Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (25 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
7.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
One night about halfway through the tour, just before we were due to fly to Australia and New Zealand for the next leg, we were staying at the Holiday Inn in Cincinnati when Glenn called a band meeting in his room. We used to have a lot of band meetings in the early days and, although everybody dreaded them for what they might reveal, they were useful as a forum for discussion. The trouble was that, with everyone expressing their disparate views, there was usually conflict.
I don’t recall exactly what started Bernie and Glenn arguing that December evening of 1975. Maybe Bernie was going on again about us having sold out and become too commercial. Maybe everyone else was pissed because Patti Davis was on the road with us again, which meant federal agents everywhere, to protect her because she was the governor’s daughter. The feds were an unwelcome addition, cramping the band’s lifestyle, especially when it came to drugs.
In any event, Glenn, sitting in the middle of the room in an aluminum chair, started in on Bernie, who was standing in the corner with a Budweiser in his hand, about how he screwed things up every time.
He said something like “You need to cool down, you fucking asshole,” and emptied his entire beer over Glenn’s head. All the while, he was staring him down, daring Glenn to stop him. Bernie was into karate and was super-fit. Few would have taken him on. Then he stormed out the open door and onto the balcony.
We sat there in amazement and watched what happened, including Glenn, who didn’t move a muscle while the beer dripped down his face. I think I was the first to move. I followed my old buddy out onto the balcony, where he was gripping the railing so hard the whites of his knuckles were showing through his skin, and I asked him what was going on. I said, “This isn’t good, man.”
He told me he was prepared to quit.
Assuming it was just one of those moments where people say something in a fit of anger, I wandered back into the room, where Glenn was toweling himself down, and tried to mediate. I told him I knew the two hadn’t been getting along, but if it continued like this, they’d come to blows.
I could see the muscles in Glenn’s jaw twitching, and I realized what a good job he’d done of containing himself. Glenn said something like “That guy’s a fucking liability,” through clenched teeth.
Don agreed.
Randy and I looked at each other and then back at Glenn and Don. I knew, in that moment, that Bernie’s days with the band were probably numbered.
The tour was cut short,
and when we got back to L.A., Bernie packed up his guitar and surfboard and took off for Hawaii, where he bought a house. He decided to write his own songs and record a solo album of the type of music he liked. He’d been in and out of several bands in the past and had been through bust-ups before. I think he thought he’d just move on to his next project. When asked why he’d left, he told one reporter, “I kept asking, ‘Are we gonna rest next month?’ and we never did. I wanted to get in shape before the age of thirty, so I could have a chance at the rest of my life. I was afraid something inside me was dying. Leaving was an act of survival.”
and when we got back to L.A., Bernie packed up his guitar and surfboard and took off for Hawaii, where he bought a house. He decided to write his own songs and record a solo album of the type of music he liked. He’d been in and out of several bands in the past and had been through bust-ups before. I think he thought he’d just move on to his next project. When asked why he’d left, he told one reporter, “I kept asking, ‘Are we gonna rest next month?’ and we never did. I wanted to get in shape before the age of thirty, so I could have a chance at the rest of my life. I was afraid something inside me was dying. Leaving was an act of survival.”
I felt really bad for him and was terribly torn. Bernie and I were good friends, and I hated to see him leave, especially under such a cloud. We’d had great times together in Gainesville, in Daytona Beach with the Allman brothers, and on the road with the Eagles. From the first time I ever met him, waiting at the Greyhound station in his ’63 Ford Falcon, we’d hung out, chatted, gotten high together, and played good music. I’d known him since I was a teenager, and he was one of the closest friends I’d ever had.
With Bernie’s departure and my inability to patch things up, I realized that my pacifist policy was going to be sorely tested. To my mind, Don and Glenn were seizing full control with Irving’s blessing; anybody who opposed them would be gone, and I felt powerless to stop it. I couldn’t bring myself to leave with him so I suddenly found myself completely isolated.
A tremor of fear ran through the band and rippled down through the crew. With the new power dynamic, the Eagles began to function by maintaining insecurity. Would Randy be next? Or me? Neither of us knew. We all wondered about our long-term future. The loss of Bernie could so easily have been our downfall. Until that point, he was actually the musical foundation of the band, being such a gifted multi-instrumentalist. Would this new direction we’d been pushed into even work? Would radio stations accept new rock songs from an essentially country band? We were quietly confident but we didn’t actually know. The doubt, fear, and worry caused even more upsets. The threat of further eruptions kept everyone walking on eggshells, feeling as if they should try to appease Don and Glenn. The original democratic band now seemed to me like a two-man dictatorship. Many wars were lost in silent combat. Opinions often went unsaid for fear that words would light the fuse that blew this band to hell.
