Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (47 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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We’d hardly ever have supper together. I’d usually make something for myself and any of the kids who happened to be around, then sit there with the dogs salivating and watching me eat. Susan’s working hours were long and erratic. Our intimate moments were few and far between. I felt increasingly lonely, living in this big house by myself, sitting there day after day, waiting for my wife to find the time to play golf with me, or have lunch, or even fly to Europe or Hawaii to help me spend the fruits of my labors.
 
“Oh well,” I finally told myself. “You can’t possibly complain after all the time you’ve spent away.”
 
The rest of the band became homebodies too, busy doing nothing. We did one benefit gig for President Clinton’s reelection campaign, and with him and Hillary as honored guests, we attended the official opening of the Henry Thoreau Walden Library, part of the Walden Woods Project, into which Don had poured so much of our charitable contributions. Don was a family man in Texas, with three small children and a new wife; Timothy and his wife, Jean, were raising their kids just outside L.A.; and Joe, still sober, brought out a new album,
Look What I Did! The Joe Walsh Anthology
, and embarked on a solo tour. Glenn played some golf and landed himself a small part in the Tom Cruise film
Jerry Maguire.
He also launched a record label, Mission, with an icon of a mission bell, which failed despite the success of its first release,
One Planet, One Groove,
by my old friend Max Carl. Glenn then set up a studio in L.A., which he called the Dog House. Don did something similar—but even more high-tech, with bedrooms—out at a Spanish-style house in Malibu.
 
Then one day, Irving called up. “Hi, Fingers, just to let you know, the guys are thinking of going back into the studio again. They’re gonna try and record a brand-new album of all new songs, the first in nearly twenty years.”
 
“OK,” I said, somewhat warily, wondering if Don and Glenn could actually bear to sit down and try to write together. Painful memories of
The Long Run
in 1979 were still burned into my brain. “Where and when?”
 
Even though we could afford the finest producers and recording equipment money could buy, and the stature of our next project deserved the very best, the plan was to use Don’s and Glenn’s new studios, paid for by the band. Mindful of the failure of the “Almost the Eagles” project over the choice of producer, they decided that this time there’d be no producer at all.
 
The first band meeting in years was called, at Don’s rental house over near Brentwood, just the five of us together. It was the first time in over twenty years that we’d assembled like that without an entourage of managers and attorneys. I arrived early, nervous as a kitten. Over tuna fish sandwiches, Don and Glenn decreed that Joe, Tim, and I had to submit any CDs of tracks we’d prepared, and they would pick which ones they liked. We weren’t allowed to hear what they had written.
 
They played us some other songs, demos from Nashville songwriters—not, sadly, from our old friends Jackson, J.D., or Jack Tempchin. Most of them were, at best, mediocre, without the Henley/Frey magic. I said nothing, but I remember thinking, “Hey, we’re the Eagles, we should be playing our own stuff,” but I knew I wasn’t in a position to speak out. One track, called “I Love to Watch a Woman Dance” sounded to me almost exactly like another song by the same writer called “For My Wedding,” just with a different set of lyrics. Don was releasing the latter on his next solo album. He suggested that Glenn could sing this version instead for him with an Italian-type mandolin sound, which wasn’t at all right for Glenn’s R&B voice.
 
Another song we were going to try was one that Timothy had written at a songwriting seminar in an English castle. Despite the fairytale surroundings, it wasn’t that great either. Joe piped up, “Well, I think I might have a couple of licks.” He had one pretty solid track started, which he’d recorded at his home studio. It sounded very much like a recognizable “Life’s Been Good,” Joe Walsh type of song. I had a song I called “Downer Diner,” a semispoof on “Sad Café,” which featured electric piano and acoustic guitar with an ascending progression slightly reminiscent of “Sad Café.” I also had another up-tempo track with Latino rhythms, called “Little Latin Lover,” with gut-string guitar. Glenn loved it.
 
“Hey, this sounds like the party music wafting over from a neighboring yacht,” he said. “Jimmy Buffett would kill for this.”
 
Among us, we had five or six other tracks, none of them very good. One sounded like “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”—black, spiritual, sixties retro, not at all the sound of the Eagles. When we went into the studio, picked up our instruments, and tried to play it, along with the rest of the Nashville songs, we just sounded like a bad demo band.
 
Furthermore, because we were constantly running between the two studios, there began to be some serious competitive rivalry about whose studio was best and where the bulk of the recording should be done. It got to the point where personalities would spark over the smallest issue.
 
To me it seemed that Don’s continual tardiness was irritating Glenn. At times Don would arrive late and spend time on the phone making personal calls, preferring to work between about two and six o’clock before he went back to his studio in Malibu to work on his solo album until the small hours. Glenn, like the rest of us, preferred to work from ten until six, so we’d have time to spend with our families in the evening and would be fresh the next day. The constant sitting around waiting for Don caused me to be increasingly impatient.
 
The jockeying for position became ludicrous. At the Dog House, Glenn would sit in the primary producer’s chair in his control room; no one else was allowed in it. The same would happen at Don’s place, where Glenn would take a subordinate position on a little roller stool, while Don sat in the big chair. Joe and I desperately wanted to sit in the big chairs and swivel around like naughty schoolboys just to see the reaction, but we feared that “The Gods” wouldn’t see the funny side.
 
Behind each other’s back, the two of them complained constantly about the other’s studio and equipment. To resolve the constant bickering about which studio was best, I had mixes of the same song made from both studios and listened to them at home. There wasn’t a dime of difference between them. They both sounded fine.
 
Irving called me one day to tell me I wasn’t making it any easier. He suggested I just leave everything to him.
 
