Read Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles Online
Authors: Don Felder,Wendy Holden
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Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (32 page)
BOOK: Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles
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Glenn was facing other challenges.
In the beginning, he’d written or sung most of the hits. He was the voice and face of the Eagles and he was still producing great songs like the number one hit “Heartache Tonight,” but all that was changing. As Don’s creative ability and individual successes surpassed his, Glenn’s input seemed to be inferior. Everyone’s was. Don kept the peace by stepping back as much as he could and letting Glenn believe he was still running the show. Glenn saw straight through that, though. He’d never liked sharing the driver’s seat, but now he was being expected to shift into the back.
In the beginning, he’d written or sung most of the hits. He was the voice and face of the Eagles and he was still producing great songs like the number one hit “Heartache Tonight,” but all that was changing. As Don’s creative ability and individual successes surpassed his, Glenn’s input seemed to be inferior. Everyone’s was. Don kept the peace by stepping back as much as he could and letting Glenn believe he was still running the show. Glenn saw straight through that, though. He’d never liked sharing the driver’s seat, but now he was being expected to shift into the back.
With Don ever more prominent, Glenn appeared to feel the need to focus his discontent on someone else. It didn’t matter if it was a roadie or guitar player, Glenn often made someone the target of his abuse. We called them his “random victims.” From one day to the next, he’d pick someone at random then humiliate them in order, I suppose, to make himself feel superior. He gave us all nicknames that seemed to be calculated to bring out our insecurities. David Sanborn, who had a withered hand, was called Flipper. When my hair started to thin slightly at the back, he started to call me Spot. One of the sound engineers was dubbed Larry, because Glenn decided, unfairly, that he looked like Larry from the Three Stooges. Tommy Nixon, Glenn’s right-hand man, usually took the brunt, but when Glenn grew bored with baiting Tommy, he’d focus on someone else. Tommy was a nice guy, absolutely dedicated to Glenn after starting out as his guitar roadie in the seventies, and he was totally dependent on him for money and a job. I’m ashamed now that I stood by for all those years watching another human being so humiliated.
One of us should have stood up for Tommy, but taking on Glenn when he was in that kind of mood wasn’t easy. Some of his victimization was done in the name of humor, but it was usually done at someone else’s expense, allowing him to play his power card and keep everyone around him subservient. It was an emotional problem that should have been addressed with therapy of some kind, and maybe Prozac, not more cocaine. We were all finding it increasingly difficult to operate at our level of success with such heavy drug use, struggling through severe hangovers every day.
My turn to be a random victim would come whenever I asked awkward questions about management. Glenn saw this as an annoyance. “You shouldn’t be bothered with all that, Fingers,” he’d tell me, crossly. “Irving’s in control.”
For whatever reason, Glenn began to make me feel like I was the chief focus of his anger. I don’t think I ever did anything directly to piss him off, except maybe not kowtow to him like some other people; it was just my turn. Besides the nicknames, Glenn seemed to delight in mimicking people in a humiliating way. He’d amplify something in your voice or character and act it out for an admiring, laughing audience. That’s fair game, I guess, but then he found my Achilles’ heel.
I’d never been overly confident singing onstage. If I stepped from the back of the line up to the microphone, I would never march up to it like him, the Teen King. I’d walk up, in step with the music, in a sort of stilted gait. My reticence was clear. I’m not a singer, I’m a guitar player, and I was always reluctant about singing, especially with Don glaring at the back of my head with eyes like lasers. I knew he was behind the drum riser, scrutinizing every note, which was very intimidating.
During one particular rehearsal, Glenn sarcastically announced, “And let’s hear it now, gents, for Fingers Felder, singing his Number One hit, ‘Hotel California.’ ” He then mimicked how I stepped to the microphone in my hesitant way. Everyone in the road crew and band, even the stagehands, was laughing. Normally I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid, but for some reason, that day I lost it completely, instead of letting it wash over me. In fact, I was so angry that I followed him into the bathroom afterward, grabbed him, and threw him up against one of the metal partitions between the urinal and the toilet.
“You ever talk to me or humiliate me like that in public again, Roach, and I’m gonna break your fucking nose,” I told him, holding him by his shirt collar, my fist balled. I was sick and tired of his abuse, not only of me but many others.
He seemed shocked. “Er, no, Fingers, I’m sorry. It was just a joke, man. Cool it,” he said. I somehow managed to reel myself back in and walk away.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a point of no return.
