Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (39 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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To professional autograph hunters, I’ve been a pain in the ass. For no reason other than where and how I lived, I was often not with the other Eagles when it came to collecting signatures. They might have all the other guys’ names on a stack of LPs or guitars, but not mine. When the band split up in 1980, the price for Eagles memorabilia skyrocketed. Likewise, when someone dies, their back catalog suddenly becomes worth so much more. Without all five signatures on their precious cache of goods, their haul was almost worthless.
 
I was well accustomed to people contacting me through the record company and Irving’s office, asking me to sign something for them. If I felt they were true fans, I’d always invite them to send me their LP or whatever and I’d gladly sign it and send it back. I was happy to. If not for our devoted fans, we’d be nothing, and I have always been grateful for their support. When “Almost the Eagles” happened, the venue was meant to be secret, because nobody wanted the press or anyone to know, in case it ended as it did. Word somehow got out, however, and on the second day, there was suddenly a barrage of professional autograph hunters at the door of the Third Encore. It still astounds me how thorough people are at getting information from those who rent rehearsal halls, drive limousines, or deliver cable or beverages to somewhere like that. They knew more than I did—where it was taking place and what time we’d be coming and going. There were dozens of “fans” waiting to pounce. Once again, I tried to find the genuine article among the professionals, although I think most of them went away happy.
 
When that project sadly ended and I returned to my home and my privacy, I suddenly became unavailable again. Most autograph hunters accepted that and approached me for signatures through the usual channels. One, however, was more determined. I began to receive letters from him at my house in Malibu, begging me to sign all his stuff. He must have run a title search for my name on all the property I owned and driven out to the various addresses until he figured out which one I lived in. A little unnerving, to say the least.
 
At first, he was extremely polite: “
Dear Mr. Felder, I’m a huge Eagles fan and I have a massive collection of memorabilia signed by everyone but you. I’d be honored if you’d meet me somewhere to sign it. Thank you.
”
 
I wrote back to him, via Irving’s office, telling him, “
Thanks for your letter. I’m sure you understand that I wouldn’t feel comfortable arranging a meeting with a complete stranger, especially not after you contacted me directly, but if you want to send me a bunch of your stuff, I’ll gladly sign them and send them back.
”
 
His response was angry. “
That wouldn’t be acceptable,
” he wrote, tersely. “
There’s too much and anyway these things are very precious to me and I’d be afraid I wouldn’t get them back. We have to meet, face to face.
” In the six or seven exchanges that followed, my same calm response was followed by his angry reply.
 
Our home in Malibu sat on six acres and was surrounded by a six-foot-high chain-link fence and specially planted prickly privacy hedge. I had two Labradors and a German shepherd named Emma, who’d been trained as a Schutzhund 3 attack/guard dog. I’d acquired her after another incident, a few years earlier, when a complete stranger, wearing odd clothes and with straggly hair, suddenly appeared at the French windows of our house. I don’t even know how he got in, but he asked me where a wedding was and placed three .45-caliber bullets in my hands with the words, “These will protect you.”
 
I ran inside, locked the doors, and dialed 911. As I did so, I saw Susan coming up the garden path right behind him.
 
“Who are you? What are you doing here? Get off my property!” she shrieked, waving her arms at him. The kids were just a few hundred yards away in the pool, when he raced back down the driveway, looking spooked.
 
I ran out and pulled Susan and the kids inside and told the police to get to my house urgently. We watched from the window as the guy went down to his car, which was inexplicably parked in our drive, and opened the trunk. I honestly thought he was going to get a gun out and come back up to the house to kill us all. I didn’t even have a weapon on the property, and all I could think of to do was grab a kitchen knife. As we watched, he stripped off all his clothes and put on a woman’s dress. I had visions of him, as in a horror movie, coming up and massacring us all, wearing this dress. Instead, he took some more bullets out of his pocket, threw them around on the ground like he was blessing us with them, got into his car, drove to the gate, and disappeared. The police eventually picked him up in my neighbor’s garden. He was from an insane asylum in Camarillo. Somehow he’d escaped his guards and gotten hold of a gun and some ammunition. The officers told us we’d had a very lucky escape. He was arrested while in the process of trying to convince a lady who lived down the street to look at something in the trunk of his car. She said she thought he was going to shove her in the trunk and take off.
 
That incident really spooked me. Susan and the kids were my chief concern, so I bought a .357 Magnum pistol, and she and I took shooting lessons at a local range. I updated my security and bought Emma. The Labradors, which I’d owned for years, had just thumped their tails in greeting at the lunatic.
 
By the time I began to receive this stream of letters from the determined autograph hunter, I was pretty happy with my security. That was, until one November day in 1993, when I was out in the yard working on the ’57 Chevy pickup truck I’d bought in memory of my dad, into which I was fitting a Corvette engine. I was in old jeans and a sweatshirt, covered in grease from my fingers to my elbows, having a private journey down Memory Lane, back to Gainesville and my father working under the hood of his old Chevy while I passed him some tools. Hey, Dad, I said to myself, are you watching me now? Are you impressed?
 
I was awoken from my reverie by a rustling in the bushes. “Hey, Don!” I suddenly heard. “Don Felder! Over here!”
 
Looking up, I could see a man leaning over my fence and six-foot hedge, waving something at me. “Hey, Don, I’ve got some of those albums I want you to sign. Over here!”
 
Wondering where on earth the German shepherd was when I needed her, I stared at this guy in total disbelief before striding purposefully into the house. Emma came as soon as I whistled and stood growling at our intruder while I grabbed the phone. I’d heard of not taking no for an answer, but this was extreme. First he’d found out where I lived, and then, when he refused my offer to send his stuff to me, he came to my house to confront me. “Holy shit,” I yelled, angrily, throwing down a wrench. “Who the fuck does this guy think he is?” I didn’t mind signing anything for him, but after the experience with the psycho, this was too bizarre. I dialed 911 and asked the police to come right away. “There’s a man trespassing on my property,” I told the sheriff, as I locked all the doors. “I’d like him removed at once.”
 
