by Don Felder
When the show was over, no matter how much the crowd hollered for a third encore, threw beer cans, or lit all the lighters and matches they possessed, we were out of there. The house lights would be kept dimmed as we ran from the stage and bolted out the back door and into waiting limos before the audience even knew we’d left the building. Only after we were well ahead of all the traffic would the lights come up, and everyone would wander home clutching their T-shirts, programs, and memories. Back at our hotel, a suite would have been specially reserved for that night’s Third Encore party, stocked with ice buckets full of beer, wine, and champagne, platters of hors d’oeuvres, and bowls of chips. By the time we’d all showered and changed in our rooms, the first of the fifty or so invitees would be arriving, desperate to meet us, their little buttons pinned proudly to their chests.
I can remember walking down the corridor toward the suite one night and bumping into a man we called the Party Doctor. He was carrying a huge prescription bottle, the size of a large mayonnaise jar, full of Quaaludes—then the recreational drug of choice—to distribute among our guests at the party if they wanted them. If one of the guys in the room wanted to select a girl to be taken back to a bedroom and laid, then it fulfilled the objectives of both parties. Seldom was a girl allowed to spend more than a couple of hours with the featured participant. Almost never could she stay overnight. A limo driver downstairs was entrusted to ferry them all home. On certain occasions in certain towns, specific women known to be group-sex girls would have a suite of their own. I never experienced any of that, but I heard a lot about it from others on the road. Little Rock Connie was a legend. Allegedly a schoolteacher by day, at night she transformed herself into a sexual animal par excellence, asking people to take Polaroids of her while they stood in line for a blowjob. To this day if you mention her name to anyone in this business from the seventies, it’ll produce a smile.
To begin with, I watched in amazement all that was going on but tried to keep my hands clean. I felt totally out of my league. You could count on one hand the girls I’d had sex with. However, by the time the One of These Nights tour really got going, the 3E parties were organized to perfection and so entirely accepted as normal that I completely lost sight of who I was. I’d like to tell you I was a saint, and that’s exactly what I’d have had to have been to resist the temptations thrust at me on a daily basis. Some of these women were goddesses, I mean really beautiful, sexy women. I had no interest in breaking up my marriage or spoiling what I had at home, but life on the road—especially in a band short on camaraderie—was extremely lonely.
I’d go from a real adrenaline rush onstage with all these women screaming and yelling and throwing themselves at me, reaching out to me with their hands while I stood in the spotlight, back to an empty hotel room, where I’d face about twenty-one hours of the day in which life was incredibly boring. I was left with an overwhelming sense of isolation, which really began to erode my sense of self. No matter how long I spent on the phone with Susan, I was still utterly alone. I don’t think she really understood that, because she was at home, surrounded by children, friends, and neighbors, going out to dinner or to the movies or being involved with the family.
A big part of me wanted to be home with her and Jesse. By the summer of that year, she was pregnant again, expecting our second child, and I longed to share in every day of our baby’s growth and be with her to help her through the morning sickness, the cramps, and the exhaustion. There wasn’t an hour that passed when I didn’t think of her. I’d imagine her sitting in her rocking chair knitting baby clothes and wonder what I’d missed of Jesse’s development. Would he even recognize me when I got home?
Instead, I was thrown in with four crazy bachelors (Randy overlooked his marriage vows) who were doing drugs, drinking, and screwing everything that walked. Half the time I was so high I didn’t know what I was doing anyway. It was such an extreme situation. I defy any man to resist temptation in such circumstances. After every single sexual transgression, I was wracked with guilt. I’d lie awake at night, wishing for some easy way out of this heaven-and-hell situation I found myself in—an angel waiting for me at home and demons taunting me when I was away.
The answer usually was to take a couple of Quaaludes, which acted as a rubber hammer to bring me down from the drink-and-drugs high and let me get some sleep before the early morning call. It was truly the rock-star life, and for better or worse, I was living it.
I make no excuses for my behavior. I was led along by the crowd in the circus of life on the road. The others would have been very suspicious of me if I hadn’t joined in, but for what it’s worth, I can say that all the women got what they wanted, and none of them meant a thing to me. I was being used and abused as much as I was using and abusing. I felt like two different people: the guy on the road being tempted by the carnal beast, and the loving homeboy who’d have gladly laid down his life for his wife and kid. When I was back in Malibu, I didn’t drink, take illegal drugs, or fool around. I’d even given up smoking for a while when my son was born, so as not to be a bad example. I was a husband and a father, and I loved Susan and Jesse with all my heart. I just didn’t know how to handle the perpetual struggle raging within me.
Despite the relief on offer, the tensions within the band continued to deepen. Everything from facial expressions to talking too much became an issue, and nerves were frayed. Don and Glenn became of the mindset that they were going to take control of every aspect of the Eagles, and a lot of emotion was vented in between drug-taking interludes. Bernie, who’d all but turned his back on the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll aspect of the business and was now into surfing, fresh air, and healthy eating, was more often than not the one to vent it.