In the summer of 1979,
we were back to the grindstone in Miami. Don’s vocals on “The Long Run” made us think we might finally be able to finish the album and have our title track, but the days of Don and Glenn sitting down and happily writing songs together, and of us actually believing we could deliver a double album, had ended. Of ten songs, seven were collaborations with people like J.D. Souther or Bob Seger. One was Joe Walsh’s solo work, “In the City.” My contribution was two songs, “The Disco Strangler,” and “Those Shoes,” although there were at least three other tracks I’d brought to the album that Don had started to do something with but was never able to finish.
we were back to the grindstone in Miami. Don’s vocals on “The Long Run” made us think we might finally be able to finish the album and have our title track, but the days of Don and Glenn sitting down and happily writing songs together, and of us actually believing we could deliver a double album, had ended. Of ten songs, seven were collaborations with people like J.D. Souther or Bob Seger. One was Joe Walsh’s solo work, “In the City.” My contribution was two songs, “The Disco Strangler,” and “Those Shoes,” although there were at least three other tracks I’d brought to the album that Don had started to do something with but was never able to finish.
I remember sitting in the studio and playing one track that I’d written and was especially proud of, called “You’re Really High, Aren’t You?” We’d started to record it, and Don sat there and suddenly said, “I see it. I know what I gotta do with that track.” Everybody thought, “Oh great, we’ve got another one,” but sadly, he never followed through, and the track was consigned to the cutting room floor. It was very disheartening, and the frustration was immense. I put that track carefully to one side in the hope that maybe for the next album, Don’s inspiration would return.
For “Those Shoes,” which was accepted, I wrote most of the music—drum parts, bass, and guitar parts—except the solo, which was Joe’s. I wrote it as a demo and gave it to Don and Glenn, and we added talk-box guitars and beefed it up a little. The concept behind the song was, I believe, how high heels turn a man on. Don took my basic track and ran with it. At the end, he sang, “Merci, Monsieur Jourdan,” a tribute to the shoe designer Charles Jourdan.
“Disco Strangler” was designed as an antidote to the Bee Gees- discotheque craze that was going on at the time, after the success of the 1977 film
Saturday Night Fever
, with John Travolta. The one thing the Eagles agreed on was that we all hated disco music. It seemed so unmusical and repetitive to us ballad boys. There was no melody to it, just four-on-the-floor, straight quarter-note, bass drum beats, so I took that as a basis and played with it. Don sang the lyrics after coming up with the concept of a woman dancing in the spotlight, urging people to look at her and how beautiful she is. The disco strangler, who’s been waiting in the wings all along, “the fiddler in your darkest night,” is ready to slide his hands around her pretty throat. I had a good time recording that one cut.
Saturday Night Fever
, with John Travolta. The one thing the Eagles agreed on was that we all hated disco music. It seemed so unmusical and repetitive to us ballad boys. There was no melody to it, just four-on-the-floor, straight quarter-note, bass drum beats, so I took that as a basis and played with it. Don sang the lyrics after coming up with the concept of a woman dancing in the spotlight, urging people to look at her and how beautiful she is. The disco strangler, who’s been waiting in the wings all along, “the fiddler in your darkest night,” is ready to slide his hands around her pretty throat. I had a good time recording that one cut.
One of the pieces I’m second-most proud of, after “Hotel California,” also came out of the
Long Run
album. It is a short guitar solo in “Sad Café,” a song Don wrote, loosely based on days at the Troubadour club. I wrote a multitrack acoustic solo for it, inspired by the song “Midnight at the Oasis,” by Maria Muldaur, which had been a huge hit. It’s only about eight bars long, but I was very happy with the way I was able to take that section and create a six-track harmony that worked. I can still listen to that and smile to myself.
Long Run
album. It is a short guitar solo in “Sad Café,” a song Don wrote, loosely based on days at the Troubadour club. I wrote a multitrack acoustic solo for it, inspired by the song “Midnight at the Oasis,” by Maria Muldaur, which had been a huge hit. It’s only about eight bars long, but I was very happy with the way I was able to take that section and create a six-track harmony that worked. I can still listen to that and smile to myself.
Glenn had only brought one song to the album so far, a number called “Teenage Jail,” which was by far his worst writing effort and had a crazy, balls-to-the-walls guitar solo at the end of it. My solo was the result of a four-in-the-morning, whacked-out, coked-out session, and to this day, I’m embarrassed to have played it. It just keeps lingering like a bad smell. Glenn fled back to L.A. and called up his old friend Bob Seger to ask if he had anything. Fortunately he had—and between them they came up with “Heartache Tonight.”
We raced back to Miami to record it for Glenn to sing, and he was as happy as could be, knowing that he finally had something. In it, he made the prophecy that someone was going to hurt somebody before the night was through.
When it came to recording solo guitar parts in the studio, there was considerable competition. Glenn would take first shot, then me, then Joe, and whichever guy came up with the coolest part won. We each had totally different styles, but somehow they worked together as well as separately. It was a real challenge in terms of personalities, because Joe and I hit it off personally and musically, and we really wanted to write stuff for a two- or three-guitar band. Between the two of us, there was a lot of camaraderie, which really produced some original and unique sounds. When we were cutting “Those Shoes,” we recorded live onto those basic tracks and found a place for a guitar solo. The first couple of times nobody played, and then the last time, Joe played, and it was great, so it stayed on the record that way.
