Heaven and Hell

by Don Felder

  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.”

  VH1, which was covering the presentation, made clear that it wanted one thing—all seven Eagles playing together.

  Two songs were chosen, and Randy and Bernie were to be allowed to join in.

  The ceremony took place in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan. Excited as I was by the event, I wasn’t looking forward to the few hours when the seven of us would have to be in the same room together, under the scrutiny of the world’s media. Don brought J.D. because J.D. deserved to be there as much as the rest of us. We all brought our families. Joe turned up wearing a suit with red bricks painted onto it, in stark contrast to our tuxedos.

  Bill Szymzcyk was there, deservedly. Of all the people connected with the Eagles over the years, he was by far the most fondly thought of, because of his warm, loving nature and great sense of humor. It was he who’d tried to quietly mediate whenever Bernie got hotheaded, and he encouraged Randy with his singing. He was very good at instilling confidence and trying to calm the waters. He was an integral part of the whole process.

  Sadly, despite Bill’s soothing presence, the atmosphere was so tense you could have cut it with one of Joe’s chain saws. Some even refused to sign autographs during the sound check. Don and Glenn pretty much shunned Randy and Bernie, and Irving ran around between them.

  We were the last to be presented with our awards, after Fleetwood Mac and Santana had performed rousing sets. Peter Green was there as an original member of Fleetwood Mac. The last time Susan and I had seen him, he’d slept on our couch in Boston. “Hi, Peter,” I said, extending my hand. “I don’t suppose you remember me, but we had some fun jamming together back in Boston in the early seventies.” He looked at me blankly. It clearly wasn’t a time he recalled well.

  Our old friend Jimmy Buffett, also dressed in a tux, introduced us with the words, “We truly look like the people our parents warned us about tonight.” He went on, “The Eagles are going into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the signature bands that began in the seventies, still alive and kicking ass as we head for the new millennium. They’ve laughed, frolicked, cried, fought, but most of all they have beaten the odds and are as popular today as they were in that incredible summer back in 1972.”

  We swept onto the stage and everyone did a brilliant job of feigning back-slapping camaraderie, wearing forced smiles for the cameras. Each of us was to be invited to step up to the mike and make a short acceptance speech. Timothy, Joe, and I were allowed a minute each, while Don and Glenn had unlimited time to ramble on as incoherently as they liked. “The Gods” couldn’t be hurried. When it came to the television broadcast, our speeches were all edited out anyway, and only theirs included.

  Don thanked Irving first and said that without him we wouldn’t have been there today. In a rehearsed aside, Glenn quipped, “Well, we might still have been here, but we wouldn’t have made so much money.”

  Don said of Irving, “He may be Satan, but he’s our Satan.” He went on to thank producers Bill Szymczyk and Glyn Johns, David Geffen, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, the road crew, and his entire family. Of us, he said only, “I appreciate all the work these guys behind me have done,” and added, “Old buildings, politicians, and whores all become respectable if they stick around long enough.”

  Timothy spoke briefly but eloquently and thanked Randy for “paving” his way. Bernie expressed his gratitude to John Boylan, Linda Ronstadt’s manager, for giving him his big brea
k. Randy, timid as ever, crept up to the mike and said how honored he was, before thanking his parents. Joe received the most applause in his outrageous suit and by opening with his trademark, “How ya doing?” In his brief speech, he largely thanked the road crew.

  I’d agonized over what I was going to say, and I delivered it with considerable emotion. I don’t think I’d been as nervous since I stood on the stage of the State Theater in Gainesville and played “Walk Don’t Run.” Clearing my throat, I began, “I’d like to thank Don Henley and Glenn Frey for writing an incredible body of work that propelled this band through twenty-odd years of life. Thank you guys.” Staring Susan straight in the eye as she sat at a table with our four children and my mother, I added, “I’d like to thank my wife, Susan, who put up with me for twenty-six years while we did this.” Susan, who deserved this award more than me, blew me a kiss.

  Glenn brought up the rear and shot from the hip. “There’s been a lot of talk tonight about disharmony,” he said. “The Eagles were a very laid-back band in a high-stress situation. A lot has been made and a lot has been speculated in the last twenty-seven years about whether or not we get along. We get along fine. We just disagreed a lot. . . . You cannot play music with people for very long if you don’t genuinely like them. I guarantee you that over the nine years the Eagles were together in the seventies, over the three years we were together during our reunion, the best of times rank in the ninety-five percent, and the worst of times in the smallest percentile that obviously everybody but the seven of us has dwelled on for the longest time. Get over it!”

  We picked up our instruments and managed to get through our set without incident. Randy was told to stand to the extreme left of the stage, next to Timothy, and Bernie to the extreme right next to Joe. There were several feet of space and a million miles of antipathy between them and Glenn. Randy wasn’t allowed to play bass live, so he stood there strumming his guitar silently. With the pain of those barbs still smarting, we began with the band’s first-ever hit, “Take It Easy,” and followed with our most successful, “Hotel California.” When it was over, there was a pregnant pause before the audience rose to its feet as one in open appreciation.

  The applause faded away, and we walked off into the wings. Within hours, Glenn left and caught a plane out of New York. Everyone else, including a deeply uncomfortable Bernie, went their separate ways in separate limos. Only Randy went to the bar to celebrate with the other bands. It was just like the good old, bad old days.