I tried my best to arbitrate and persuade him to chill, but I was frequently left straddling the fence. “If Don and Glenn want to control the situation, then let them,” I’d tell Bernie. “It’s gotta be easier than fighting all the time like this.” My policy was to walk away, pretending not to care, rather than have a confrontation. I knew how fame and fortune could corrupt, and I didn’t want to be a part of that. But Bernie was as stubborn as a mule. He’d disappear for days to go surfing and feel the sunshine on his face. He was the first of us to adopt a healthier lifestyle and turn his back on the drugs and late nights, which were making a difficult emotional situation worse. All of us but him had major stomach problems—ulcers, acid indigestion, and diverticulitis—and lived on a diet of Mylanta or Tums. Bernie’s “Marty Martian” nickname no longer related so much to how curly his hair was but to how bright and clear his eyes were compared to ours.
One night about halfway through the tour, just before we were due to fly to Australia and New Zealand for the next leg, we were staying at the Holiday Inn in Cincinnati when Glenn called a band meeting in his room. We used to have a lot of band meetings in the early days and, although everybody dreaded them for what they might reveal, they were useful as a forum for discussion. The trouble was that, with everyone expressing their disparate views, there was usually conflict.
I don’t recall exactly what started Bernie and Glenn arguing that December evening of 1975. Maybe Bernie was going on again about us having sold out and become too commercial. Maybe everyone else was pissed because Patti Davis was on the road with us again, which meant federal agents everywhere, to protect her because she was the governor’s daughter. The feds were an unwelcome addition, cramping the band’s lifestyle, especially when it came to drugs.
In any event, Glenn, sitting in the middle of the room in an aluminum chair, started in on Bernie, who was standing in the corner with a Budweiser in his hand, about how he screwed things up every time.
He said something like “You need to cool down, you fucking asshole,” and emptied his entire beer over Glenn’s head. All the while, he was staring him down, daring Glenn to stop him. Bernie was into karate and was super-fit. Few would have taken him on. Then he stormed out the open door and onto the balcony.
; We sat there in amazement and watched what happened, including Glenn, who didn’t move a muscle while the beer dripped down his face. I think I was the first to move. I followed my old buddy out onto the balcony, where he was gripping the railing so hard the whites of his knuckles were showing through his skin, and I asked him what was going on. I said, “This isn’t good, man.”
He told me he was prepared to quit.
Assuming it was just one of those moments where people say something in a fit of anger, I wandered back into the room, where Glenn was toweling himself down, and tried to mediate. I told him I knew the two hadn’t been getting along, but if it continued like this, they’d come to blows.
I could see the muscles in Glenn’s jaw twitching, and I realized what a good job he’d done of containing himself. Glenn said something like “That guy’s a fucking liability,” through clenched teeth.
Don agreed.
Randy and I looked at each other and then back at Glenn and Don. I knew, in that moment, that Bernie’s days with the band were probably numbered.
The tour was cut short, and when we got back to L.A., Bernie packed up his guitar and surfboard and took off for Hawaii, where he bought a house. He decided to write his own songs and record a solo album of the type of music he liked. He’d been in and out of several bands in the past and had been through bust-ups before. I think he thought he’d just move on to his next project. When asked why he’d left, he told one reporter, “I kept asking, ‘Are we gonna rest next month?’ and we never did. I wanted to get in shape before the age of thirty, so I could have a chance at the rest of my life. I was afraid something inside me was dying. Leaving was an act of survival.”
I felt really bad for him and was terribly torn. Bernie and I were good friends, and I hated to see him leave, especially under such a cloud. We’d had great times together in Gainesville, in Daytona Beach with the Allman brothers, and on the road with the Eagles. From the first time I ever met him, waiting at the Greyhound station in his ’63 Ford Falcon, we’d hung out, chatted, gotten high together, and played good music. I’d known him since I was a teenager, and he was one of the closest friends I’d ever had.
With Bernie’s departure and my inability to patch things up, I realized that my pacifist policy was going to be sorely tested. To my mind, Don and Glenn were seizing full control with Irving’s blessing; anybody who opposed them would be gone, and I felt powerless to stop it. I couldn’t bring myself to leave with him so I suddenly found myself completely isolated.
A tremor of fear ran through the band and rippled down through the crew. With the new power dynamic, the Eagles began to function by maintaining insecurity. Would Randy be next? Or me? Neither of us knew. We all wondered about our long-term future. The loss of Bernie could so easily have been our downfall. Until that point, he was actually the musical foundation of the band, being such a gifted multi-instrumentalist. Would this new direction we’d been pushed into even work? Would radio stations accept new rock songs from an essentially country band? We were quietly confident but we didn’t actually know. The doubt, fear, and worry caused even more upsets. The threat of further eruptions kept everyone walking on eggshells, feeling as if they should try to appease Don and Glenn. The original democratic band now seemed to me like a two-man dictatorship. Many wars were lost in silent combat. Opinions often went unsaid for fear that words would light the fuse that blew this band to hell.
