Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (36 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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When the band split up and I came home to live in the remodeled house, I just didn’t feel comfortable. There was far too much marble and granite for me; it felt more than a little gauche. I’d come from meager means, and my new home seemed opulent and pretentious. I was, quite frankly, embarrassed by it. Worst of all, I felt I had been completely omitted from the planning. Everything seemed very feminine, and there wasn’t even a corner for me to have a comfortable recliner to feel at home.
I discussed it with Susan, and we eventually agreed that there was no point in my feeling uncomfortable in my own home, so we sold the house and bought a five-acre piece of land at Paradise Cove, for which I started designing a new house. To supplement my income and stop myself from going mad, I went back to school and acquired the qualifications I needed for a real estate license, to broker my own property transactions. I hoped that by doing that and trying my hand at a few different jobs, such as writing movie scores, or doing some TV work, I could finally get to stay home with my wife and kids after years on the road.
For the first few years of their lives, my kids had grown up with an absentee father. I’d come home and they’d look at me and say, “Oh yeah, you live here, don’t you? You sleep with Mom. I remember you.” I’d be there for a week or two, then go. I missed school plays, parent evenings, soccer games, and many of the major events in their young lives. OK, I was Santa Claus each time I came home, laden with gifts and toys, my plunders from the big wide world, but it wasn’t the same. Our grueling schedule prevented me from being an active participant in their development, despite all the astronomically expensive telephone calls. Poor Susan was effectively a single parent. Now all that was going to change.
I refused, point-blank, to go back on the road—even when friends in the industry offered me a chance to tour with them. I was enjoying time with my kids again. I’d get up at six o’clock in the morning and make strawberry pancakes for breakfast, each one with their initials cooked into the batter. I drove my kids and their friends to school in the car pool. I became the Little League and soccer coach.
Jesse was wild about technology and computers and building things like remote-control cars and gliders, so I encouraged him to follow his passion. Warner Brothers gave us one of the first Atari computers, and he and I played a game called
Lemonade Stand
on it, in which you had to decide how many lemons and how much sugar to buy to make lemonade, depending on the weather predictions for the next few days. Man, he loved that. Later I bought him
Millionaire,
a stock market game in which he built up his own imaginary portfolio. I took him to the New York Stock Exchange to see how it worked firsthand. He even appeared in
People
magazine at America’s first computer camp when he was eight years old. With his white-blond hair, he looked like the kid from
The Champ
. I could have called him Cotton.
Lemonade Stand
on it, in which you had to decide how many lemons and how much sugar to buy to make lemonade, depending on the weather predictions for the next few days. Man, he loved that. Later I bought him
Millionaire,
a stock market game in which he built up his own imaginary portfolio. I took him to the New York Stock Exchange to see how it worked firsthand. He even appeared in
People
magazine at America’s first computer camp when he was eight years old. With his white-blond hair, he looked like the kid from
The Champ
. I could have called him Cotton.
When he was ten years old, he came to me and asked me to teach him how to play guitar. At first I discouraged him and refused, using reverse psychology to make him want it even more. He’d beg me to teach him a few licks, until finally I’d relent, but only after I made him listen to B.B. King and Eric Clapton and Duane Allman.
“I knew Duane Allman,” I’d tell him. “It was he who taught me how to play slide. And I once shook B.B. King’s hand.”
“Really, Dad?” he’d say, not sure whether to believe me or not. Then he’d go up to his room and practice for hours, cranking it up on his own, but never in public. He was far too shy.
I spoiled all the kids rotten, and they were constantly complaining that I was too affectionate with them in public. I guess I was trying to compensate for the lack of physical affection my parents had shown me. Whereas I’d had very few birthday parties, they had massive, catered events with balloons and clowns and magicians. Christmases involved the biggest tree, with me dressing up as Santa and dishing out gifts like huge scale train sets or rocking horses. It was a million miles from my Christmases in Florida, with two small gifts under the tree for Jerry and me—usually much-needed items of clothing or shoes—and the crafts for Mom and Dad that we’d made at school. Or from my first Christmas in that first-floor apartment in Culver City with Susan and Kilo, where we’d made a star out of tin foil and cut pictures from magazines to decorate our skinny little tree.
I don’t think my kids really understood that their father was a rock star. To them I was just Dad. I played guitar and was away a lot. The only thing that made me stand out from the crowd was the way I looked, with my shoulder-length hair, beard, and mustache. One day, when I’d just dropped Rebecca off at school and was walking her to her class, I overheard one of her friends, who’d previously only seen me from the back, cry, “Rebecca! Your mom’s got a beard!” Maybe my dad was right. Maybe it was time to shave.
