Heaven and Hell

by Don Felder

  One of the pieces I’m second-most proud of, after “Hotel California,” also came out of the Long Run album. It is a short guitar solo in “Sad Café,” a song Don wrote, loosely based on days at the Troubadour club. I wrote a multitrack acoustic solo for it, inspired by the song “Midnight at the Oasis,” by Maria Muldaur, which had been a huge hit. It’s only about eight bars long, but I was very happy with the way I was able to take that section and create a six-track harmony that worked. I can still listen to that and smile to myself.

  Glenn had only brought one song to the album so far, a number called “Teenage Jail,” which was by far his worst writing effort and had a crazy, balls-to-the-walls guitar solo at the end of it. My solo was the result of a four-in-the-morning, whacked-out, coked-out session, and to this day, I’m embarrassed to have played it. It just keeps lingering like a bad smell. Glenn fled back to L.A. and called up his old friend Bob Seger to ask if he had anything. Fortunately he had—and between them they came up with “Heartache Tonight.”

  We raced back to Miami to record it for Glenn to sing, and he was as happy as could be, knowing that he finally had something. In it, he made the prophecy that someone was going to hurt somebody before the night was through.

  When it came to recording solo guitar parts in the studio, there was considerable competition. Glenn would take first shot, then me, then Joe, and whichever guy came up with the coolest part won. We each had totally different styles, but somehow they worked together as well as separately. It was a real challenge in terms of personalities, because Joe and I hit it off personally and musically, and we really wanted to write stuff for a two- or three-guitar band. Between the two of us, there was a lot of camaraderie, which really produced some original and unique sounds. When we were cutting “Those Shoes,” we recorded live onto those basic tracks and found a place for a guitar solo. The first couple of times nobody played, and then the last time, Joe played, and it was great, so it stayed on the record that way.

  There was a lot of trying out new material and ways of playing it for the good of the project. On “The Long Run,” I played keyboards for the first time on record. I just started playing in the studio, and it worked. Joe used to play keyboards on some songs too. Everybody did whatever was necessary to make the best record without trying to insist on playing solo or stepping up to the mike. That was the musical dynamic when it was at its best.

  When it was at its worst, drugs were usually to blame. Cocaine and alcohol with Quaaludes thrown in was bad medicine, even if it did smooth off the edges. It’s amazing we’re all still alive. I can’t count the number of nights I drove home from the studio with the sun coming up. I’d cruise down Ocean Boulevard, my nose still tingling, heading for a house I shared with Joe in Key Biscayne. I could hardly keep the car on the road for grinding my teeth. I’d have been up all night, I’d reach home by six, fall into bed, then wake up, and have to get back to the studio and start all over.

  In the end, I became fed up with driving home, worried that I was going to kill myself. And I was always afraid a Miami cop would stop me and throw me in jail after finding drugs in my pocket. Even on so-called days off, I’d leave the studio at five in the morning, high as a kite, and keep going. Joe and I might play golf at one in the afternoon with a couple of beers, then continue partying. Sure enough, our day off became another marathon. Instead of recovering, we’d rush right back in.

  I didn’t want to be locked into that life anymore, so I booked myself a little suite in the Coconut Grove Hotel, a few blocks away from the studio. Now when I left, I just had to stagger few blocks. I’d push a button, enter the elevator, fumble with my room key, and crash out. I’d wake up and order room service instead of going downstairs to fumble with pots and pans. Since they had a gym, I could also work out and maintain some semblance of normality. I didn’t mean to withdraw from the others. I was just tired of that long drive.

  The studio marathon went on. We were down to our bare nerve endings in terms of stress. I think the whole band had been suffering from postpartum depression after Hotel, and now we were heavily pregnant again with the next baby, and the strain was showing. To allow us to spend more time with our families and less in Florida, some of the recording was moved to the One Step Up Studio in West Hollywood. It would be fair to say, I think, that this became our least favorite album because it represented such a dark time personally. We were struggling to write, we were struggling with drug and alcohol abuse, and we were struggling with interpersonal relations and egos. The whole album had this dark cloud of dissension around it. It finally divided us into two camps, Don and Glenn versus me and Joe, the guitar players. Timothy was somewhere floating around, the Wanderer, as ever. Finally, we exhausted ourselves, exhausted our patience, and took so many drugs that nobody could see any further solutions except to finish what we had and walk away from it.

  The album became known as the Long One at the record company. It wasn’t helped by the way we worked, which was actually quite a strange and lengthy process. We’d start with a basic track—intro, verse, second verse, chorus, third verse, chorus, bridge, and out—and set some device to help us keep our tempo together. We’d fill up ten to twelve reels over two or three days, each reel having three to five takes on it, recording that same track over and over, constantly arranging and creating it. Then there’d be an editing session, where we’d put up twenty-four-track tapes and listen to each reel to find out what the best feel was for the drums.

