Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (35 page)
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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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As far as our fans knew, the Eagles simply vanished. The 1980s heralded a rock scene that relied largely on synthesizers and drum machines. After the assassination of John Lennon in December 1980, it felt like the end of an era for all of us. The music business was something we no longer recognized or felt a part of. Blondie was riding high in the charts, along with people like the Police, ABBA, David Bowie, and Michael Jackson. Irving, who realized his best-selling act was no longer going to make him millions, became head of MCA Records, dropping all but five of the company’s almost fifty rock acts and thereby rescuing it from bankruptcy. The move made him one of the most powerful men in the music industry yet didn’t prevent his retaining indirect control of Front Line Management or his own independent record label, Full Moon. Joe Smith, head of Warner and the last connection between Warner and the Eagles, resigned.
The only headlines the rest of us were making were unwelcome ones. Don Henley threw a party at his L.A. home at which a minor took an overdose of drugs. The paramedics had to be called and the sixteen-year-old girl resuscitated. Don was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, cocaine, and Quaaludes, as well as contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He claimed he never even knew she was there among all the other groupies and partygoers. He was fined two thousand dollars, placed on probation for two years, and ordered to attend drug counseling. Later that same year, he and his actress girlfriend were involved in a plane crash in Aspen.
Glenn did some film work in Mexico and ended up detained by authorities briefly in Veracruz after a minor car accident. He was so freaked out by the experience that he chartered a private plane to fly him home to Aspen, Colorado, as soon as he was released. Joe and Tim were out on the road or doing solo work, and I was home, trying to make some sense of my family life.
The year the Eagles broke up
turned out to be one of my worst personally, too. For a time, I felt as if my whole world was falling apart.
turned out to be one of my worst personally, too. For a time, I felt as if my whole world was falling apart.
The day before the
Long Run
tour ended and I was due home, Susan opened a fan letter from among scores that had been delivered to our Malibu house by the management company. Sacks of mail were collected together and held back until our return, then delivered to each member of the band personally. Susan rarely bothered to read the letters and cards adoring fans sent, but for some reason, this time she did. My mother was staying with her, awaiting my return as well, when Susan happened upon a letter from a fan in Texas.
Long Run
tour ended and I was due home, Susan opened a fan letter from among scores that had been delivered to our Malibu house by the management company. Sacks of mail were collected together and held back until our return, then delivered to each member of the band personally. Susan rarely bothered to read the letters and cards adoring fans sent, but for some reason, this time she did. My mother was staying with her, awaiting my return as well, when Susan happened upon a letter from a fan in Texas.
This particular fan was the most sexually adventurous creature I had ever met. During our brief liaison on the road, in a hotel room in Dallas, she had led me through experiences I’d never previously known. In her letter, she expressed her delight at our “wonderful night together,” and cataloged some of the things she’d like to do to me if ever I was in Texas again. Poor Susan, who’d always chosen to ignore the rumors and media stories about the excesses of life on the road, found herself sitting in her own living room, her mother-in-law a few feet away, reading a sexually explicit billet-doux from a woman I’d had sex with. This was irrefutable evidence, in black and white, held in her trembling hand.
When I arrived home the following day, expecting my usual warm greeting, I found myself ducking a machete. She wanted to decapitate me. Slowly. To her eternal credit, she did a brilliant job of publicly pretending everything was normal for my mother’s sake and that of the children, but when we were alone, she talked to me endlessly about what I’d done and why.
“I can’t believe you’d be so stupid! To jeopardize everything we have for
this.
” She waved the letter accusingly at me. “Nine years we’ve been together. Nine years. We have three small children. What were you thinking?”
this.
” She waved the letter accusingly at me. “Nine years we’ve been together. Nine years. We have three small children. What were you thinking?”
There was nothing I could say to appease her. I’d been caught red-handed and I knew it. All the years of guilt and angst conspired against me. I’d managed to persuade myself that none of the women mattered, that my infidelities were insignificant compared with the depth of feeling I had for Susan, but the pain I saw in her eyes made me realize how wrong I’d been.
“I honestly never set out to hurt you, but you must have known what was going on,” I said lamely. “I was thrown in with Don and Glenn and Joe, with all that alcohol and drugs, you couldn’t possibly have expected me not to crack after all these years.” Even as I spoke the words, I knew how shallow they sounded.
Whether she’d suspected or not before didn’t matter. The letter she held in her hand made our situation temporarily irredeemable. We started therapy, as a couple and separately, and I came to realize just how much distress I’d caused. I also realized how close I was to blowing my marriage. I’d almost lost her before, when we’d separated in the sixties, and my good fortune at finding her again in Boston after Flow had always been such a blessing. I knew then, as I knew now, that she was the only woman I had ever truly loved, and the thought of losing her snatched the breath from my lungs.
It may have been a little late, but I decided there and then that I’d done all I needed to do in terms of exploring sexual experiences with other women. The breakup of the Eagles had made me realize that what really meant the most to me in my life wasn’t the band, it was Susan and the kids. I would do everything within my power to keep them.
My heinous crime wasn’t a bear I could fully wrestle to the mat and forget, however. Susan might be able to forgive me eventually, but she could never forget. I’d created a fissure in our relationship that would reside there permanently, irreparably. Even though I tried my hardest by apologizing profusely and telling her how much I loved and admired her, and promising never to touch anyone else, the bear was always there, between us. In therapy, I became dogged with guilt, which I found impossible to purge. I’d been wracked with it enough on the road, but this was in a different league. This was true remorse. I begged forgiveness both from Susan and from a higher being for the sins I’d committed, the damage and suffering I’d caused, not only to my family but to all those women I’d used and abused.