  NINETEEN

  My marriage had, by now, become a serious cause for concern. There was this huge void in my life, which I didn’t know how to fill. Susan and I had been together, on and off, since I was with Bernie in the Maundy Quintet. I’d run the gauntlet of snakes, alligators, drugs, and women just to be with her. We’d had four wonderful children together, and I’d held her hand through every birth. Now, I don’t think I even knew who she was, this high-powered business executive who had no time to even share a meal with me.

  My frustration was epitomized by an evening in the summer of 1999, when I managed to track her down on her cell phone after fruitlessly leaving her messages all day. “Hey, honey,” I said, “let’s go to see a movie and have dinner tonight out at the new Palace Theater in Calabasas. If we get there early enough, we can be home in time for Leah when she comes back from her friend’s house, and I’ll bring her some takeout from the restaurant.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Don,” Susan began. “I was actually planning to work late tonight.”

  “Come on, honey,” I pleaded. “I haven’t seen you all week.”

  She relented. “OK. I’ll meet you there.”

  The movie started at four thirty, and I arrived at four o’clock, bought two tickets, and waited around for her, but she was over forty minutes late. When she eventually arrived, she sat down with me, a third of the way through the film, and ate her way through half a bucket of popcorn because she’d skipped lunch. When the film was over, I said excitedly, “OK, what do you feel like eating? Italian? Chinese?”

  “Oh, Don,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I’m not really hungry. Do you mind if we skip dinner? I think I’d rather go into the bookstore and browse for a while.”

  With that, she wandered off to Barnes & Noble and left me standing in the mall, staggered by her attitude. Not only had she almost stood me up, but she’d blown off our romantic evening completely. I walked into the bookstore and told her I was going to order some fettucine for Leah from the Italian restaurant. She still had her nose buried in a jewelry book when I returned. “You know, I don’t want this to get cold,” I told her. “I think I’ll just go home.”

  “OK,” she said, without even looking up.

  When I got home, I was too upset to eat. I left Leah’s meal in the oven and went straight to my office to surf the Web, unhappier than I had been in many years. I heard Susan come home an hour later and go to her studio without even saying hello. I knew she’d eventually come to bed in the early hours, roll over, and go to sleep. Our evening together couldn’t have been more sterile and coldly unromantic. There was never a screaming match where we told each other, “I hate your guts.” That might have been preferable. This was like a slow, silent death, and I knew that night that my marriage was all but over.

  In 1999, talks began again about us getting together to possibly record some new material. At the end of the year, we were booked to perform three end-of-the-millennium shows, two to be held at the gilded Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on December 27 and 28 and one at the Staples Center in L.A. on December 31. It was hoped that we might come up with some new songs, but it was not to be.

  Glenn sent us all a fax, setting out his terms and conditions for any possible resumption. He blamed stress and cited the “unique dynamics” of the band as a contributory factor.

  “Unfortunately,” he wrote, “the Eagles experience is a stressful one for me. Although it’s what I call ‘positive stress,’ it is stress nonetheless. So the big questions for me are: How do I handle my commitment to the December shows and also continue to make some sort of effort to work on a studio album with you guys? I’ve given this a lot of thought. At this time, here is what I’m willing to do.” He then set out five conditions for his returning to work, which included preparing five “Glenn songs” for the album, along with any songs he might coauthor, and agreeing to work on Joe’s material. The lines were being drawn.

  To me it seemed the problem was that we hadn’t played a concert together publicly for more than three years and hadn’t socialized much either. The last time we’d seen each other had been the Hall of Fame awards, and that hadn’t been the best of atmospheres.

  Irving’s new plan was to piece together the best of the Millennium concerts—featuring a few never-before-recorded but nonetheless old songs—for a box set to be released in 2000. That way, we’d be getting a new product out to the public, thus keeping us in the open market until we could finally get it together to release a new studio album. He had also done a deal to offer the previously unreleased songs to download for free on the Internet, setting a new precedent in music marketing (although the songs were later withdrawn due to “unforeseen publishing licensing problems”).

  I had more serious problems to worry about. I’d decided that, once the concerts were over and the New Year had arrived, I’d be telling Susan that I was leaving her.

  It’s a terrible feeling, knowing you’re about to do something irrevocable and heartbreaking to your wife and kids but being unable to prevent it. Marriage counseling wasn’t an option—we’d been in therapy for years—and I knew that neither Susan nor I could or would change. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her anymore. I always would, but her jewelry business was her life now—a life I had helped her create, as an antidote to being the wife of an absentee rock star. I knew that I only had myself to blame for all the pain and suffering I had caused and that I was about to cause more, but I also knew that I couldn’t remain in that marria
ge a moment longer.

  The kids were grown. Jesse was married, with a son of his own and another child on the way. Rebecca was caught up in Susan’s business. Cody was finally finding his footing. And Leah was so busy with her hectic teenage social life that she barely seemed to notice my existence. I felt confident that, after the initial shock, they’d come to see that I was right. Whenever I asked them, none of them could even remember the last time they saw Susan and me cuddle or kiss. Was I to stay in that lonely, sterile environment forever, just for the sake of propriety?

  I faced the Millennium concert rehearsals just after Thanksgiving with a heavy heart. They would, in some ways, be a welcome distraction. When I arrived at Culver Studios, I quickly gathered that there was much that had to be redone and relearned. Hours were spent in discussion with the lighting designer and the monitor crew, and for some time, we were unable to concentrate on the music at all. For us old-time rockers, the move into the twenty-first century, with its high-tech wizardry, was not always easy.