Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
Speaker 1: And I know everybody busts my chops when I say that,
Speaker 1: but my guest is extra special. His name is Don Felder.
Speaker 1: He was the lead guitarist for the Eagles. He wrote
Speaker 1: Hotel California. He is a legend in the music industry
Speaker 1: and really a very nice guy and an informative um
Speaker 1: rack on tour who tells wonderful stories. If you are
Speaker 1: at all interested in music or seventies, or the Eagles,
Speaker 1: or the eighties, or guitar history or the nineties, you
Speaker 1: will find this to be an absolutely fascinating conversation. So,
Speaker 1: with no further ado, my interview with Don Felder. My
Speaker 1: extra special guest this week is Don Felder. He is
Speaker 1: a legendary guitarist and songwriter, perhaps best known for his
Speaker 1: work with the Eagles, where he has written numerous songs,
Speaker 1: including Victim of Love and perhaps most famously, Hotel California.
Speaker 1: Don Felder, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you. It's fabulous to
Speaker 1: be back here again. So, um, you have really a
Speaker 1: fascinating background, and I was really you know stunned when
Speaker 1: I was reading you. You grew up in Gainesville, Florida,
Speaker 1: which somehow became a hotbed of music. Is that a
Speaker 1: fair statement. Yeah, for some reason, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was something that was in the water or
Speaker 1: in something that we were all smoking at the time,
Speaker 1: that so many people came out of Gainesville that went
Speaker 1: on to become rock and roll legends, rock and Roll
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame inductees, platinum selling artist. We were all
Speaker 1: just kids in different garage bands down there. One of
Speaker 1: my guitar students was a kid named Tommy Petty who
Speaker 1: I taught how to play guitar. He was little Tommy Petty,
Speaker 1: Little Tommy. He was playing bass in this band called
Speaker 1: the Epics, and he thought it was kind of awkward
Speaker 1: and geeky to be fronting a band playing bass and singing.
Speaker 1: So he wanted to learn to play guitar so he
Speaker 1: could write songs instead of playing bass. So I gave
Speaker 1: him guitar lessons. I helped a little little bit of
Speaker 1: the arrangement on a couple of their songs in their shows.
Speaker 1: I went to just hang out. We were friends. We
Speaker 1: were in battles of the bands together, Uh. Steven Stills
Speaker 1: and I had a band together in Gainesville. I think
Speaker 1: we were fourteen and fifteen years old. My mom would
Speaker 1: drive us around to these little events because we didn't
Speaker 1: have a car, driver's license or anything. Uh. Dwyane Allman
Speaker 1: and Greg Allman were in different bands in that time,
Speaker 1: called like the Almond Joys or the Spotlights. Dwayne taught
Speaker 1: me how to play slide guitar one night on the
Speaker 1: floor of his mom's house in Dayton of Beach, about
Speaker 1: two thirty in the morning. Who else was around their
Speaker 1: Leonard skinnerd was right over in Jacksonville, Florida. Bernie Leadon
Speaker 1: actually moved to Gainesville because his dad was given the
Speaker 1: appointment of heading up the nuclear research department at the
Speaker 1: University of Arida, so he moved his family, all eight kids,
Speaker 1: over to Gainesville. And Stephen Stills had just left to
Speaker 1: move to California, and Bernie showed up and picked me
Speaker 1: up actually at a bus station where I was coming
Speaker 1: back from a little town called Lake City about thirty
Speaker 1: minutes away, where I had gone up by myself and
Speaker 1: played this little women's tea party in the afternoon. So
Speaker 1: he had a car. He was sixteen he picked me
Speaker 1: up at the bus station and actually wound up replacing
Speaker 1: Stephen Stills in that band, and Bernie went on to
Speaker 1: become one of the founding members of the Eagles. We've
Speaker 1: known each other since high school. So Stephen, Bernie, and
Speaker 1: Tom and myself all went to the same high school,
Speaker 1: Gainesville High School together, so astonishing. I don't know how
Speaker 1: that all happened, but it did. And and what first
Speaker 1: got you interested in music? The legend is you see
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley on television and not just sparks a lifelong interest. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a huge interest in that explosion of rock
Speaker 1: and roll in that time and had just a really strong,
Speaker 1: exciting energy about it, whether it was a little Richard
Speaker 1: singing two Dy Fruity or Elvis on stage shaking and
Speaker 1: gyrating and flipping his greasy hair around and snarling his
Speaker 1: upper lip and watching all those young girls screaming at him.
Speaker 1: I kind of said, you know, I think I'd like
Speaker 1: to do that. That looks like fun. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: I traded a handful of cherry bombs to a kid
Speaker 1: that lived across the street for a broken guitar and
Speaker 1: had a crack and it was missing strings and I
Speaker 1: found the guy around the corner that helped me tune
Speaker 1: the thing, replace some of the strings on it. And
Speaker 1: I used to sit on my front porch down there
Speaker 1: on this dirt road in Gainesville, on this metal glider,
Speaker 1: just sliding back and forth and back and forth, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how that guitar worked, where do you
Speaker 1: put your fingers, how do you make chords? And there
Speaker 1: wasn't a music school. There was no money to be
Speaker 1: had in my family for lessons if there was a
Speaker 1: music school, so I was pretty much self taught. And
Speaker 1: it turned out that I gave myself kind of basic
Speaker 1: ear training by listening to stuff on the radio or
Speaker 1: listening to my stuff on my dad's tape recorder and
Speaker 1: just playing it over and over and over until I
Speaker 1: could figure it out on guitar. And eventually, even today,
Speaker 1: I can hear something two or three times and just
Speaker 1: play it right away because I've trained my mind and
Speaker 1: my body and my insight into music to be able
Speaker 1: to hear something and play it. So from there, I
Speaker 1: moved from Gainesville. I think I was nineteen years old. Well,
Speaker 1: before we leave Gainesville, let's just stay stay in Gainesville,
Speaker 1: Florida for another moment. Okay, you start um working at
Speaker 1: a music store like an instrument store, um, and you
Speaker 1: were working essentially to be able to earn money for instruments.
Speaker 1: Is that. Yeah? I wasn't getting paid money. I was
Speaker 1: given credit for every hour or every lesson that I
Speaker 1: taught there. I was given credit on the store card.
