by Don Felder
We had a 16-mm film made of one of the gigs in D.C. In the movie, there’s one part on the final cut where Joe and I are standing toe-to-toe playing the two main guitar parts in “Hotel California.” Joe’s wearing a bandana on his head because he hated to wash his hair. I say something to him, he looks at me, and we start laughing uncontrollably. Scores of people have asked me what it was I said to him that night.
Well, what I actually said was, “Hey, buddy, you’re showing,” pretending that he had a white powder ring around his nostrils, captured forever on film. He didn’t, but he thought he did, so he said, “Oh, I am?” which set us off laughing. Now you know.
One of the other questions I’m asked more than any other is: What is “Hotel California” really about? For whatever reason, some of the fans have inexplicably read all sorts of hidden demonic messages into the lyrics, citing lines about heaven and hell, stabbing the beast with steely knives and hearing the mission bell. As far as I’m concerned, I just came up with a reggae-sounding music track that sprang from a glorious summer’s day out in Malibu. Glenn and Don came up with the lyrics and the Mexican/Latino concept of an isolated hotel on a dark desert highway that attracts a weary, possibly drugged-out traveller. The elegance and the decadence are inexorably juxtaposed.
If Don Henley hadn’t been a songwriter, he’d have written poems and sonnets. He is an English literature major, full of fine prose. I have always been in awe of his ability to take a concept and develop it so lyrically that when he sings a couple of lines, a whole movie starts rolling inside your head. The way he writes, he allows everyone to see their own version of the story. As they feel the textures of the music, they see images flicker on their own personal movie screens. With that gift in mind, my answer is always the same. It’s like life. “Hotel California” is whatever you want it to be.
The tour continued, taking in more than a dozen countries. We were no longer playing as an opening act but headlining in our own right. This was a serious record. It had propelled us into another league, and we were delighted. In England, we played several sold-out gigs that ensured our future success there. For someone who’d started out admiring English bands and copying their style with the Maundy Quintet, that felt especially sweet.
In the dizzying round of press interviews in London during the tour, several of the music journalists asked me the same question.
“We just had another American band playing here,” they said, “and their lead singer claims you first taught him how to play guitar. Did you?”
“Really?” I said, bemused. “What was his name?”
“Tom Petty,” they replied. “He’s on a world tour with his band, the Heartbreakers. They’re going down very well.”
Little Tommy Petty from Gainesville. I could hardly believe it.
Susan flew out and joined me in places like London, Paris, and Tokyo, to indulge in some serious retail therapy and to allow me to spend some precious time with Jesse and Rebecca. Aside from those snatched moments of happiness, however, the grueling nature of what we were doing began to take its toll.
Don had long suffered from stomach ulcers, as had Randy and Glenn to a lesser degree, but now he began to have serious back pain as well, after years of leaning over a drum kit. His on-tour masseuse realigned his spine nightly, but the pain didn’t improve his mood. One of the things that bothered him was the addition of Joe Walsh’s drummer to the tour. Joe Vitale could play better drums than Don Henley with an arm and a leg cut off. He also played keyboards and flute and was a welcome addition to our stage sound. With him providing the basic beat, Don could concentrate on his singing. Vitale also gave us a backup for the times when Don stepped off the drum riser to the front of the stage. For some reason, though, he saw Joe Vitale as a threat, a direct criticism of his competence as a drummer. He knew Joe Walsh wanted Vitale to be a permanent member of the band, and his simmering resentment, coupled with his health problems, caused him to flare up over the smallest issue.
In Montreal, when there was a screw-up on a hotel reservation, Don blamed our long-time road manager, Richie Fernandez, and ordered him fired. Irving duly obliged, claiming that Richie was a pothead, no longer doing his job properly. Poor Richie, who’d been a devoted member of the crew from day one, was given his papers. Ironically, he ended up working as Tom Petty’s road manager instead. The firing led the remaining crew, already unhappy with the atmosphere, to dub the tour Prison California.
Glenn’s power struggle with Don wasn’t eased by the fact that Don’s creative ability, with his writing and his singing, had just exploded in the previous couple of years. Having held himself back during the early albums, he suddenly became the driving force in lyrics and concepts and music, making everybody else’s offerings pale by comparison. The consequence was that we suddenly had two presidents, vying for the same position. Don would usually back down in the end, knowing that to push Glenn too far would be unwise, but when they had one of their cocaine-induced arguments, the clouds descended. It affected everyone, even the road crew. Between gigs, Don would sit silently in his part of the Learjet and Glenn in his.
“Hotel California,” the single, shot to number one in March 1977. It spent fifteen weeks in the charts and became our most successful single ever, outshining “The Best of My Love” and “One of These Nights.” Its success pushed sales to an even higher level. Worldwide, at our peak, we were selling a million albums a month, but the growing tour was also taking me away from my family once more.
Susan understood that, whether it took ten days or ten months out of the year, I had to do whatever the band said. I had no control over scheduling. Furthermore, I was powerless to plead for more time off with my family. Susan never told me, “You gotta come home and help me raise these kids.” She never made me feel I had to quit to be part of our home life, and I really appreciated that.
