew to the ceiling. One of the truck drivers, who’d become a good friend, had a long night’s drive ahead of him after the show, so when I’d taken what I wanted, I gave him the rest. “Hey, buddy, maybe this’ll help,” I told him. He was very happy to accept.
 
The next day, someone was chopping out some cocaine in a dressing room, and I took a snort. David watched me from the other side of the room. “Hey, Don,” he said, “what happened to the blow you had yesterday?”
 
“I gave it to the truck driver.”
 
David nearly fell off his chair. “You did what?” He never quite understood my camaraderie with the “hired help,” as he called them.
 
The tour continued to go well, and Geffen-Roberts Management seemed pleased. They gave us the green light to expand and put a four-man band together, with bass and drums, using other songs that lent themselves to the same format. “You can open for the Eagles for a couple of local gigs,” Elliot told us. “They’re going on a nationwide tour for their new album,
Desperado
.”
 
Within a few weeks, I was standing on the stage at the Santa Monica Civic Center with David Blue, playing accompaniment, with my old buddy Bernie Leadon standing in the wings watching me, ready to go on with his own band. It felt like a dream come true, Bernie and me on the road together at last, each one of us doing OK. Every night after the gig, we’d hang together like the old days, drinking a few beers. The more I saw of the Eagles, the more they seemed like a really nice bunch of guys. I was happy Bernie had found himself a good group.
 
Our next act was opening for Crosby & Nash. The legendary Graham Nash had stood on the stage in front of me in Gainesville and sung “Bus Stop” for the Hollies. Then he’d belted it out at Woodstock with Stephen Stills, the kid I’d played with in Florida. He’d even lived with Joni Mitchell for a while. Now I was going on tour with him and David Crosby. I could hardly believe my luck. Meeting Graham for the first time did nothing to disappoint. He was a true English gentleman, charming, genuine, and sincere. He personified the ideals of Woodstock. He’d always greet you with a smile, even if he was sometimes a little high on pot. He seemed to be delighted with me musically and with what I’d been able to add to David’s act. He’d often sit in on our rehearsals and make useful suggestions about the house mix and how it was sounding, always in an extremely diplomatic and gentle way. I had the utmost respect for him musically and when I came to know him as a person, I added several tiers of admiration. He was a timeless, wise soul, whom I felt to be several thousand years ahead of me.
 
I was still very naïve when I started working on that nationwide tour in the fall of 1973. Our opening gig was at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. Susan had flown up with us to see the show and wave me off on tour. She was going back to L.A. and her secretarial job the following morning. We were both childishly excited.
 
“Wow, Don, you’re really going on the road,” she said, her eyes brighter than I’d seen them in years. “This is all you’ve ever wanted, isn’t it?”
 
“Yes,” I told her, my own stomach doing a somersault at the thought. I needn’t have worried. We went onstage and performed very well. The fans really seemed to like our stuff. I played guitar and sang harmonies and stood in front of a club packed to the hilt with adoring fans, relishing every second. I felt so exhilarated, because I knew this was the start of something really big. Crosby & Nash came on after us and blew the crowd away with some of their best numbers, like “Woodstock,” “Teach Your Children,” “Love the One You’re With” and “Marrakesh Express.” They were awesome with their hypnotic harmonies, and the crowd loved their music.
 
We spent that night at the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco, a five-star Japanese fantasyland, with sushi, hot tubs, and shiatsu massage. Susan and I went back to our room after the gig, took a shower, made love, and lay side by side on the bed in the darkness, the glow of the city lights illuminating our room.
 
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I whispered. “It all seems so unreal.”
 
“I know,” Susan replied, her body pressed hard against mine. “It’s really cool.”
 
“I feel like we’re on the brink of something here. Like this could really be the beginning, you know?” I reached down and kissed the top of her head.
 
“We
are
on the brink of something, Don,” she told me, pulling herself up onto one elbow and staring at me in the half-light. There was a pause. “I’m going to have a baby.”
 
I lay staring at her in stunned, unblinking silence for what seemed like an eternity. It was such unexpected news. Susan was the steady breadwinner, we were living in a crappy little rented apartment, and I was about to go on the road. I thought to myself: “I’m just a long-haired, rock-and-roll hippie, a guitar player, not someone’s dad.”
 
Susan sat up even more and stared down at me. “Don?” she said. “Are you all right? Did you hear me? We’re having a baby.”
 
I had a sudden stupid desire to cry. Grabbing her, I pulled her to me. “A baby? Are you sure?”
 
“Yes.” She grinned. “Certain. Are you pleased?”
 
“Pleased? I’m thrilled! I feel like everything I touch at the moment turns to gold. I couldn’t be happier, Susan. Really.”
 
 
 
 
While I let the idea of being a father filter through, the tour continued, taking in most of the West Coast’s hockey and sports arenas, theaters, university campuses, and college venues. Most nights, before the gig, we’d sit and jam with Crosby & Nash and their backup band in their dressing room. We had some good laughs, playing music together. Then, one night, guitarist David Lindley—whom I’d stepped in for with David Blue—took sick with the flu while the band was staying at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. He was so ill, he had to be flown back to L.A. Graham Nash came to my hotel room and asked me if I could play David’s parts.
 