There was a lot of trying out new material and ways of playing it for the good of the project. On “The Long Run,” I played keyboards for the first time on record. I just started playing in the studio, and it worked. Joe used to play keyboards on some songs too. Everybody did whatever was necessary to make the best record without trying to insist on playing solo or stepping up to the mike. That was the musical dynamic when it was at its best.
When it was at its worst, drugs were usually to blame. Cocaine and alcohol with Quaaludes thrown in was bad medicine, even if it did smooth off the edges. It’s amazing we’re all still alive. I can’t count the number of nights I drove home from the studio with the sun coming up. I’d cruise down Ocean Boulevard, my nose still tingling, heading for a house I shared with Joe in Key Biscayne. I could hardly keep the car on the road for grinding my teeth. I’d have been up all night, I’d reach home by six, fall into bed, then wake up, and have to get back to the studio and start all over.
In the end, I became fed up with driving home, worried that I was going to kill myself. And I was always afraid a Miami cop would stop me and throw me in jail after finding drugs in my pocket. Even on so-called days off, I’d leave the studio at five in the morning, high as a kite, and keep going. Joe and I might play golf at one in the afternoon with a couple of beers, then continue partying. Sure enough, our day off became another marathon. Instead of recovering, we’d rush right back in.
I didn’t want to be locked into that life anymore, so I booked myself a little suite in the Coconut Grove Hotel, a few blocks away from the studio. Now when I left, I just had to stagger few blocks. I’d push a button, enter the elevator, fumble with my room key, and crash out. I’d wake up and order room service instead of going downstairs to fumble with pots and pans. Since they had a gym, I could also work out and maintain some semblance of normality. I didn’t mean to withdraw from the others. I was just tired of that long drive.
The studio marathon went on.
We were down to our bare nerve endings in terms of stress. I think the whole band had been suffering from postpartum depression after
Hotel
, and now we were heavily pregnant again with the next baby, and the strain was showing. To allow us to spend more time with our families and less in Florida, some of the recording was moved to the One Step Up Studio in West Hollywood. It would be fair to say, I think, that this became our least favorite album because it represented such a dark time personally. We were struggling to write, we were struggling with drug and alcohol abuse, and we were struggling with interpersonal relations and egos. The whole album had this dark cloud of dissension around it. It finally divided us into two camps, Don and Glenn versus me and Joe, the guitar players. Timothy was somewhere floating around, the Wanderer, as ever. Finally, we exhausted ourselves, exhausted our patience, and took so many drugs that nobody could see any further solutions except to finish what we had and walk away from it.
We were down to our bare nerve endings in terms of stress. I think the whole band had been suffering from postpartum depression after
Hotel
, and now we were heavily pregnant again with the next baby, and the strain was showing. To allow us to spend more time with our families and less in Florida, some of the recording was moved to the One Step Up Studio in West Hollywood. It would be fair to say, I think, that this became our least favorite album because it represented such a dark time personally. We were struggling to write, we were struggling with drug and alcohol abuse, and we were struggling with interpersonal relations and egos. The whole album had this dark cloud of dissension around it. It finally divided us into two camps, Don and Glenn versus me and Joe, the guitar players. Timothy was somewhere floating around, the Wanderer, as ever. Finally, we exhausted ourselves, exhausted our patience, and took so many drugs that nobody could see any further solutions except to finish what we had and walk away from it.
The album became known as the Long One at the record company. It wasn’t helped by the way we worked, which was actually quite a strange and lengthy process. We’d start with a basic track—intro, verse, second verse, chorus, third verse, chorus, bridge, and out—and set some device to help us keep our tempo together. We’d fill up ten to twelve reels over two or three days, each reel having three to five takes on it, recording that same track over and over, constantly arranging and creating it. Then there’d be an editing session, where we’d put up twenty-four-track tapes and listen to each reel to find out what the best feel was for the drums.
From tape twelve, we might take the first eight bars, from tape three the second eight bars, and from tape five the first bar and a half of the second bridge. Bill would listen with those fantastic ears of his and say, “Oh, good first verse” or “Nice bridge” from one tape, and then shake his head and say, “Well, that’s about it.” Then on the next tape, he’d listen and say, “Oh, good, great intro, that was a really good intro” or “The drum fill was really great going into the chorus,” and so on, until the floor of the control room was literally carpeted with two-inch tape standing on edge. All these little pieces would start coming out of these basic tracks and be edited together until that the drum track sounded really good, even if everything else sounded awful, because we could fix all the other stuff later.
BOOK: Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles
10.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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