On December 20, 1975,
Irving Azoff issued a press release officially announcing Bernie’s departure and the signing of his client Joe Walsh as the newest Eagle. The decision had been made in a matter of weeks, although Don had initially taken a great deal of convincing. He thought it was a colossal risk and worried that Joe’s strident musical personality would not fit well within the Eagles. We were the most successful we’d ever been, having found the right combination of country and rock to appeal to all tastes, and yet Irving was suggesting we take on an out-and-out heavy rocker whose arrival would surely herald a radical transformation of our sound.
Irving Azoff issued a press release officially announcing Bernie’s departure and the signing of his client Joe Walsh as the newest Eagle. The decision had been made in a matter of weeks, although Don had initially taken a great deal of convincing. He thought it was a colossal risk and worried that Joe’s strident musical personality would not fit well within the Eagles. We were the most successful we’d ever been, having found the right combination of country and rock to appeal to all tastes, and yet Irving was suggesting we take on an out-and-out heavy rocker whose arrival would surely herald a radical transformation of our sound.
Joe had been a friend of the band for some time, coming around to the studio to hang out and play with us after sessions, and I would personally welcome a few duelling jams with him onstage, but for many he seemed a little too wild for the Eagles. Apart from his solid rock career with the James Gang and songs like “Rocky Mountain Way,” he had a reputation for being a maverick. Irving convinced us that Walsh wouldn’t overshadow the rest of us and wouldn’t be allowed to play anything but our music.
“Irving insisted that he didn’t want people to think the Eagles were finished.” We had to replace Bernie right away and get back on the road. There was still an image of cohesion on stage and in the media. Irving tried to minimize the public damage by enforcing a news blackout, refusing to let any of us talk to reporters for fear that they might see what we’d become. He denied that there were personality conflicts and claimed that Bernie genuinely wanted to pursue a solo career.
No other candidates were suggested, and Joe Walsh was given his greatest Christmas present on a plate—membership in the Eagles. Bernie had just walked away from the whole deal, leaving the remaining four of us as Eagles Ltd.
The transition wasn’t as easy as Irving had suggested. Joe’s voice was much more nasal than Bernie’s, and the sound of the vocal harmonies changed dramatically. Joe’s performing style also couldn’t have been more different. He was a showman, accustomed to leaping around the stage, jumping off risers, and playing spectacular solos. By now, Don and Glenn’s control had extended to our stage show. Except for Glenn announcing, “We’re the Eagles from Los Angeles, California,” the rest of us rarely spoke to the audience, and we remained static and largely faceless. Don sang more, but most of the audience couldn’t even see him, sitting at his drum kit, hidden behind the cymbals. After Joe joined, the show became pretty schizophrenic for a while, kicking off and ending with some of our early numbers, like “Take It Easy,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Witchy Woman,” with Joe Walsh sandwiched in the middle, offering some comic relief and blowing everyone away with a raunchy James Gang number.
He was soon put in his place. After an initial burst of activity onstage, he started to toe the line, following Don and Glenn’s strict instructions that every note in every show on every night had to be played verbatim like on the record, without variance. All the steps were choreographed, including all the guitar moves and where we went on the stage in between songs. It was like a theatrical production. You could have written those charts out and had anybody play those pieces.
I feared that the precision playing and obsession with perfection made for a rather dull show. Yeah, sure, it’s great to hear a live performance played exactly as you know and love it on the record, perfect if you want to sing along or clap or follow the lines. But wasn’t the whole point of a live show that it was
live,
that you were seeing your idols for the first time and watching them actually
perform?
I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I know Randy and Joe were frustrated too.
Rolling Stone
magazine commented that by “eliminating spontaneity, particularly a Walsh-Felder guitar jam, the Eagles sacrifice any chance of creating anew onstage and reaching a higher peak.”
live,
that you were seeing your idols for the first time and watching them actually
perform?
I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I know Randy and Joe were frustrated too.
Rolling Stone
magazine commented that by “eliminating spontaneity, particularly a Walsh-Felder guitar jam, the Eagles sacrifice any chance of creating anew onstage and reaching a higher peak.”