Speaker 1: They had this thing that they'd put in their register
Speaker 1: and give me five dollars or ten dollars for having
Speaker 1: much I'd earned. And I could use that money for strings,
Speaker 1: for pedals, for cords. If I saved up a nump,
Speaker 1: I could trade in my old guitar and get a
Speaker 1: better guitar and or an amp or some tubes. Or
Speaker 1: if I blew out a speaker in my appen it
Speaker 1: needed to be replaced, which happened frequently in those days,
Speaker 1: I would be able to work until I got enough
Speaker 1: money to get a speaker replacement. So yeah, that's where
Speaker 1: I was learning how to make money. Was in uh,
Speaker 1: working in a music store. And and where did the
Speaker 1: music theory in Gainesville first come into your experiences? There
Speaker 1: was a great guitar player that lived there whose name
Speaker 1: was Paul Hillis. He left Gainesville and went to the
Speaker 1: Berkeley School of Music in Boston and came back a
Speaker 1: few years later, but had given up guitar and it
Speaker 1: started playing piano because he thought you could see compositions
Speaker 1: and chord clusters and progressions much easier on piano than
Speaker 1: on guitar, which is true. It's a repetitive octave on piano,
Speaker 1: and on guitar it's everything's a different feeding fingering as
Speaker 1: you go up the scale or up the neck. So
Speaker 1: he opened the School of Music, and for every hour
Speaker 1: that I taught there these incoming young kids that had
Speaker 1: gotten a guitar for Christmas and we're complaining about their
Speaker 1: callous is hurting on their fingers. For every hour I
Speaker 1: taught them, he would teach me music theory, composition, chord progressions,
Speaker 1: how to read music. And I basically got the cheap
Speaker 1: version of a Berkeley College of Music education from Ball,
Speaker 1: the cheap version. Um, there was one of the person
Speaker 1: you did not mention. I recall reading about from the area,
Speaker 1: and I want to say it was the keyboardist for
Speaker 1: Stevie Ray Vaughan. Is that right? I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about That's off my that was that might have been
Speaker 1: a little a little later. Um, so, so what finally
Speaker 1: motivated you to say, all right, Gainesville has been good
Speaker 1: to me musically, But on the other side of the
Speaker 1: country is this place called Los Angeles, and there seems
Speaker 1: to be a burgeoning music scene going on over there.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of stops along the way. I
Speaker 1: had a band called the Mondy Quintet that Bernie Leadon
Speaker 1: was in with me. We played opening for this band
Speaker 1: called The Circle, and The Circle were being managed by
Speaker 1: Sid Bernstein, who was a huge manager here in New York.
Speaker 1: And their road crew decided they were going to take
Speaker 1: us up to New York and do some showcases up
Speaker 1: here in different clubs, and we had a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old drummer that actually owned the van. Uh, So we
Speaker 1: loaded everything into this van and drove from Gainesville up
Speaker 1: to New York. I think we were up here about
Speaker 1: a week and we had done some showcases and Sid's
Speaker 1: organization was really interesting and signing us, managing us and
Speaker 1: kind of building a career. But our drummer started crying
Speaker 1: I think the second or third day in the bedroom
Speaker 1: because he missed his mom and he was frightened by
Speaker 1: New York City. So we had to pack everything back
Speaker 1: into the van and moved back down to Gainsville to
Speaker 1: It was his van, he had to go home. Um
Speaker 1: So later I had another band that I put together
Speaker 1: called Flow and I packed up with a guitar in
Speaker 1: one hand, a suitcase and the other and moved back
Speaker 1: up to New York with that band, starved her on
Speaker 1: the street for about a year and a half. The
Speaker 1: very first thing I did when I got here the
Speaker 1: second day was I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Speaker 1: There was no art in Gainesville at all, probably nothing
Speaker 1: south of the Mason Dixon down there that rivaled what
Speaker 1: I had heard about them at So I spent the
Speaker 1: entire day there at the met my second day here
Speaker 1: in New York, just soaking up all the history and
Speaker 1: the amazing artwork that's there, and the sculptures, and the
Speaker 1: Egyptian history going back thousands of years, and just had
Speaker 1: a newfound appreciation for what I had never seen or
Speaker 1: had before. Anyway. Um I worked here for about a
Speaker 1: year and a half. We made a record with a
Speaker 1: band called flow Uh, signed by a guy named Creed
Speaker 1: Taylor for CTI Records. Creed was one of the biggest
Speaker 1: blue note and verve jazz producers in the business. I
Speaker 1: think Quincy Jones was on that label with me. Uh,
Speaker 1: Hubert Laws was on that label. It was kind of
Speaker 1: Hubert Laws, Yes, that's right, we had. It was kind
Speaker 1: of a jazz label, and we were a jazz fusion
Speaker 1: rock band. He saw us play at the Film or
Speaker 1: East one night and signed us literally the following week
Speaker 1: to his record label. After about a year and a half,
Speaker 1: I decided I just didn't want to live in New
Speaker 1: York City. It's a try. It's a tough transition from
Speaker 1: beach bum in Florida up to Eskimo here and living
Speaker 1: on the city was a little a little difficult for me.
Speaker 1: And my high school girlfriend had moved back to Boston, uh,
Speaker 1: and so I went up to visit her a couple
Speaker 1: of times and decided I was going to move to
Speaker 1: Boston because we wanted to get back together. And I
Speaker 1: asked Creed Taylor if he would help me, and he
Speaker 1: called Berkeley School of Music and set up an appointment
Speaker 1: there for me to go in and UH call two
Speaker 1: or three recording studios up there to give me an
Speaker 1: introduction to that area. So I went in and started
Speaker 1: doing jingles and sessions in these recording studios, and actually
Speaker 1: went over to Berkeley College of Music and they offered
Speaker 1: me a job teaching, And I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: a teacher. I wanted to actually be doing music, teaching music,
Speaker 1: so I humbly declined uh their offer to teach there UH,
Speaker 1: and wound up working in this one studio. I think
Speaker 1: I was working there six days a week, and I
Speaker 1: made fifty dollars a week. Now, if you went to
Speaker 1: a recording school today and you spent that much time
Speaker 1: and effort learning how to record, you'd probably spend fifty
Speaker 1: grand a semester to get that kind of education. So
Speaker 1: I think I got the better end of that bargain,
Speaker 1: and I got the better end of the bargain on
Speaker 1: a handful of cherry bones for a guitar. All these
Speaker 1: trades and things that I did along the way for
Speaker 1: the free Berkeley education and learning how to make records
Speaker 1: in that studio in Boston for three years really served
Speaker 1: me well. So finally, my friend Bernie Lyndon kept calling
Speaker 1: me and going, what are you doing in New York?