A great many other beasts were awoken by the therapy too, as they so often are. One was the issue of control. Because I was away so much, Susan had understandably assumed control of the house and the kids and the Mexican maids and our three pet dogs. It was she who chose and bought the furniture and the drapes, disciplined the children, and decided where they should go to school and how they should dress. When I came home and tried to impose a different regime, or make a suggestion about something she might like to consider, my input was largely ignored or overlooked. The kids knew that when Dad was home, things were suddenly more ordered, but as soon as I was gone, they could all relax and go back to their normal lives. The effect had been to make me feel less and less involved in family life and more and more on the periphery, which, our therapist explained, had helped push me into the arms of other women.
“Don needs to feel a part of his family and this home,” she told Susan. “He needs to feel that the little authority he does have isn’t constantly undermined. Until he does, he’ll never be able to come to terms with the two very separate parts of his life. Or worse, he’ll start to feel more comfortable with the on-the-road persona than he does with the home one, and you may lose him altogether.”
The therapist made a lot of sense, although she still made me feel like a complete failure as a husband and father. She also made me realize—too late—that being a rock star wasn’t a horrible thing to be. I’d learned to cope with the negatives and savor the positives, like the money and the fame and the ability to play music. There was a thrilling element to my life that allowed me to walk out onto a stage in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans and do my stuff. But when I came home and wanted real intimacy, to counter the increasing isolation I felt on the road, despite or perhaps because of the women I slept with, I was faced instead with control issues and a distancing between Susan and me that only fed my guilt. Often, she made me admit, it was a relief to go back on tour, to a life that was more familiar and easier to deal with.
If I could have turned back the clock and been a better person then, I would have done so. Susan, Jesse, Rebecca, and Cody were my life, and there was, I knew, a very real danger that I might lose them. And for what? To satisfy the carnal beast? To impress my fellow band members and not be regarded by them with suspicion and contempt? I prayed for extra strength to help me through the many trials I was now facing. Was this how I was going to end up?—an embittered, unemployed guitarist, divorced from his wife, a weekend dad, living in some apartment alone somewhere? I prayed not.
Perhaps not surprisingly, within six months of the band splitting up and the start of my problems with Susan, I was hospitalized with chronic diverticulitis, inflammation of the colon, which erupted within me like a burning spear. I’d been trying to deal with the stress of my life in a very self-healing way, but internally my body was eating itself alive. I spent a week in the Santa Monica Hospital on intravenous antibiotics, feeling utterly wretched about myself and the path my life seemed to be taking.
A nurse brought me a telephone one afternoon. “Felder, it’s Irving,” the voice on the line said.
I was touched at the thought of Irving calling to see how I was. I should have known better.
“Just to let you know,” he said, without asking a single question about my well-being. “Joe Walsh is putting together a solo album, and he’s recorded one of the songs you wrote for the last album which didn’t make it. It was the one called ‘You’re Really High, Aren’t You?’ He’s gonna redo the lyrics and change it around a bit, and would like your permission to use it on his new album.”
“Er, well, Irv, I was kinda keeping that one for the future,” I said, at a loss for what to say, my head flopping back onto my pillow with a searing wave of pain.
I felt as though he wasn’t asking me, he was telling me, as Joe’s manager, that this was how it was going to be. I think I was supposed to be grateful.
I’d always been careful about spending money.
When you come from poverty, you never quite believe your luck will last. In L.A., I saw plenty of other people make mistakes. They’d join bands, have some success, and make lots of money. Ten years later, they’d be subsisting in rundown little condominiums in the Valley because they’d blown it all. I was somewhat cognizant of this danger. I also had a good business manager, who’d invested in some profitable real estate ventures for me, but I was still only in my thirties, and none of my investments had yet left me financially solvent for the rest of my days. With the lucrative income from touring cut off, a future living on royalties alone would obviously have a big impact on my family and me. I had enough to live on, but if I wanted to maintain our lifestyle, I would definitely have to reconsider my options.
When you come from poverty, you never quite believe your luck will last. In L.A., I saw plenty of other people make mistakes. They’d join bands, have some success, and make lots of money. Ten years later, they’d be subsisting in rundown little condominiums in the Valley because they’d blown it all. I was somewhat cognizant of this danger. I also had a good business manager, who’d invested in some profitable real estate ventures for me, but I was still only in my thirties, and none of my investments had yet left me financially solvent for the rest of my days. With the lucrative income from touring cut off, a future living on royalties alone would obviously have a big impact on my family and me. I had enough to live on, but if I wanted to maintain our lifestyle, I would definitely have to reconsider my options.
I’d bought a big house on a two-acre lot in Bonsall Canyon, Malibu, from Tommy Chong of the comedy duo Cheech and Chong, both of whom became close friends. My immediate neighbors were Jimmy Pankow from the band Chicago on one side and the actor Nick Nolte on the other. Nick used to have such wild parties with Gary Busey and his friends that Jimmy would call me up in the middle of the night and say, “Hey, Felder, turn that music down!” and I’d yell back, “It’s not me, it’s Nolte.”
Jimmy was a great family man, living high on the hog with seven acres filled with thoroughbred horses and Rolls-Royces. He was always inviting me over for barbecues with his friends, most of whom were his fellow band members. I can remember watching them all getting along so well, their wives and kids in tow, and wishing our band had been like that.
Our house was a California-style property designed by the man who built the Disneyland Hotel. It had a living room forty feet square that was like a hotel lobby. Irving had recommended his architect and interior designer to us and Susan met with them and decided what we wanted, which was effectively a whole new house on the back of this living room, so we had to move into rental houses until it was done.
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