“Hey, Irv, I was just trying to help,” I explained, “and I don’t care if we record this album in my fucking garage. I just want those two big kids to get past this pissing contest.”
 
Knowing that critics were waiting to cut us off at the knees, whatever we produced, injected even more pressure and fear into an already volatile situation. There was a highly competitive market out there, and with artists like Madonna and the Spice Girls hogging the charts, there was no magic team this time. After a while, Glenn decided that he couldn’t work this way anymore. Just to appease him, we ended up going back into Glenn’s studio.
 
After months of hoping that we could salvage enough songs for a new album, Don finally pulled the plug. He’d almost finished his latest solo record and was increasingly preoccupied. Irving accepted their decision with a sigh. “Let them just get this stuff out of their system and then we’ll regroup,” he said. I wasn’t sure.
 
The songs we’d worked so hard on were consigned to digital heaven. The album was never completed, even though we’d recorded four or five tracks. All that’s left are a few tapes I took home with me to carry on tinkering with, just in case “The Gods” ever decided to try again.
 
“Maybe we’ll put out another greatest hits, or even a box set,” Irving told the rest of us, ruefully, “to buy us some time.”
 
 
 
 
For Glenn’s fiftieth birthday,
he held a huge party in Palm Springs at La Quinta golf resort, a famous hotel that people used to drive across the desert to in their Model T Fords. Tom Hanks and Don Johnson were invited, along with a list of celebrities as long as my arm. “I want you all to come along, and jam some with me on the stage, while the guests finish their banquet,” he said. It wasn’t an invitation, it was an order. Glenn played his guests an embarrassing video featuring film clips from his brief and not very successful acting career. After the fifth or sixth clip, someone yelled from the back of the room, only half-joking, “You ought to stick to playing music.”
 
We were each assigned tables, and I sat at my designated place up near the front of the stage and turned to the stranger next to me to introduce myself.
 
“Hi, I’m Don Felder,” I said, extending my hand.
 
The middle-aged man to my right looked at me and laughed. “Hey, Fingers! Don’t you know me? It’s J.D.”
 
I was stunned. J.D. Souther, our old songwriting companion, the man who should have been the sixth Eagle, funny and warm, used to have this Marlboro-man, craggy-faced look, with a beard. He could have been a character actor with that face. This guy had short-cropped hair, he was wearing a suit, and there wasn’t a wrinkle on his skin. I could hardly believe the change.
 
“Sorry, man,” I said, pretending that I’d known it was him all along. “It’s just that you look so, so. . . .”
 
“Different?” he said, with a wink that barely creased his new smooth skin. “I know.”
 
When it came time to do our jam, we got up onstage and actually had a good time playing blues together. The guests certainly seemed to appreciate it. The champagne and the wine were flowing, and several people had more than their fill, including Glenn’s prized house mixer, who had to be carried to his hotel room while someone else leaped behind the console and tried to figure it out.
 
My birthday gift to Glenn was a white-studded Elvis suit, complete with rhinestones, a wig, and sideburns. He was a huge Presley fan and liked to be called Elvis by his homeboys. He even wore a baseball cap with Elvis written on it, and his party invitations had featured a picture of him as Elvis, so it seemed appropriate.
 
After that party, we did another benefit gig together for the Tiger Woods Foundation. Tiger was there, and we had our photos taken with him, which was a great honor for amateur golfers like Glenn and me. We played five songs, including “Hotel California,” “I Can’t Tell You Why,” and “Rocky Mountain Way” for the Joe Walsh fans. It was a fun gig, and the best thing about it was that we all seemed to be getting along a bit better. We’d grown up, I guess.
 
The underlying tensions between us would always be there, and the simmering differences about music, money, and personalities, but for the first time since our early days on the road, we seemed to be able to put them aside and be civil to each other. Glenn and I weren’t exactly playing golf together, but we’d help each other out for charity gigs and put on a united front when we had to. Was the ice finally melting, I wondered?
 
 
 
 
On January 12, 1998,
we were to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the hundredth members, in the thirteenth annual ceremony. Fellow inductees on the same night were to include Fleetwood Mac, Santana, the Mamas and the Papas, and the late Gene Vincent. We’d all become eligible because it was twenty-five years since the Eagles had released their first recordings. We knew it was a tremendous accolade, and we accepted most graciously. The previous year, my old friend Stephen Stills had become the first person to be inducted twice in the same night—as a member of Buffalo Springfield and also with Crosby, Stills & Nash. Stephen had done me the greatest honor by publicly naming me among his top four all-time favorite guitar players. I was in good company.
 
The others on his list were Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh, and George Terry, a noted Florida session guitarist.
 
The ceremony was going to be televised from New York, and we were asked if we could play a few songs. There were a great many discussions before the awards ceremony about whether or not Randy Meisner and Bernie Leadon should be included. If ever I was asked, which was rarely, my answer was unequivocal.
 
“Absolutely,” I’d say. “Bernie and Meis are as much responsible for the Eagles’ success as any of us. More so than some. They have to be there.”
 
The counterarguments kept coming back that we should just go along as we were—five guys in the band—and that we couldn’t all turn up.
 
Timothy, Joe, and I strongly disagreed, especially those two, who knew their own contribution had come much later. “They are every bit as entitled to be there as we are,” they’d tell Don, Glenn, and Irving, “if not more so. They were the ones who helped make the first greatest hits album such a success. They deserve this.”
 
“Why not ask them and see what they say?” I suggested, as diplomatically as I dared.
 
As I expected, Bernie and Randy were delighted and relieved to be invited and jumped at the chance. Irving saw their presence as a chance to make even more mileage out of the event. “It’ll be the first time all seven members of the Eagles have ever been photographed together,” he proudly announced. “This’ll make prime-time news.”

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