Speaker 1: What are you doing in Boston? The music businesses out
Speaker 1: in California. You need to move to California. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about California right now. Hotel California. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about you're writing that song, because my
Speaker 1: I mentioned my pet theory is the Eagles were kind
Speaker 1: of thought of as like a kick back mellow country,
Speaker 1: not quite rock bands, and I know the rest of
Speaker 1: the band really wanted to be more of a led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin type of um, both with Hotels Destruction and with
Speaker 1: rock and roll, and Hotel California just took the band
Speaker 1: to an entirely different level. Not only is the song
Speaker 1: ranked forty nine on the list of Greatest Songs of
Speaker 1: All Time, Uh, the album sold seventeen million copies in
Speaker 1: the US thirty two million worldwide. I think it was
Speaker 1: number three on the Old Time List something like that.
Speaker 1: So so you deserve a whole lot of credit for
Speaker 1: really taking the band up until the next level. I
Speaker 1: have to ask, because it's so different from everything else
Speaker 1: that was done, how did you come up with that
Speaker 1: that intro? And then how did you basically just write
Speaker 1: the music for that song. At the time, I was
Speaker 1: living in a rental beach house on Malibu Beach, and
Speaker 1: I had two little kids. One was about a year old,
Speaker 1: one was about two and a half years old, and
Speaker 1: I was sitting on a couch one day just playing
Speaker 1: acoustic guitar and looking out at the sun glistening on
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean and watching my two kids playing in
Speaker 1: the sand and this little swing set we had on
Speaker 1: the beach, and I out came that progression two or
Speaker 1: three times, and I had to go record a little
Speaker 1: bit of it so I wouldn't forget it. Much like
Speaker 1: a dream, when something comes through me, I have to
Speaker 1: write it down or record it, or you know, two
Speaker 1: days later, I can't remember what it was. It was gone,
Speaker 1: you know. So I run into my daughter's back bedroom,
Speaker 1: who was almost a year and when she was awake,
Speaker 1: I had set up this little recording studio back there
Speaker 1: where I could go in and make demos. So I
Speaker 1: went back and recorded that little progression three or four
Speaker 1: times and turned it off and went out and played
Speaker 1: with my kids on the beach. Years well months later,
Speaker 1: when it was time to sit down and write the
Speaker 1: songs that were going to become candidates for what was
Speaker 1: going to be the Hotel California Record, I had put
Speaker 1: together about fifteen or sixteen song ideas, and I heard
Speaker 1: that little three time loop through the progression, I said,
Speaker 1: I gotta finish that. So I really rebuilt the whole
Speaker 1: idea of playing acoustic guitar, twelve strings starting it off,
Speaker 1: and I played bass on the overdub. I played a
Speaker 1: drum machine that ran through it, the sound kind of
Speaker 1: like a cha cha beat or something, and I thought
Speaker 1: Joe Walsh should just join the band, and was going
Speaker 1: to be the first appearance on this record. Joe and
Speaker 1: I had been playing together a lot before he joined
Speaker 1: the band. If you go online and look at Joe
Speaker 1: Walsh and friends, you can see him and I doing
Speaker 1: all this guitar trading and jamming together. I wanted to
Speaker 1: have something on this record that he and I could
Speaker 1: do together that that was by design from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an afterthought, Hey, let's put a little guitar
Speaker 1: duel at the end. That was conscious. That was conscious
Speaker 1: aimed at trying to have a bed that we could
Speaker 1: do that on. So when I got to the part
Speaker 1: where I was recreating or making up or ad living
Speaker 1: these solos, I said, I'd play something kind of like this,
Speaker 1: and Joe had plays something kind of like this, and
Speaker 1: then I'd play this and he had play something like that,
Speaker 1: and so I made a little mix of that and
Speaker 1: I think fourteen or fifteen other song ideas. One became
Speaker 1: Victim of Love uh, and put it on this cassette.
Speaker 1: Made copies of the cassette. If anybody knows what a
Speaker 1: cassette is anymore, I think you've got to be over
Speaker 1: fifty understand what a cassette is, right, and forget eight tracks.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows what that. It's a it's a little plastic
Speaker 1: MP three. It's just hard to get it in the
Speaker 1: CD players. It's a little fat anyway, So I made copies,
Speaker 1: and I gave a copy to Don Henley, Glenn Fry,
Speaker 1: Joe Walsh, and Randy Meisner, who was the bass player
Speaker 1: in the band at the time. I said, if there's
Speaker 1: anything on these songs you guys like and you want
Speaker 1: to finish writing with me, gimme call let me know
Speaker 1: and we'll figure it out. You know, we'll start working
Speaker 1: on and him they called me a couple of days later, said,
Speaker 1: you know, I like that track that sounds kind of
Speaker 1: like a Mexican reggae and I knew exactly which track
Speaker 1: evens almost a little Spanish influence, and so so let
Speaker 1: me ask you a few questions about that, because I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated by this process. First, the guitar duel at the end,
Speaker 1: So you want to incorporate Joe Walsh Moore into the band.
Speaker 1: What what did you use as inspiration for that? Because
Speaker 1: when I was thinking about this, I immediately think of
Speaker 1: the end of Layla or the Beatles Abbey Road medley
Speaker 1: where there's three guys swapping h guitar looks back and forth.