The police arrived and picked him up. They drove him several blocks away and warned him that if he were ever caught harassing me on my own property again, they’d arrest him. I hoped that would be enough.
 
A couple of weeks later, just a few days before Christmas, my Realtor friend Jack Pritchett called me up. “Hey, how you doin’?” I asked. “Wanna do some fishing this week?”
 
“Yeah, maybe,” came the distracted reply. “Listen, Don, I’ve just driven past your house, down the Pacific Coast Highway, and I saw something really strange. I had to stop the car and turn around to make sure I was seeing it right.”
 
“What? Seeing what right?” I asked.
 
“Well, there’s this guy dressed as Santa Claus standing out on the street, holding up a giant placard.”
 
“Yeah, and?”
 
“The placard says, DON FELDER IS UNFAIR TO HIS FANS. HE WON’T SIGN AUTOGRAPHS.”
 
I’m the strongest advocate of free speech. Heck, I’ve done benefit gigs advocating such rights, but Psycho Santa—as he will forever be known in our house—was behaving so strangely that I called the police again. The sheriff found him and issued another warning, but he was too far from my house to be arrested for harassment. I felt really bad about calling the cops. I didn’t want to see the guy in prison; I just wanted him to accept my offer to sign his stuff and leave me and my family alone.
 
A couple of weeks after Christmas, I received a videotape in the mail. It was from Psycho Santa. In it, he gave me a guided tour of his bedroom, which was set up as a shrine to the Eagles. It was too weird. His voice close to the mike, narrating where he’d acquired which item and why, he slowly panned around the room, showing me his stash of T-shirts, albums, posters, football jerseys, and guitars, all set up in a very obsessive way. Anyone can be a fan, but this was way beyond the norm. He was almost salivating over the memorabilia he slept with every night, and his breathless narration made my flesh crawl. He was scaring my wife, my kids, and me. I sent the tape to my attorney and had a restraining order issued for him. He’d given me no other choice.
 
“Please Lord, may we never hear from him again,” I said to Susan.
 
And, for a long time, we didn’t.
 
 
 
 
One night in 1993,
I was at home flicking through the TV channels absentmindedly, when I suddenly spotted Don and Glenn onstage, performing at a charity event without Timothy and me. They were playing “Hotel California.” I was staggered. No one had approached me or even told me about it. I felt like a spouse betrayed. This was the second time I knew of when other members of the band had played together after the split. Don had done a benefit concert in Massachusetts for the Walden Woods Project, a pet campaign of his to preserve from developers the Massachusetts land that inspired the writer Henry David Thoreau. I had a horrible sinking feeling that events I knew nothing about were happening without me.
 
I found out later that Glenn and Joe had decided to do this latest gig together as part of their
Party of 2
tour, and Irving, still hopeful, had invited Don to sit in. It was on Glenn’s home turf, and as there wasn’t the pressure of walking into a studio and facing all of us, he still felt like he was in control. A few other gigs followed, and I’d receive messages from friends all over the States about them.
 
“Hey, Don,” they’d write, “I see the Eagles are doing a gig in Port-land, Oregon. Any chance of some tickets?” It would be the first I’d know of any gigs, and when I made inquiries, I’d discover it was just Glenn and Joe playing together.
 
There was another gig in Central Park, for the Democratic campaign, with Don, Glenn, Timothy, and a backup band, and there were a couple for the Rainforest Foundation. Only once was I was invited to join in, for some antinuclear gig in Long Beach with Timothy and Don and Lindsey Buckingham, of Fleetwood Mac. Glenn was supposed to participate, but never did. Instead, he sent an apologetic video from his hospital bed, where he was recovering from stomach surgery, saying, “Hey, guys, I’d love to be there with you, but as you can see I’m tied up here for a while.” I sent him a bouquet of flowers and wished him well, but never heard a word back.
 
When I asked Irving why I hadn’t been asked to any of the other gigs, he told me, “Don’t worry about it, Felder. It was hard enough to get those guys to work together. You were omitted so that there wouldn’t be that specific friction between you and Glenn that would make him refuse to do it. I thought if we started this way, it would be easier to include you later.”
 
I still felt sick to my stomach. I wondered how much it really was a ploy to get Glenn to play ball, or whether Irving was saying, “Fingers, we can do this without you.”
 
Glenn and I still hadn’t spoken since the Alan Cranston incident thirteen years before, although I’d tried half a dozen times to extend olive branches. When Glenn divorced his first wife after just three years of marriage, I sent him a note expressing my sorrow and asking if there was anything I could do. As with the flowers, I never received a reply. It was all very strange, because I couldn’t ever recall doing anything to Glenn that warranted his behavior. I never screwed his wife behind his back or stole anything from him. I just became the scapegoat for the breakup of the band and the ongoing “sibling” rivalry between him and Don, because I’d dared to vent some feelings publicly, as Glenn so freely and frequently did, and because I had occasionally asked some searching questions about the way the band was being run.
 
I can even remember being in a little studio in L.A. with Glenn one night after we’d recorded “Those Shoes” for
The Long Run,
when he told me that what I’d brought to the band would propel it to a whole new level of success.
 
“Man, what you’ve added to our sound with
Hotel California
and all the musical changes you’ve made, is awesome,” he said. “I knew when I first heard you play slide that you were perfect for this band, and you really are one of the main reasons the Eagles have risen to this level.”

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