I rarely called her with problems. I didn’t want to contaminate her life with any Eagles melodrama. When we’d finally stop touring, she’d always ask, “Well, how was it?” By then, three or four days would usually have passed and I’d have decompressed. I could just about describe the latest power struggle without raising my voice.
But this latest tour was going to take all my powers of decompression to get over, as the screws were tightened up a notch. Randy and Joe were both big Chuck Berry fans and started to do his famous “duck walk” onstage. Don berated them both. Joe let it slide, but Randy was furious that Don had addressed him in this manner. Randy hated any sort of confrontation, he lost many battles by attrition, but inside, he was festering. The gradual power shift bothered him enormously. He’d been in the band right from the start, just like Bernie, and he didn’t think it was right that Don and Glenn should automatically assume the reins.
As I remember it, venting his own frustrations, Joe, decided to trash a hotel room in Chicago. He was clearly drunk and I helped him. Joe’s fiancée was on tour with us at the time and had brought her parents along. The late Steve Wax, then executive vice president of Warner/Elektra/Asylum, mischievously introduced them to several groupies. Joe went crazy. He and I went up to Steve Wax’s room while he was in bed with one of the groupies and tore that place apart. Joe smashed crystal decanters, then pulled some sort of knife or tool from his belt. I don’t recall exactly what it was, but he stabbed at pictures and furniture and walls. He tore the drapes down and covered himself with them for protection while he smashed the chandelier with a leg he’d broken off the grand piano bench, which was collapsed in pieces on the floor. He was a one-man wrecking crew, destroying paintings and Persian carpets, even ripping the fabric wallpaper off the walls. I mostly stood watching and laughing, although I did take gleeful delight in hurling a table lamp into the fireplace. Steve Wax eventually ran in naked and stoned, the groupie holding a towel to cover herself behind him. There wasn’t very much he could do. We were the biggest act on his label, and he knew he’d fucked up.
During the second leg of the domestic tour, in Knoxvi
lle, Tennessee, Randy’s ulcers flared up, and he was sick with the flu. Don complained it was because he was having too many late nights. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, we’d been touring for eleven months straight, without much of a break, and everyone was starting to feel the strain. At this particular concert, the audience wanted to hear “Take It to the Limit” sung by Randy, but Randy told Glenn, “No way. Not tonight.”
Randy had one of the best voices in the band. He made women scream when he sang that ballad in his tenor voice. Hitting the high note at the very end guaranteed an almost deafening round of applause, sometimes for several minutes. Glenn once called it “the ribbon on our package,” and it was certainly one of the highlights of the show, but for whatever reason, Randy felt uncomfortable in the spotlight. Onstage, he’d always grab his microphone and pull it back by his bass amp. He’d stay by the piano, away from the front. When he was singing, he refused to have a spotlight on him; he’d only allow a blue light. He’d stand in profile by the piano and sing with his eyes pressed shut as if hiding from the audience.
“For me, it feels like standing on the railroad track in front of a freight train, the spotlight on the front of the train bearing down on me,” he told me privately. “I can’t stand it, man. I just can’t. I get all nervous and sweaty, and I just want to run from it.”
Glenn was furious. “I have to stand in the front of the stage and sing ‘Take It Easy’ in a white spotlight. Don does the same for ‘Hotel California. ’ That’s show business. You should just stand in the front of the stage and sing that song.” Glenn was right. Everybody had to cope with the spotlight, and he was probably only trying to persuade Randy into doing it for his own good, but he didn’t go about it the right way.
Man, he got into this big fight with Randy. The two of them started arguing constantly over exactly where Randy should stand, what color the spotlight should be, and how he should sing. Some nights, like when he was ill, Randy would refuse to sing the high note on the end; sometimes he wouldn’t sing the song at all. He’d tell Glenn, “I don’t feel like it. Not tonight.”
Glenn would explode. “You got to! It’s in the show! They wanna hear you sing. The fans expect it.”
Randy was usually easygoing, but he’d reply, “I ain’t doing it. My throat doesn’t feel good tonight.” He’d say to me afterwards, “Who the hell appointed Glenn Frey leader of the Eagles?”
There had been fewer and fewer band meetings of late and more closed door meetings between Irving, Glenn, and Don, leaving everyone else out of it. The band spent too much time fighting over stupid stuff: what publicity photographs would be used, whether somebody was doing something without clearance, or which hotels we should stay in. All of it served to inflame an already irritable situation.
For Irving, Glenn and Don were the chief singers and songwriters and, as far as he was concerned, they were running the show. They’d been natural allies from the start, and now that alliance was taking over. Since Irving paid a great deal of attention to their likes and dislikes, whatever they wanted usually happened. Whatever anyone else wanted was secondary. We were the country cousins. Irving made a show of trying to appease us, but we knew our opinions were irrelevant. After a series of closed-door meetings with Irving and Don, Glenn would emerge to hand decisions down and dictate what they expected. Randy was tired of it. He was also getting static from his wife.