Speaker 1: What what was the driving force that said, hey, let's
Speaker 1: do a little guitar duel on here. Thank Joe and
Speaker 1: I had already been doing that and you were talking
Speaker 1: about Layla. That was Dwayne Alman play the high slide
Speaker 1: guitar part on that and Eric playing below it. It
Speaker 1: was just it was something that all guitar players like
Speaker 1: to do, to go together against somebody that plays really
Speaker 1: all and it pushes you up to another level. And
Speaker 1: so I wanted to do that with Joe on this record,
Speaker 1: So I kind of designed that whole track with that
Speaker 1: in mind. Now, after I gave him that cassette, it
Speaker 1: was like a year and something later we were actually
Speaker 1: in the studio. We had recorded that basic track three times.
Speaker 1: First time it was in the wrong key for Don
Speaker 1: Henley to sing in, and he's got a pretty high range,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but even that was too hot. We had
Speaker 1: to go lower it from E minor down to B minor,
Speaker 1: which is not a particularly friendly guitar key to play in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then finally we got everything laid out on the
Speaker 1: track and the overdubs done and the intros recorded and
Speaker 1: everything done, and Joe and I, as I always kind
Speaker 1: of foresaw it, We're sitting in the control room with
Speaker 1: two guitars plugged into amplifiers out in the studio and
Speaker 1: miked up, and I was going to play a lick
Speaker 1: and Joe would play a lick, and we just started
Speaker 1: doing what we had always done. And Don Henley opens
Speaker 1: the door and comes walking back in a stands there
Speaker 1: for a minute and goes, what are you doing. I said, well,
Speaker 1: we're recording the solos on the end of this record.
Speaker 1: And he says, that's not right. You had to do
Speaker 1: it just like the demo. I said, I don't know
Speaker 1: what that was. That was a year ago that I
Speaker 1: made that demo idea. So he said, no, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: you've got to record it like the demo because he
Speaker 1: had been listening to it over and over and over
Speaker 1: and over. Well, it is cat You have to admit
Speaker 1: it's really catch Well, I have to say, some of
Speaker 1: the best first shots that come out when you're improvising
Speaker 1: are usually your best. You know, that moment of just
Speaker 1: first inspiration comes out. So I had to call my
Speaker 1: housekeeper back in Malibu and have her go through my cassettes,
Speaker 1: find that copy, put it in a blaster play it,
Speaker 1: hold the phone up to the speaker so we could
Speaker 1: record it in Miami. Then I had to sit down
Speaker 1: and learn what I just made up off the cuff
Speaker 1: and wait a second, Hold on Hotel California was recorded
Speaker 1: in Miami. Yeah, not in not in l A. I
Speaker 1: of all the research I did, that's the one thing
Speaker 1: I didn't even think of looking up. It would make
Speaker 1: sense for you to record that in uh in California?
Speaker 1: But why why am I Auntie? Well? You know it's
Speaker 1: funny because nobody in the band was from California. Handley
Speaker 1: was from Texas, Grands from Detroit, Joe was from Ohio,
Speaker 1: and Randy Meisner was from Nebraska. I was from Florida.
Speaker 1: Yet we became the California band that everybody identified with,
Speaker 1: you know, and so especially after Hotel California came in,
Speaker 1: it had just such an iconic you know, sure everybody
Speaker 1: hears the word California and you think of palm trees
Speaker 1: and beaches and stars on Hollywood Boulevard, movie stars and
Speaker 1: all these images that we have just pounded into our
Speaker 1: head over the years are associated with that word California.
Speaker 1: Whether you've been there or not, you have images in
Speaker 1: your mor So, um, you know, to be the California
Speaker 1: band and nobody from California's kind of a unique thing.
Speaker 1: But we recorded in Miami, so last Hotel California. Question,
Speaker 1: there is a version of the song played live and acoustic,
Speaker 1: and for that version you rewrote this beautiful sort of
Speaker 1: Spanish introduction. What what was the inspiration for that? Well,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the nineties, everybody, including Eric Clapton,
Speaker 1: did an acoustic, unplugged version of like Layla right for
Speaker 1: for MTV they had m t V and plugged in again,
Speaker 1: the same people who won't know what cassettes are won't
Speaker 1: know what MTV is, but f the audience will get it,
Speaker 1: that's right. So, um, we were putting together a bunch
Speaker 1: of different things for that filming of the health freezers
Speaker 1: over film, and Henley finally says about three days at
Speaker 1: the very end of Rehearsally says, we need an acoustic
Speaker 1: version of Hotel. Now. We have been playing this thing
Speaker 1: with electric guitars and distorted amps for years, right, and
Speaker 1: that's what everybody knew. And I thought, well, if we
Speaker 1: sit down with a couple of acoustic guitars and try
Speaker 1: to play, we're gonna sound like a couple of country
Speaker 1: bumpkins playing, you know, acoustic steel string guitar. So I
Speaker 1: had spent a lot of time sitting in a holiday
Speaker 1: inn in Cambridge Square playing nylon string guitar while people
Speaker 1: ate their dinner and ordered more wine from the later
Speaker 1: and stuff. I had developed some pretty good technique on
Speaker 1: acoustic guitar nylon string guitar. So I went home that
Speaker 1: night and I took out my nylon string guitar and
Speaker 1: I started playing around with it, and I go, okay,
Speaker 1: I've got to order tomorrow to acoustic nylon string guitars
Speaker 1: with pickups in them. Put one in Joe's hand, one
Speaker 1: in my hand. Here's how we start, would play it,
Speaker 1: and da da da da da, And so we just
Speaker 1: put it together at rehearsal one day. We rehearse it
Speaker 1: for two or three days. We get on the sound
Speaker 1: stage to record. I think there's like twelve or fourteen
Speaker 1: cameras rolling. There's an orchestra behind us, uh two recording
Speaker 1: trucks recording all the audio, and at sound check we
Speaker 1: do the song. It starts right at the beginning like
Speaker 1: it started on the chord. Don Hanley says, this song
Speaker 1: needs a special introduction. So I said, well, what are
Speaker 1: you going to say? How are you going to introduce this?
Speaker 1: He says, no, no, no, no, not talking introduction, and
Speaker 1: this needs a special musical introduction. I said, uh, okay,
Speaker 1: So I said, you guys, play a chord, I'll doodle around.