Personally, I liked Joe a lot. What wasn’t there to like? He’s such an easy-to-love character, like a favorite drunken uncle with a bunch of crazy toys, a ready cache of funny stories, and a great sense of humor. Lord knows we needed to laugh. It was often mind-numbingly boring and lonely being on the road for weeks and months on end, and dealing with that was hard enough sober, much less when we were hung over, out of drugs, or feeling sick with sinus infections from bad blow out of Cuba. So we had to find ways to stay entertained.
Joe already had a reputation as a legendary hell-raiser and, given enough gin, that’s exactly what he was—turning adjoining rooms into one giant suite with the help of a chain saw, cutting the legs off all the furniture in Irving’s room to suit his diminutive height, and jamming coins into bedroom doors so they’d not open. In Chicago, I heard, he once pushed a grand piano out of a window onto the hotel manager’s car after they refused to let him into the restaurant without a tie. He was also a great one for starting water fights. We wrecked one whole floor of a hotel in Evansville, Indiana, by knocking on people’s doors, using Irving as a front man, and throwing ice buckets full of water at them when they opened up. He once painted the windows of a roadie’s hotel room black so that he thought it was still night when he woke in the morning and went back to sleep.
Joe would get a key to your room, turn the spigot on in the bidet, and close the bathroom door so that by the time you arrived, the room would be flooded. With a glue gun, he’d glue hotel doors shut. He’d glue the handset to your telephone and then ring and ring your room at four in the morning, knowing you couldn’t make it stop unless you ripped it from the wall, which, of course, you eventually did.
After Joe arrived, nobody ever returned a rental car in one piece or walked away from one in perfect condition. Joe’s voice would come crackling over the walkie-talkies he’d bought us all at Radio Shack, just as we parked in the lot and walked away. “Hey, Fingers, what the hell do you think you’re doing? It’s only a rental, man!” So, we’d dump the cars on the curb right outside the airport, with the seat belts cut out, the alarm or ignition disabled.
Joe delighted in going to toy stores and buying just about every new gadget they had. He’d come back to the hotel with remote control cars or helium blimps that we could steer around in the grand lobby or the rest of the hotel. After the walkie-talkies arrived, he gave everyone a call sign, including himself. His was José, although we also called him Rubber Nose, because he had this great big rubbery nose up which alarming quantities of cocaine would disappear.
“Yeah, that’s a big ten four, Whisky a-Go-Go.”
My call sign for Irving was 411, because that’s the number you dial for information. When someone claimed it was also his height, it stuck.
We spent huge amounts of money on batteries for the walkie-talkies to make sure we could reach each other day and night. The radio would crackle to life at 4 A.M. and a voice would say, “Hey, you still awake?”
“Yup. Am now.”
“You got any left?”
“Yeah.”
“OK, I’ll be right down.”
Joe was not at all confrontational and would acquiesce graciously to whatever Don and Glenn said, even if it meant he had to be virtually glued to the stage to stop him from moving about. However, his general stress of being on the road had to come out somewhere, and the rest of us encouraged him, because it allowed our own rage to be released by proxy. The more frustrated he became, the more pride he took in his “work” offstage—especially playing bumper cars with rental vehicles or throwing televisions out of hotel windows.
Irving joined in the fun by buying Joe an electric chain saw. It had its own special carrying case and was much quieter than a conventional one. You wouldn’t know what old Rubber Nose was up to until the blade started coming through your wall.
Joe and I had become friends long before he joined the Eagles. I’d played a couple of gigs with him, one at Dodger Stadium, and I’d helped him with a live record and a TV show he fronted called
Joe Walsh and Dr. John
. We played well together. The best lesson he taught me was how to adjust your phrasing so as to play behind someone without detracting from the solo. As a lead guitarist, it isn’t always easy to allow someone to step forward into the spotlight and play while you’re supporting them. Between us, we learned that little two-step, a sort of musical dance.
Joe Walsh and Dr. John
. We played well together. The best lesson he taught me was how to adjust your phrasing so as to play behind someone without detracting from the solo. As a lead guitarist, it isn’t always easy to allow someone to step forward into the spotlight and play while you’re supporting them. Between us, we learned that little two-step, a sort of musical dance.
Other books
Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing
Broken by Martina Cole
His Cinderella Heiress by Marion Lennox
Pug Hill by Alison Pace
The Assassin Princess (The Legacy Novels Book 1) by Blake Rivers
All Rivers Flow to the Sea by Alison McGhee
The Bond That Ties Us by Christine D'Abo
Mafeking Road by Herman Charles Bosman
Fabric of Sin by Phil Rickman
The Sheriff Catches a Bride by Cora Seton