He lived in L.A. because of work, but his wife and four kids were still back home in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and the distance between them was getting harder for them both. Randy had married Jennifer right after high school, and, they had a lot of history together. Ultimately, Randy had to reach a difficult decision—the band or his family.
We were in Memphis in the summer of 1977 when he chose the latter. It began as a memorable night for another reason. We were supposed to be going over to Graceland to meet Elvis Presley. Someone had set it all up for us, and we were just waiting on a call. When it came, at almost midnight, it wasn’t what we’d hoped for.
“The King isn’t feeling so good tonight,” one of his handlers told us. “He’d love to meet you next time you’re in town, but he’s not taking visitors today.” Within a few weeks, Elvis was dead. His years of drug abuse were finally too much for his heart. He was forty-two years old.
After the news came through that we weren’t going to Graceland after all, Joe, Randy, and I got high on Jack Daniel’s and cocaine and stayed up all night, trying to convince Randy not to leave.
“You don’t want to do this, man,” I told him. “Not financially, musically, or careerwise. Imagine what it would be like having to start over.”
“I’ve been out there on my own,” Joe told him, glumly, “and it’s no picnic.”
We tried every which way to convince Randy not to quit, but he was adamant. By six in the morning, we’d exhausted every possibility. Randy had pretty much made up his mind. The crunch came two days later when Glenn and Randy got into another fight during the intermission about where Randy should stand onstage for the encore. It was the same old argument, and we expected the same outcome, but this time it was different.
“Stop being such a pussy,” Glenn yelled.
Before we could stop him, Randy had Glenn up against a wall while security guards and the rest of us tried to pull him off. It surprised me beyond words. Glenn had somehow pushed Randy to the point that this gentle, easygoing guy, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, flipped. He was probably the most difficult person in the world to drive to that point. It was scarily reminiscent of what had happened with Bernie.
As soon as the two brawling men had been separated, and while the guards continued to restrain a struggling Randy, Glenn grabbed a dirty towel, wiped the sweat off his face, walked right up to Randy, and threw it in his. That was the final straw. Randy decided there and then to retire back to Scottsbluff and raise his kids, tired of being dominated in a band that had started out being a lot of fun. He stayed only until the final date on the Hotel California tour.
“The Gods” were taking the reins, and those that opposed them were either expelled or driven out. In eighteen months, I’d lost my two best friends in the band—Bernie, that fiery streak of brilliance, and gentle Randy, the sweetest man in the music business. I was truly on my own now.
THIRTEEN
The Hotel California tour and the loss of Randy left us emotionally and physically drained. We returned to Los Angeles, where Irving’s office issued a brief press release claiming Randy had left due to exhaustion. Irving initially promised to continue managing him, but little came of it after a first solo album, and they soon parted company.
There was never a suggestion we might disband because of Randy’s departure, the assumption was always that we’d continue. Don and Glenn had indicated a band should not keep going on and on, way beyond the time it should, with only a few of the original members, but we were all in our late twenties or early thirties and still felt young and energetic enough to keep going. The only question was, who would replace Randy? We didn’t have to look very far. The logical replacement was someone we knew and liked—Timothy B. Schmit, who’d taken Randy’s place in Poco when Randy had joined the Eagles in 1972. Timothy sang high and played bass. He was perfect—everyone agreed he was the only choice.
Timothy, whose nickname became the Wanderer, because he was always wandering off somewhere, was married with kids, a soft-spoken, extremely likable vegetarian, heavily into yoga. He’d been a friend and ally from way back, when he was in Poco and I first joined the Eagles, and we used to sit backstage at gigs, jamming and talking about our kids like the proud dads we were. I never had that kind of camaraderie with Don and Glenn. Tim had spent a lot of time on the road and felt like one of the boys. I have nothing but praise for him as a musician and a human being. He is honest and straightforward, with a great amount of patience and humility. He was an undeniable asset to the band, and, since Bernie’s departure, the only member of the Eagles who actually was born and raised in California.<
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There were now just three shareholders of Eagles Ltd. left—Don, Glenn, and me. Randy had blazed this incredible trail for Timothy, and he was able to step in and take over the extraordinary legacy that had been built up. He made no problems for anyone. Whatever anyone wanted was fine with Timothy.
Irving and his staff, lawyers, and business managers took care of everything, and there still seemed no reason to question them. The only time I really started to wonder was when my business manager, Gerry Breslauer, put together property partnerships involving eight or so of Irving’s clients, including people like Boz Scaggs and Danny Fogelberg, along with the Eagles and others. As I looked at the percentages, I saw that Irving, Don, and Glenn owned twice as much as the rest of us.
“Hey, Irv,” I said, “How come this isn’t an equal split like everything else?”
Irving smiled and explained that those guys earned so much more money from writing and publishing that they had a much bigger cash fund to invest. Seeing that I wasn’t quite convinced, he added, “Remember, Don, those boys are single, and they don’t have kids.”