Speaker 1: When I stopped playing. You play another chord, this chord,
Speaker 1: I'll doodle around, third chord. I'll dool into a kind
Speaker 1: of a frantic arpeggio. And then when I finally hit
Speaker 1: the slow, retarded part of that arpeggio, you hit the
Speaker 1: final chord and we start the percussion. So, literally, sitting
Speaker 1: on the stage thirty minutes before we start taping, we
Speaker 1: run through this thing and I go, okay, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna make it up hope. I'm funny, you know, like
Speaker 1: all the jazz stuff that I learned in New York
Speaker 1: improvisation has become really important to me to be able
Speaker 1: to do that walk into a studio, plug in, makeup
Speaker 1: a solo. So anyway, we recorded that. We made two takes.
Speaker 1: We were filmed the show twice. The first take obviously
Speaker 1: was the best. The second one I did okay, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't as good, it wasn't as fresh. It just
Speaker 1: wasn't as exciting as the second one. So we chose
Speaker 1: the first take. And it's really the only song that
Speaker 1: I know that was the same record recorded by the
Speaker 1: same band that has been nominated two times for Grammys. Uh,
Speaker 1: quite the original and that one as well. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your new CD, American Rock and Roll.
Speaker 1: This reads like a Grammy Award list of of guest
Speaker 1: musicians Sammy Hagar, Bob we Are, Slash, Joe Satriani, Mick Fleetwood.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm missing lots and lots of other people.
Speaker 1: What what made you want to record a sort of
Speaker 1: supergroup c D Well, it didn't start out that way.
Speaker 1: Originally had the initial concept for this record based on
Speaker 1: the song American rock and Roll. I was at Woodstock
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. I saw Jimi Hendrix play live. I
Speaker 1: saw Crosby, Stills and Nash, I saw Santana, I saw
Speaker 1: Janis Joplin, I saw the Grateful Dead. Three days worth
Speaker 1: of just drenched, soaked your shorts, uh covered with mud,
Speaker 1: of probably the most historic rock and roll performances I
Speaker 1: think in the history of rock and roll music. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, that nuclear rock explosion that took
Speaker 1: place at Woodstock in nineteen sixty nine, the fallout from
Speaker 1: that event really succumference the entire world, and everybody was
Speaker 1: influenced and impacted by that. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: Slash is a huge Jimmy Hendricks fan. He cut his
Speaker 1: teeth learning Jimmy Jimmy Hendricks Licks and everybody that I
Speaker 1: invited him to play on this record, in one way
Speaker 1: or another, were influenced by the artist at Woodstock. So
Speaker 1: this song American rock and Roll is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a rock humnary musically, starting back in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine with Hendricks and all those guys from Woodstock, and
Speaker 1: through the decades, every one of the artists that has
Speaker 1: risen out of the ashes of woodstock and gone on
Speaker 1: to be huge artists themselves. Successful artists themselves. I thought
Speaker 1: was really a nice salute to the history of rock
Speaker 1: and roll. So who helped you put this album together?
Speaker 1: Who produced it? Tell tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: the backdrop for this. I have a studio in my home.
Speaker 1: I've had a studio since uh and I spend just
Speaker 1: about every single day in my studio when I'm home,
Speaker 1: not outlaying on my pool by my pool and Beverly Hills,
Speaker 1: but in my studio working. So um. I always doodle
Speaker 1: around with different ideas, whether it's driving down the four
Speaker 1: oh five and grabbing a cell phone and singing lyrics
Speaker 1: into a cell phone, or sitting on a plane with
Speaker 1: the laptop writing lyrics, or doodling around in the studio
Speaker 1: just plugging in a guitar and writing little parts, whatever
Speaker 1: it is. I'm just obsessed with music, and that's what
Speaker 1: I do. So um. The inspiration for this whole record
Speaker 1: was to be able to take these little bits and
Speaker 1: pieces and invite friends of mine into play on it.
Speaker 1: My last record, wrote it forever, I played everything on
Speaker 1: it except for one guy came in, Steve Luca there
Speaker 1: and played guitar on the title track, wrote it forever
Speaker 1: with me um and it really turned out beautifully well,
Speaker 1: but it was very controlled. There wasn't that inspiration in
Speaker 1: that fire and that energy that comes together when you're
Speaker 1: sitting in a room with Joe Satriani, who's an incredible player,
Speaker 1: and we're trading off licks and writing harmonies and just
Speaker 1: that excitement that's there. Or Peter Frampton and I play
Speaker 1: on an Alex Lives and Richie Sambora Oriental, the tons
Speaker 1: of great players. It just really got me excited. And
Speaker 1: there's a song on this record called Charmed, and it's
Speaker 1: about once you go through the success, the rise of success,
Speaker 1: and you have all the money and the fame and
Speaker 1: the adulation and private jets and cars and big houses,
Speaker 1: if the music doesn't have the passion, all that other
Speaker 1: stuff has lost its charm. It just doesn't. It's not
Speaker 1: worth it. And so to me, my original inspiration has
Speaker 1: always been the excitement and love of music, from the
Speaker 1: time I was doing till the time even today when
Speaker 1: I walk out on stage, I don't have to go
Speaker 1: out and play anything, but I love to be on
Speaker 1: stage playing for people. So all of these people that
Speaker 1: came in feel the same way. We didn't have to
Speaker 1: negotiate with managers and lawyers and all that stuff. I
Speaker 1: just call up Slash and say, hey, I got this
Speaker 1: song I'd love to have you play on. And he'd
Speaker 1: come in with a guitar and we'd sit down and
Speaker 1: jam on stuff and have a great time doing it.
Speaker 1: A couple of hours later, he's given me a hug,
Speaker 1: he's off and we're editing and putting stuff together that
Speaker 1: we recorded. Same thing with Uh Sammy Hagar on this
Speaker 1: I wrote this song called rock You. It's like a
Speaker 1: big stadium power rock star for Hagar, absolutely, and so
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do a raw duet with somebody
Speaker 1: that had that really strong rock and roll, gravelly voice.
Speaker 1: I called up Sammy and hey, I got this song
Speaker 1: I'd love to have you sing on. He said, sure,
Speaker 1: come on up to my studio. So I hop on
Speaker 1: a plane and fly up Sasolito with my little hard
Speaker 1: drive in my bag and go in and literally an
Speaker 1: hour later, he and I have sung a verse. He
Speaker 1: sings a verse, I sing a verse. We trade off
Speaker 1: on the choruses we do vocally, but just sharing the
Speaker 1: stage there on that song. So well, and Sammy was
Speaker 1: such the perfect person to play on that. Just as
Speaker 1: we're finishing, Joe Satriani comes walking down the hallway. He
Speaker 1: keeps his guitars and stuff in the back of Sammy studio.