  From tape twelve, we might take the first eight bars, from tape three the second eight bars, and from tape five the first bar and a half of the second bridge. Bill would listen with those fantastic ears of his and say, “Oh, good first verse” or “Nice bridge” from one tape, and then shake his head and say, “Well, that’s about it.” Then on the next tape, he’d listen and say, “Oh, good, great intro, that was a really good intro” or “The drum fill was really great going into the chorus,” and so on, until the floor of the control room was literally carpeted with two-inch tape standing on edge. All these little pieces would start coming out of these basic tracks and be edited together until that the drum track sounded really good, even if everything else sounded awful, because we could fix all the other stuff later.

  When our master tape went by on a twenty-four-track tape machine it looked like a zebra, there were so many edits. Each one of us would then have to repair our guitar, keyboard, and bass parts. We did so much of this that Bill had to lay those tapes on an edit block and resplice them with a razor blade, because they’d start to fall apart from going around and back and forth so many times. And he didn’t want to monopolize two machines, so we had to work on that master only.

  Finally, when all the recording was done and ready to mix, Bill—whose new nickname became “Coach” because of his role in the studio and his passion for sports—would sit in the control room and not allow anyone else in for a couple of hours until he’d got a mix that he wanted everyone to hear. They we’d all go in, each carrying a legal pad, and make notes as the track went by, suggesting various adjustments—echo too loud, drum fill too soft, and so on—and Bill would try to make those corrections by hand on his console, feeling what he was mixing. Finally we’d get to the point where we liked mix number five or seven, and we’d all go away and shoot pool or have dinner while Coach got up the next mix. If we finished one mix every day and a half, we were doing really well. We’d take a batch home with us and listen to them again for a few days, in the car or on the stereo, to see if our choice still held up.

  Bill was great at holding the reins while letting the horses run at their own pace. He never pushed us or forced us to make creative decisions. He’d sit and let us listen, with his eyes closed. If his head was bouncing, r you knew you had a great take, but if he stopped and stared at one of the speakers, you knew he’d heard something he didn’t like. He really had a marvelous set of ears, listening for a coherent performance, in which we all meshed perfectly as a band.

  “
Well, Bill,” we’d say at the end, our faces hopeful, “do we have all the pieces yet?”

  “I’d like to hear a couple more good bridges,” he’d say, and we’d do as he asked, concentrating really hard on playing that particular part well.

  Trouble is, you can’t go back and record another bridge three or four days later. It won’t splice in. The sound is different, the humidity is different that day, people play their instruments a little differently, and so you have to keep going, keep recording until you have all the pieces. Which is where cocaine comes in.

  If you listen to Eagles records, there’s nothing out of tune, there are no foibles. They are almost inhumanly flawless and, in my opinion, sometimes to a fault. Because of Don’s perfectionism and Bill’s professionalism, the two of them kept raising the bar for us to leap over. Unfortunately, in the end we took that bar and hit each other over the head with it. And I think that many of our gutsiest, most spontaneous performances ended up needlessly on the control room floor. We tried so hard to be better and better, but in doing so, I think we lost something of the passion. Was this how B.B. King worked?

  On September 24, 1979, The Long Run was released. It had taken eighteen months, almost a year longer than Hotel California, and it nearly killed us. The notes on the back of the album sleeve described it ominously as our last studio album. It debuted at number one, but the critics savaged it as “a considerable disappointment.” Rolling Stone was ambivalent. Their reviewer described it as “a bitter, writhing, difficult record, full of piss and vinegar and poisoned expectations,” but added, “Because it is steeped in fresh, risky material and unflinching self-examination, it’s also the Eagles’ best work in many, many years.”

  The magazine ran the review with a critical cover story by a reporter who’d spent two years hanging out with us and who claimed Don had likened himself to God. Don fired off a series of angry letters. Many read them and sensed we’d reached the endgame. We reluctantly agreed to some interviews to publicize the new album, but Don, Glenn, and Irving continued to control all the information released to the press. Only Don and Glenn were allowed to answer direct questions, and they had a series of pat answers ready if anyone asked about strife within the band.

  “How’s everyone getting along?” someone would ask.

  “Oh, we loathe each other, as you can see,” Glenn would reply, smiling.

  “That’s why we just agreed to work together again for the last eighteen months to bring out this new album. Can’t stand each other’s guts,” Don would add, winking.

  Steering the conversation away from controversial issues to the new project, they became masters at handling the media. Their quotes in a number of magazine profiles were eerily similar, as if they’d precisely rehearsed the answers. Joe Walsh was allowed to give some interviews, and I did a few with Guitar magazine, but we were all discouraged from speaking with the press. The policy thereafter became minimal contact. Fewer interviews, they hoped, would maintain a mystique and spin certain awkward situations.

  Instead of resting, as we should have done, we played Japan, Hawaii, the East Coast, and the Southern states, before embarking on another world tour. Every waking moment seemed to be spent eating, sleeping, and dreaming the Eagles.