When Don Henley invited me on the road with him for his first solo tour, I turned him down. Not only did I not want to tour again, but the salary he offered was five thousand dollars a week—that of a sideman, not a band member or the lead guitarist of the Eagles. He made the offer through Irving, instead of calling me direct, and I wrote and told him that I wasn’t really interested, despite my enormous respect for him as a singer and songwriter. His letter of reply said, “I don’t see any reason why we can’t write together and remain in touch,” and so we did. I’d send him tapes now and then, and he came and sang on a few records for me, but he was writing with Danny Kortchmar and other people he felt were fresh and new. He was enjoying heading in a different direction and that was cool.
Instead of going on the road, I concentrated on the completion of our new home, in between writing and performing some songs for film, including the soundtrack for an animated movie called
Heavy Metal.
I also wrote the title theme song and sound score for an animated Saturday morning CBS series my kids loved called
Galaxy High.
I did another song, called “Wild Life,” which became the title track for a Neil Simon movie called
The Slugger’s Wife,
and I contributed some music for a film called
Fast Times at Ridgemont High,
written by none other than little Cameron Crowe, the
Rolling Stone
reporter who’d been on the road with us.
Heavy Metal.
I also wrote the title theme song and sound score for an animated Saturday morning CBS series my kids loved called
Galaxy High.
I did another song, called “Wild Life,” which became the title track for a Neil Simon movie called
The Slugger’s Wife,
and I contributed some music for a film called
Fast Times at Ridgemont High,
written by none other than little Cameron Crowe, the
Rolling Stone
reporter who’d been on the road with us.
I did some session work for people like Stevie Nicks, Bob Seger, Warren Zevon, Boz Scaggs, and the Bee Gees, and I helped my friends Chicago out a couple of times when their guitarist, Donnie Dacus, left them. I worked on an album by Mickey Thomas of Jefferson Starship, which saw me back working with the inimitable Bill Szymczyk, and I helped Joe Walsh with his solo records. I even ended up cohosting a music video program for kids called
Fun TV
or
FTV.
My kids loved it. They were much more impressed with that than anything I’d done with the Eagles.
Fun TV
or
FTV.
My kids loved it. They were much more impressed with that than anything I’d done with the Eagles.
The record company waited two years before
they officially confirmed that the Eagles had split, and in May 1982, shortly after the announcement, Glenn released his first solo album
No Fun Aloud,
more than half of which was cowritten with Jack Tempchin, his collaborator on one of the band’s first hits, “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” Glenn swapped his trademark long hair and handlebar moustache for a clean-cut look, and the distinctive Eagles sound for his Detroit rhythm-and-blues roots.
No Fun Aloud
sold around five hundred thousand copies. Don Henley, meanwhile, was in the midst of his nationwide tour when his hit single “Dirty Laundry” climbed to number three and helped his album
I Can’t Stand Still
sell around seven hundred thousand copies.
they officially confirmed that the Eagles had split, and in May 1982, shortly after the announcement, Glenn released his first solo album
No Fun Aloud,
more than half of which was cowritten with Jack Tempchin, his collaborator on one of the band’s first hits, “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” Glenn swapped his trademark long hair and handlebar moustache for a clean-cut look, and the distinctive Eagles sound for his Detroit rhythm-and-blues roots.
No Fun Aloud
sold around five hundred thousand copies. Don Henley, meanwhile, was in the midst of his nationwide tour when his hit single “Dirty Laundry” climbed to number three and helped his album
I Can’t Stand Still
sell around seven hundred thousand copies.
The trouble was that, after years of keeping our names out of the newspapers and our faces off Eagles album covers in favor of the artist Boyd Elder’s incredible decorative cattle skulls, no one really knew who Don Henley and Glenn Frey were—or any of us, for that matter. For years, we’d been able to walk around L.A., into restaurants, clubs, and theaters, and melt anonymously into the crowd. It is one of the great bonuses of being an Eagle. No one knows what we looked like. Furthermore, Don and Glenn were now competing in the charts against
the Eagles’ Greatest Hits Volume 2,
released by Asylum/Elektra in time for the 1982 Christmas market, cobbled together from
Hotel California
and
The Long Run
. Despite its lack of direct involvement with the band, it far outsold both solo albums. It was a hard act to follow.
the Eagles’ Greatest Hits Volume 2,
released by Asylum/Elektra in time for the 1982 Christmas market, cobbled together from
Hotel California
and
The Long Run
. Despite its lack of direct involvement with the band, it far outsold both solo albums. It was a hard act to follow.
When asked if the Eagles would ever reunite, Don famously replied. “Yeah, sure, when hell freezes over.”