Speaker 1: I said, Joe, go grab a guitar, come in here.
Speaker 1: I got something I want you to play on. So
Speaker 1: he comes in and I set up my guitar and
Speaker 1: we just, out of nowhere create this thing, much like
Speaker 1: I wanted to do with Joe, but we had to
Speaker 1: go back and reenact the exact demo perfectly. It's so
Speaker 1: much fun and excitement when you do it live right there,
Speaker 1: and Joe is an incredible player. Pushed me and I
Speaker 1: pushed him, and that's what it's all about. And then
Speaker 1: as we're finishing Opposatrion and Bob Weir has a studio
Speaker 1: about two blocks away. Come on, hea, Yeah, he comes
Speaker 1: over to just hang out and get a freak cup
Speaker 1: of coffee and hear a few jokes and I see him.
Speaker 1: I say, Bob, come here, go out on that mic
Speaker 1: and just saying rock you, which is the chorus, and
Speaker 1: I think we've got five or six Bob, We're singing
Speaker 1: on the chorus, but it all just fell together in
Speaker 1: such a sweet way. And the title track American rock
Speaker 1: and roll. I wanted it to start off sounding like
Speaker 1: the late sixties seventies. Mick Fleetwood has a way when
Speaker 1: he plays, he just sounds like Mick, and everybody so
Speaker 1: identifies with that feel in that era that he starts
Speaker 1: off the song playing drums, another another drummer. Vocalists, not
Speaker 1: a lot of them, and we worked with two of
Speaker 1: the best. Yeah, and about halfway through, Chad Smith from
Speaker 1: the Chili Peppers comes in, feeling like a five thousand
Speaker 1: pound gorilla on steroids. He plays so loud and so strong,
Speaker 1: and the track just kind of lifts up off the
Speaker 1: runway and takes off when he starts playing. But that's
Speaker 1: really the migration from like the sixty nine all the
Speaker 1: way through the decades, and when we started hitting the
Speaker 1: eighties and that more intense, you know, Chili Peppers, Fighters
Speaker 1: and the nineties kind of feel just kind of took over.
Speaker 1: I wanted the song musically to my great as well.
Speaker 1: So there's so many great people on this record. You know,
Speaker 1: Todd Suckerman from Sticks plays drums on a Jim Kilton
Speaker 1: or a couple of guys from Toto, David Page and
Speaker 1: I wrote a song called Hearts on Fire that he's
Speaker 1: just got this greasy keyboard player feel about him. Steve Carro,
Speaker 1: their keyboard players on it, Nathan East, who used to
Speaker 1: be Clapton's guitar player, and before that are bass guitar
Speaker 1: player Clapton's bass player, and then before that he was
Speaker 1: with me, and before me, I had stolen from Kenny Login.
Speaker 1: So he finally got to work with Clapton, and I
Speaker 1: don't have time to see him anymore anyway. The record
Speaker 1: was mixed by Bob clear Mountain. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you are an audio file, but Bob clear Mountain is
Speaker 1: probably the most high fi legendary mixer in record history,
Speaker 1: to tell you the truth. He mixed it for me
Speaker 1: and did an amazing job. There's a guy named Bernie
Speaker 1: Grunman who was a mastering engineer that Bob clear Mountain
Speaker 1: recommended that I use. So I go over to Bernie
Speaker 1: Greenman's mastering lab. This is oland, saclito or no, this
Speaker 1: is okay, And so Bernie calls one of his guys
Speaker 1: over whispers something in his ear, and the guy comes
Speaker 1: walking back in. He's got this big box of tape. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it actually turns out to be the original two
Speaker 1: track mastered version of Hotel California from nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: that Bernie mastered originally and has remastered for CD and
Speaker 1: remastered for vinyl release and remastered for the Greatest to it.
Speaker 1: So all the stuff, and so I'm sitting there holding
Speaker 1: this box. I've got a picture of it. I'll show
Speaker 1: you of me holding this box of the original master
Speaker 1: while he's mastering this record American. So this really was
Speaker 1: an opportunity to do what you couldn't do on Hotel California,
Speaker 1: which was jam with Joe Walsh, and instead you jammed
Speaker 1: with all these other people. That must have been very satisfied. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really was. It just expired inspiring. The other thing
Speaker 1: that's a little point side, noticed that Bernie Taupin did
Speaker 1: the artwork for the cover of it. That's his American
Speaker 1: John's song co writer. He's a brilliant artist. And my
Speaker 1: soft Stone was working Nashville at a party and I said,
Speaker 1: would you mind if I use one of those American
Speaker 1: flags for the cover of this album. Don't call American
Speaker 1: rock and roll. I know you're British, but you have
Speaker 1: had such an influence on American roll with you and
Speaker 1: bird are You and Elton, that I'd be honored. He
Speaker 1: absolutely let me have it, so that somebody on this
Speaker 1: record has an unbelievable pedigree, a great friendship. And uh
Speaker 1: did a wonderful job. You wrote the I almost forgot
Speaker 1: you wrote the theme song to Heavy Metal, didn't you.
Speaker 1: That's right the movie. I love that movie back in
Speaker 1: the day. As a matter of fact, that track was
Speaker 1: a track that I wrote for the Long Run record.
Speaker 1: It was going to be a follow up to Hotel California,
Speaker 1: where Joe and I would have been able to play
Speaker 1: these harder electric guitars, trading off in the harmonies and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And we just never got to the point.