“W-w-what do you mean?” I stammered.
 
“You know all the songs, Don. You know us. It’d just be for a while, until David gets better.”
 
I played with them that night at the Capitol Theater, and it worked really well. Graham liked my playing so much that he came to see me after the show. “You know, I don’t think we’re gonna have David back,” he said. “We’d like you to stay with the tour. Do you think you can handle it?”
 
“Sure,” I said, gulping down my excitement.
 
For a few short months, the band became Crosby, Nash & Felder. I’d play my set with David Blue, come offstage for the intermission, then return to play with Graham and David. They paid me double wages, once for each show, but saved a fortune by only having to pay expenses for one guitarist instead of two. Still, I wasn’t complaining.
 
One night we were playing in Denver when, unbeknownst to me, they invited Stephen Stills—who was living in Colorado—to come and jam with us onstage during the show. It was a last-minute thing, arranged as a surprise for the audience. He was a successful solo artist now, but he sometimes missed the camaraderie of being in a band, and he jumped at the chance. We’d just finished “Marrakesh Express” when Graham suddenly introduced Stephen to uproarious applause, and he strolled onto the stage. We took one look at each other in mutual surprise. “Don!” he said, astonished, as the audience waited for us to begin, “What the hell are you doing here?”
 
“Being you,” I replied with a smile. He took his place, and we all jammed together and blew the crowd away. It was the once-in-a-lifetime only performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Felder. After the show, Stephen told Graham that we’d been in a high school band together in Gainesville and had known each other since we were teenagers. I’d never mentioned our connection; it never seemed to come up, and in any event, when I’d tried to see Stephen backstage in Boston, I’d been given the brush-off, so I wasn’t sure how I stood.
 
Graham was flabbergasted. “I can’t believe you never said anything or tried to use your friendship with Stephen to your advantage,” he told me. I think he took another view of me after that.
 
David Crosby was completely the opposite. He was the first person I’d ever met who used excessive amounts of cocaine, and the energy that came off him in consequence was paranoid, tense, and fearful. I remember walking down the hallway in a motel we were staying in one night and seeing David’s door open, so I strolled in. We were working together, after all, and I had hoped we were friends.
 
“Hey, how you doing?” I said, thinking I could walk into his life the same way I could with Graham. On the bed, his suitcase was lying open, and inside was a bag of cocaine. David was really high, and the look on his face was one of paranoia. He’d been caught red-handed and there was no telling what he might do.
 
Stiffening, I said, “Oh, I forgot something, I’ve gotta go.” I only worked with him for a few months, but there was always a distance between us, and I never stopped being slightly wary.
 
 
 
 
The tour ended
and, with it, the fun. There were plans for a second leg early in 1974, and Graham and David asked me to go out again with them then. I agreed without hesitation. I returned home to Susan, who was happily pregnant and working full-time, and we set about looking for somewhere else to live until I went on the road again. Culver City was no place to bring up a child.
 
We found a place for $175 a month at Fernwood Drive in Topanga, near Bernie. We shared it with his younger brother Tom and Tom’s girlfriend, Cathy. Topanga was so beautiful, with its mountains and woods, and it attracted an artistic community of singers, actors, writers, and instrumentalists, many of them known as “canyon musicians.” Our neighbors, past and present, included Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, Alice Cooper, the Mothers of Invention, and a singer named Taj Mahal, who had a big hit at the time called “Take a Giant Step,” cowritten by Carole King. There was a bar called the Topanga Corral, where bands like Spanky and Our Gang, Canned Heat, and Spirit regularly honed their musical skills. We fit right in. Best of all, our cabin had a yard for Kilo, who rediscovered the pleasures of outdoor living.
 
The place we found was like a summer cabin, with screened windows and a hammock out back. There was one proper bedroom, which we had, and a little sewing room for Tom and Cathy. I installed a washer-dryer so Susan didn’t have to go all the way to the coin-op in the Valley, and I made a dining table out of a giant wooden telephone cable spool I bought at a junkyard for fifteen bucks. Our bedroom was too small for a crib, so the baby would have to sleep with us for a while. Susan was getting further and further along, and blossoming with it. I loved watching our child grow inside her.
 
She was still driving the Volvo, which never once gave up the ghost, and I bought a faded blue ’51 International Harvester pickup truck to run around in. It was truly horrible. You couldn’t see your reflection in any part of the paint, and there was nothing left that resembled chrome either. It had six cylinders and you could hardly hear the clunk and grind of the engine over the clatter of the fenders and the noise the body made while in motion.

Other books

London Harmony: Minuette by Erik Schubach
Heart of Steele by Brad Strickland, Thomas E. Fuller
Artful Deceptions by Patricia Rice
Midnight Magic by Shari Anton
Heart Fate by Robin D. Owens
Bring Me Fire by Stone, Emily