  I took Jesse with me to Japan, hiring local nannies to care for him, just so I could spend some time with my son. He was six years old, and I felt we barely knew each other. Taking him into the toy shops in Tokyo after a ride on the Bullet Train was a dream come true for any father. His little face lit up under his white-blond hair, and I told him to pick out something he wanted. He was so overwhelmed, he couldn’t decide what to pick at first but finally settled on trunkloads of Legos. I took him to a sumo wrestling match, courtesy of our very gracious promoter, Mr. Udo, and he met one of the great champions after the match, who, coincidentally, was called Super Jesse Sumo Man. Little Jesse watched this man-mountain slamming into a telegraph pole in training backstage and felt the ground shake beneath his feet. He became a lifelong fan. He almost lost his balance staring up at the huge piles of flesh towering over him. I don’t think he ever forgot that.

  In Japan, I bought Susan a beautiful silk kimono, hand-embroidered, in heavy material. Don Henley bought twenty, for his collection. During the remainder of the tour the road crew complained bitterly about having to lug them around. They were already transporting his personal mattress and sheets of plywood, to ease his bad back in the various hotel rooms he had to sleep in, and the kimonos represented one packing case too many.

  “Heartache Tonight,” the first single from the new album, written by Don, Glenn, J.D., and Bob Seger, topped the charts and sold over half a million copies. “The Long Run,” the second single, rose to number eight. Our next single, “I Can’t Tell You Why,” started by Timothy, reached the same level. Interest in us was still at an all-time high.

  Speaking of all-time highs, the cocaine abuse went crazy. Everybody in the music business was involved, even upper-echelon executives. One of the presidents of a very large label probably had the biggest cocaine habit I knew of. Coke even had many of the lawyers, doctors, and managers strung out. It was the same with musicians and DJs; it had infested the entire industry. Nobody yet realized the long-term damage that would result from it. We just thought it was great, like pot; we’d have a great time, and there wouldn’t be a problem. It was the fun party drug of the seventies, and until you’d lost your house, your car, your family, and your kids and wound up in the hospital or rehab, you didn’t realize how dangerous it could be. The movie Blow, with Johnny Depp, offers a perfect synopsis of what happened back then.

  The constant pace cocaine set didn’t do much for our relationships. Being high allows for a false sense of camaraderie, but as soon as the drug wears off, you realize how fake it all is. Sometimes, just sometimes, everybody got along great. We’d drink together, get high, write songs, and jam. It was so fantastic when something good happened, we’d all look at each other in amazement and wonder if it could possibly last.

  There were some real highlights in the shows we did around this time, the memory of which I shall feed on forever. Among them were the nights Roy Orbison opened for us for a series of concerts at the Los Angeles Forum, our first shows in our adoptive hometown since 1976. Orbison was amazing. We’d be sitting in our dressing rooms and know exactly where he was in his set when we heard the audience explode because he’d hit the high note in “Crying.” You could set your alarm clock by him. Every night, like clockwork, we knew that after that high note, there’d be two more songs and we’d be on. The audience responded really well to him. Some of these kids didn’t even know who he was, and yet he got them going every night. He was a shy, quiet man, unbelievably humble. He just stood there dressed in black with his sunglasses on, singing his tail off. I was honored to be on the same stage as him. If there had been any justice in this world, we would have been opening for him.

  Another great memory of the L.A. Forum gigs was working with the Blues Brothers—John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd—and Elton John when they came on and jammed with us during one of our encores. Man, that was really something. I think it was one of the best performances we ever gave. It felt incredibly emotional, playing with these guys, backed by a huge orchestra, hearing our music fill the whole place, and all in our “hometown.”

  Elton John was like the Liberace of rock and roll, with his huge glasses and flamboyant outfits. On the radio, he came across as a completely different person from the man who appeared on stage. He was completely over-the-top but always very friendly and charming—the quintessential polite Englishman. I liked him a lot. Don was, by then, dabbling in gambling, and he and Glenn and Irving took Elton to a casino one night in London after a gig. Elton had a great night but didn’t come away with as much as he would have liked to have won. The following day, the guys bought the blackjack table he had been playing on and had it sent over to his house with a tongue-in-cheek note which said, “For the amount you lost last night, you
should at least own the table.”

  During one gig with Elton and his band, I wandered into the men’s room and found one of his musicians rolling around on the floor, screaming in pain and holding his nose.

  “What’s the matter, man?” I asked, rushing to him. Blood was pouring from his nostrils.

  “I dunno,” he wailed. “Someone just came in and offered me some blow, and I took some, but it stings like crazy. I think it must have been cut with something.”

  We called the paramedics, and they flushed his sinuses with water before rushing him to hospital. Someone had cut the coke with rat poison and nearly killed him. That event was a big warning to me, never to take any drugs offered by a stranger. You never knew what nutcase was going to wander up to you and say, “Hey man, I love your stuff. Here, have some of this,” and maybe have it laced with cyanide or something, just to get their name on network news.

  John Belushi became a friend of the band. We reciprocated the Blues Brothers’ guest appearance with us in L.A. by playing at their Blues Bar after a gig at the Chicago Stadium. John had a party house in inner-city Chicago, with a pool table, a bar, and a bandstand set up with guitar, drums, and a mike, and we’d just go along and jam with him all night, taking drugs and hanging out. He was everybody’s favorite bad boy and such an upbeat, excitable guy, who loved music and would pour himself into it, like Joe Cocker. He was one of the funniest people I ever met, full of energy and brilliance.