Speaker 1: I think we left three or four bits and pieces
Speaker 1: unfinished in the studio and we just had to get
Speaker 1: out of the studio. We had a tour book, and
Speaker 1: we were right up to the deadline, running out of
Speaker 1: time before we had to finish, and we just said,
Speaker 1: we don't have time to finish these. So I got
Speaker 1: a call from a director who wanted me to come
Speaker 1: over and look at this animated movie. And I had
Speaker 1: never seen anything like this in my life. It was
Speaker 1: because there never was anything like that. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: It was like an animated adult stoner movie. And I went,
Speaker 1: what do I write to that? And I thought about
Speaker 1: that song that I had written that was tentatively entitled
Speaker 1: You're really High, I Aren't You? And I thought that
Speaker 1: would be in a perfect appropriate vibe that would go
Speaker 1: into that movie, and so I rewrote the lyrics, re
Speaker 1: recorded the track, and it turned out to be really
Speaker 1: a good successful track for me. So so before we
Speaker 1: talk about your book, I just have to throw some
Speaker 1: numbers out about some of the accolades and and records
Speaker 1: set by the Eagles. So the Greatest Hits Album comes
Speaker 1: out the same year as Hotel California, right within a
Speaker 1: couple of months of that. That goes on to be
Speaker 1: the best selling album of the twentieth century and the
Speaker 1: second best selling album of all time. The only reason
Speaker 1: it felt a number two is after Michael Jackson passed away,
Speaker 1: Thriller surged and it just slightly notched I want to
Speaker 1: say twenty nine million in the US, forty two or
Speaker 1: forty three million worldwide. Actually, the R I A A
Speaker 1: went back and they started analyzing all the screaming numbers
Speaker 1: and counting so many streams as a sale. And so
Speaker 1: now the number one's best selling album of all times
Speaker 1: is Greatest Hits Volume one. Eagles Greatest Hits Michael Jackson
Speaker 1: is at number two, and number three is Hotel California.
Speaker 1: So having two out of the three top selling albums
Speaker 1: of all time is okay, not bad. So the Eagles
Speaker 1: go through two periods. They they break They started in
Speaker 1: the early seventies, they break up early eighties, right, So
Speaker 1: decade is what are the Beatles last eight years? So
Speaker 1: ten twelve years is actually a pretty good run. What
Speaker 1: motivated everybody to get back together? Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: think Don Henley put together this U Salute to the
Speaker 1: Eagles recorded in Nashville by country artists. I recall Vince
Speaker 1: Gill and a number of other trips and a bunch
Speaker 1: of people are on it, and it did so well.
Speaker 1: It was a bit of an eye opener about the
Speaker 1: demand and appreciation for Eagles songs. So I I keep
Speaker 1: hearing that and I always want to call BS on
Speaker 1: it because Hotel California was a monster smash and the
Speaker 1: greatest It's sold a ton And if you remember what
Speaker 1: was it, late eighties, classic rock kinda takes over the
Speaker 1: air waves. Why wouldn't anybody think that there would be
Speaker 1: a demand for that? The boomers were aging, it was
Speaker 1: just you know, ready made to keep selling for the
Speaker 1: next few decades. Or is this just hindsight? No? No,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think that Hotel California was
Speaker 1: always there is kind of the shining star of the
Speaker 1: catalog that the Eagles put out, But I think the
Speaker 1: countryside of it when it came out with country artists
Speaker 1: doing it, it was completely different. It wasn't Eagles performing it.
Speaker 1: It was just an acknowledgement. It was called Common Threads
Speaker 1: and it was a great country record, right. The closest
Speaker 1: thing to that would be the dedicated album of all
Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead covers was not not much earlier than that.
Speaker 1: Is that about right? But it really just kind of
Speaker 1: brought to everyone's attention the viability of the possibility of
Speaker 1: a reunion. We had tried numerous times to get back
Speaker 1: together unsuccessfully before that, and why why there was one
Speaker 1: hold out? Wasn't there? It was Glenn Fry yet Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean both him and Don Henley had a fairly
Speaker 1: successful solo career and and Fry started doing TV and
Speaker 1: Miami Wis and movies. I think he liked his second
Speaker 1: act as a as a star. He did. He enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: and he was free of all the pressure and demands
Speaker 1: of having to follow up songs like Hotel California and
Speaker 1: make another album. The stress and difficulty of being in
Speaker 1: the studio after reaching the height of a successful song
Speaker 1: album like Hotel California was just intense. Uh. Glenn used
Speaker 1: to call it the hardening of the artistry. That's a
Speaker 1: dreaded disease, you know. That happened is when you have
Speaker 1: this huge success that you have to surpass anything is
Speaker 1: like a huge hit movie and you come out with sequels,
Speaker 1: it's always a little less than the original riot original movie,
Speaker 1: so Godfather Too being the only exception to that. Well, thanks,
Speaker 1: but you're right. I think that Common Threads record really
Speaker 1: kind of brought everybody back to going, you know, we
Speaker 1: should get together and see how this works. And so
Speaker 1: we went on to a shoot for Travis Trip for
Speaker 1: Take It Easy, the first time we had been in
Speaker 1: the same room together for fourteen years. That was a
Speaker 1: video done from the album for MTV. That's right for
Speaker 1: common threads, that's right. And we all played, we all
Speaker 1: hung out, we shot pooled together, we told jokes. It
Speaker 1: was it was like, hey, this is okay, we can
Speaker 1: do this. All the old bad water is under the bridge.
Speaker 1: And so we decided would get back together and do
Speaker 1: a tour and a new record and that MTV show
Speaker 1: that we've taped for MTV, and uh, it all started
Speaker 1: off really well. But as these things happened, they tend
Speaker 1: to It only is a matter of time before all
Speaker 1: the bad memories start coming back. Eventually, you leave the
Speaker 1: bands and you write a book, which is not what
Speaker 1: I typically think of when I think of Fingers Felder.
Speaker 1: So what made you decide? And by the way, the
Speaker 1: book isn't merely a throwaway. If you read the book,
Speaker 1: it's well written. It's clear you put some time and
Speaker 1: effort into this, didn't you. Well, I never started out
Speaker 1: to write a book. As a matter of fact, I
Speaker 1: failed ninth grade ninth grade English and had to spend
Speaker 1: the summer back in the same class in Gainesville and
Speaker 1: a hundred degree temperature where everybody else was going to
Speaker 1: the pool into the beach with the same English teacher
Speaker 1: that had failed me. To make it up so that
Speaker 1: I could go on into the tenth grade. So I
Speaker 1: didn't start out to try to write a book. I
Speaker 1: started out after I had left the band and also
Speaker 1: in the same twelve months had gone through a divorce
Speaker 1: and separation from my wife. That everything that I knew
Speaker 1: that I had built up to that point in my
Speaker 1: life had been taken away. My fatherhood, my wife, my home,
Speaker 1: my family, my job, my celebrity, my association with the Eagles,
Speaker 1: it was all gone. And so I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever thrown pots, but when you sit down on
Speaker 1: a wheel to throw a pot, you have to take
Speaker 1: a piece of clay and throw it in the middle
Speaker 1: of this wheel, and then you have to center it
Speaker 1: by leaning into it. And if it's a little bit
Speaker 1: off center, as you try to make something, it goes
Speaker 1: more and more and more out around as you go up.