On December 20, 1975, Irving Azoff issued a press release officially announcing Bernie’s departure and the signing of his client Joe Walsh as the newest Eagle. The decision had been made in a matter of weeks, although Don had initially taken a great deal of convincing. He thought it was a colossal risk and worried that Joe’s strident musical personality would not fit well within the Eagles. We were the most successful we’d ever been, having found the right combination of country and rock to appeal to all tastes, and yet Irving was suggesting we take on an out-and-out heavy rocker whose arrival would surely herald a radical transformation of our sound.
Joe had been a friend of the band for some time, coming around to the studio to hang out and play with us after sessions, and I would personally welcome a few duelling jams with him onstage, but for many he seemed a little too wild for the Eagles. Apart from his solid rock career with the James Gang and songs like “Rocky Mountain Way,” he had a reputation for being a maverick. Irving convinced us that Walsh wouldn’t overshadow the rest of us and wouldn’t be allowed to play anything but our music.
“Irving insisted that he didn’t want people to think the Eagles were finished.” We had to replace Bernie right away and get back on the road. There was still an image of cohesion on stage and in the media. Irving tried to minimize the public damage by enforcing a news blackout, refusing to let any of us talk to reporters for fear that they might see what we’d become. He denied that there were personality conflicts and claimed that Bernie genuinely wanted to pursue a solo career.
No other candidates were suggested, and Joe Walsh was given his greatest Christmas present on a plate—membership in the Eagles. Bernie had just walked away from the whole deal, leaving the remaining four of us as Eagles Ltd.
The transition wasn’t as easy as Irving had suggested. Joe’s voice was much more nasal than Bernie’s, and the sound of the vocal harmonies changed dramatically. Joe’s performing style also couldn’t have been more different. He was a showman, accustomed to leaping around the stage, jumping off risers, and playing spectacular solos. By now, Don and Glenn’s control had extended to our stage show. Except for Glenn announcing, “We’re the Eagles from Los Angeles, California,” the rest of us rarely spoke to the audience, and we remained static and largely faceless. Don sang more, but most of the audience couldn’t even see him, sitting at his drum kit, hidden behind the cymbals. After Joe joined, the show became pretty schizophrenic for a while, kicking off and ending with some of our early numbers, like “Take It Easy,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Witchy Woman,” with Joe Walsh sandwiched in the middle, offering some comic relief and blowing everyone away with a raunchy James Gang number.
He was soon put in his place. After an initial burst of activity onstage, he started to toe the line, following Don and Glenn’s strict instructions that every note in every show on every night had to be played verbatim like on the record, without variance. All the steps were choreographed, including all the guitar moves and where we went on the stage in between songs. It was like a theatrical production. You could have written those charts out and had anybody play those pieces.
I feared that the precision playing and obsession with perfection made for a rather dull show. Yeah, sure, it’s great to hear a live performance played exactly as you know and love it on the record, perfect if you want to sing along or clap or follow the lines. But wasn’t the whole point of a live show that it was live, that you were seeing your idols for the first time and watching them actually perform? I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I know Randy and Joe were frustrated too. Rolling Stone magazine commented that by “eliminating spontaneity, particularly a Walsh-Felder guitar jam, the Eagles sacrifice any chance of creating anew onstage and reaching a higher peak.”
Personally, I liked Joe a lot. What wasn’t there to like? He’s such an easy-to-love character, like a favorite drunken uncle with a bunch of crazy toys, a ready cache of funny stories, and a great sense of humor. Lord knows we needed to laugh. It was often mind-numbingly boring and lonely being on the road for weeks and months on end, and dealing with that was hard enough sober, much less when we were hung over, out of drugs, or feeling sick with sinus infections from bad blow out of Cuba. So we had to find ways to stay entertained.
Joe already had a reputation as a legendary hell-raiser and, given enough gin, that’s exactly what he was—turning adjoining rooms into one giant suite with the help of a chain saw, cutting the legs off all the furniture in Irving’s room to suit his diminutive height, and jamming coins into bedroom doors so they’d not ope
n. In Chicago, I heard, he once pushed a grand piano out of a window onto the hotel manager’s car after they refused to let him into the restaurant without a tie. He was also a great one for starting water fights. We wrecked one whole floor of a hotel in Evansville, Indiana, by knocking on people’s doors, using Irving as a front man, and throwing ice buckets full of water at them when they opened up. He once painted the windows of a roadie’s hotel room black so that he thought it was still night when he woke in the morning and went back to sleep.
Joe would get a key to your room, turn the spigot on in the bidet, and close the bathroom door so that by the time you arrived, the room would be flooded. With a glue gun, he’d glue hotel doors shut. He’d glue the handset to your telephone and then ring and ring your room at four in the morning, knowing you couldn’t make it stop unless you ripped it from the wall, which, of course, you eventually did.
After Joe arrived, nobody ever returned a rental car in one piece or walked away from one in perfect condition. Joe’s voice would come crackling over the walkie-talkies he’d bought us all at Radio Shack, just as we parked in the lot and walked away. “Hey, Fingers, what the hell do you think you’re doing? It’s only a rental, man!” So, we’d dump the cars on the curb right outside the airport, with the seat belts cut out, the alarm or ignition disabled.