My mother,
who was leading a full and busy life in Gainesville, remarried in 1982, having met her new husband, Oliver Reynolds, through the church. She finally moved out of the house I’d grown up in and into Oliver’s concrete-block property with a yard, closer to her sister. The old house remained in the family; my father’s younger sister moved in. Once again, I paid for that old house to be completely remodeled and refurbished. My mother rejected my offer of a Hawaiian honeymoon as a wedding present and asked for a small check instead.
who was leading a full and busy life in Gainesville, remarried in 1982, having met her new husband, Oliver Reynolds, through the church. She finally moved out of the house I’d grown up in and into Oliver’s concrete-block property with a yard, closer to her sister. The old house remained in the family; my father’s younger sister moved in. Once again, I paid for that old house to be completely remodeled and refurbished. My mother rejected my offer of a Hawaiian honeymoon as a wedding present and asked for a small check instead.
She remained as active as ever, although she finally gave up work when she remarried, spending her time taking bus trips with Oliver instead. They traveled quite a bit and enjoyed church outings, until Ollie developed Alzheimer’s and my mother became his full-time caregiver. Even then, she wouldn’t accept help. Jerry and I paid for someone to come in three days a week to cook, leave food in the refrigerator, and do the heavy cleaning, but she lasted less than two weeks before my mother told her to get out and not come back. “She didn’t do things the way I like them,” Mom explained.
The same year she and Ollie were married, David Blue, whose career had nosedived in the years since I had stopped playing with him, dropped dead while jogging in New York. He was forty years old. I didn’t hear about it until some time later, but the news was shocking. He and I had been contemporaries out on the road together, and now his life was over. I couldn’t help thinking about the time we’d spent together, snorting cocaine, smoking pot, and taking Valium, and I wondered if that had anything to do with his sudden demise. The loss only made me think longer and harder about what I was doing with my life and made me work even harder to keep my marriage going.
In November 1982, our fourth child, Leah, was born. With this birth, we felt we had come full circle from that sad time. Our family was complete. We had survived the traumas I had wreaked upon us, and we had a new baby to concentrate on. I’d lie in bed early in the morning, Leah’s still, warm weight upon my chest, and pray silently to the Lord to thank him for the blessings I’d been given. What had started as a dreadful beginning to the new decade was suddenly looking brighter. I wondered what the next few years would bring.
With Glenn and Don embarking on solo careers,
and Joe and Timothy talking about doing a record each, I decided I might as well give it a try, as long as I didn’t have to do any extensive touring. I’d had enough of walking around on eggshells and not saying what I really felt about songs and lyrics. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do and not be a slave to someone else’s agenda. As an inducement for the last Eagles album, Elektra/Asylum had offered each of us a record deal, so I decided to take up the offer.
and Joe and Timothy talking about doing a record each, I decided I might as well give it a try, as long as I didn’t have to do any extensive touring. I’d had enough of walking around on eggshells and not saying what I really felt about songs and lyrics. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do and not be a slave to someone else’s agenda. As an inducement for the last Eagles album, Elektra/Asylum had offered each of us a record deal, so I decided to take up the offer.
My budget was around $300,000, which wasn’t huge, so I converted my guesthouse into a full-blown recording studio, with a drum room, a twenty-four track, and a piano. That way I wouldn’t have to be looking over my shoulder all the time or worrying about spiraling studio costs of around $20,000 a week. With time on my side, I’d be able to experiment: If I didn’t like something, I could redo it. The only other person in the studio was an engineer I hired to record the music while I played. I had scores of tracks I’d written for the Eagles, which had never been used. Unearthing them, I chose the best, and worked on them, endlessly reshaping the original sound.
I called the new album
Airborne,
to signify that this Eagle wasn’t grounded, and worked on it for over a year. I invited friends like Jimmy Pankow and Lee Loughnane (of Chicago), Dave Mason (of Fleetwood Mac and Traffic), Kenny Loggins, and Timothy B. Schmit to provide backup music and vocals, along with a whole bunch of buddies from the business. I played all the guitars, sang all the lead and most of the backup vocals, and played some synthesizer. We had a lot of fun together in the studio, and I enjoyed every minute of working with such outstanding talent.
Airborne,
to signify that this Eagle wasn’t grounded, and worked on it for over a year. I invited friends like Jimmy Pankow and Lee Loughnane (of Chicago), Dave Mason (of Fleetwood Mac and Traffic), Kenny Loggins, and Timothy B. Schmit to provide backup music and vocals, along with a whole bunch of buddies from the business. I played all the guitars, sang all the lead and most of the backup vocals, and played some synthesizer. We had a lot of fun together in the studio, and I enjoyed every minute of working with such outstanding talent.
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