Speaker 1: So I needed to recenter myself in my life to
Speaker 1: get a clear understanding of what had happened to me
Speaker 1: to where I was today, and so that I could
Speaker 1: go forward, not out of round. I could recenter myself
Speaker 1: and go forward with a clear understanding and kind of
Speaker 1: shed a lot of that baggage. So I started doing
Speaker 1: these morning meditations every morning at about five thirty in
Speaker 1: the morning, when it was really quiet and still. I'd
Speaker 1: met a tape for about fifteen minutes on specific areas
Speaker 1: of my life. And as I came out of those meditations,
Speaker 1: I would write them down on legal pads, just Philip
Speaker 1: three four five pages of memories from that time. I
Speaker 1: started filling up these piles of legal pads after a
Speaker 1: couple of months, and my um fiance at the time
Speaker 1: went in unbeknownst to me, and started reading these things
Speaker 1: and said one day, you know, this would make great book.
Speaker 1: I went, I can't write a book. She said, no, no,
Speaker 1: these are these are no I'd never written anything. No. No.
Speaker 1: When you when she was saying to you, this would
Speaker 1: make a great book, you said I couldn't. I can't
Speaker 1: write a book, Car responses, effectively, you already did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. She said, these stories are great. This, this
Speaker 1: is fantastic. So she introduced me to a guy named
Speaker 1: Michael Ovits, who at the time was was a big
Speaker 1: hitter right right, and he had a literary department and
Speaker 1: a television production department in a film department blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Managed Leo DiCaprio, and these different things they had going
Speaker 1: on in this new company. So I went to him,
Speaker 1: and after talking to him for about five minutes, just
Speaker 1: describing some of the stories that I had written, he said,
Speaker 1: you go to my office tomorrow and ask for the
Speaker 1: head of the literary department there and he'll take care
Speaker 1: of it. So I go in. I don't even have
Speaker 1: a book, I don't have anything in writing except my
Speaker 1: hands scribbled notes on legal pads. So I meet with
Speaker 1: this guy, tell him some of the stories and some
Speaker 1: of the thoughts and stuff I had had and how
Speaker 1: this came about. The week later, we're on a flight
Speaker 1: from l A to New York to meet with five
Speaker 1: publishing companies. And when we get back on the plane,
Speaker 1: by the time we land back in l A, we
Speaker 1: have five offers for me to write a book. And
Speaker 1: I had never been so petrified my life about how
Speaker 1: to take these chicken scrawls of my memories and turn
Speaker 1: him into a real book. So, with the help of
Speaker 1: a co editor and co writer, Wendy Holden, and the
Speaker 1: publishers editor themselves, we went through all this. I started
Speaker 1: transcribing my memories, my meditations onto tape, and then that
Speaker 1: was transcribed into keyboard writing onto a word document so
Speaker 1: I could look at it and edit it and stuff,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't writing it all out by hand. And
Speaker 1: it turned out that we finally got to a point
Speaker 1: where we wanted to publish it, and I had to
Speaker 1: put together a bunch of pictures in it, and the
Speaker 1: next thing I know, I'm an author. I come to
Speaker 1: New York a couple of weeks after that and release
Speaker 1: of the book. I'm sitting in a friends apartment and
Speaker 1: I'm looking on Amazon to see where my book is,
Speaker 1: and it's like a hundred and twenty eight or something
Speaker 1: on the rock bios. I go in that morning at
Speaker 1: like six am or something to be on Howard Stern Show.
Speaker 1: I've seen those clips. They're quite amusing, and we had
Speaker 1: a great time. I think I played Hotel California and
Speaker 1: head him and everybody in the in the room saying
Speaker 1: a Hotel California with me. And I go back to
Speaker 1: my apartment when I'm done, and I go to Google
Speaker 1: Amazon to see where my book is and it's number one, sure,
Speaker 1: And the following week that actually went on the New
Speaker 1: York Times Bestseller's list. Like that, the power of Howard
Speaker 1: was just unbelievable. So here's the question for you. There
Speaker 1: was all sorts of interesting responses to the book. What's
Speaker 1: the most vivid pushback that that stands out in your
Speaker 1: mind to to what you had actually written? You know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people thought that I was
Speaker 1: actually going out to like slam the guys in the
Speaker 1: band and reveal a bunch of dirty inside. Really wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot of dirty. No pun intended dirty laundry, and
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, I deliberately left all of that aside.
Speaker 1: I did not want to come out angry, bitter, retaliatory
Speaker 1: in anyway. I have the highest respect for the work
Speaker 1: and the art we made together, and I really like
Speaker 1: to cherish that and keep that in a very positive light.
Speaker 1: Despite all the arguments and you know, stress of having
Speaker 1: to create something a past Hotel California and all of
Speaker 1: that tension, the ultimate outcome of the whole thing has
Speaker 1: been phenomenal. What we went through to produce those records
Speaker 1: was well worth the effort in time and hassle. So
Speaker 1: I held that in the highest and still do held
Speaker 1: that in the highest regard, and would never slander that
Speaker 1: or slander the people so it was really as as
Speaker 1: unbiased as I could be, and as that comes across
Speaker 1: in the book, Yeah, just honest and unbiased and truthful
Speaker 1: about what And some people will go, oh, you just
Speaker 1: want to make these guys look bad, and I went, no,
Speaker 1: that wasn't the intent at all, And to be fair, Subsequently,
Speaker 1: the the Eagles do this two part documentary and that's
Speaker 1: completely unvarnished, warts and all. In fact, your buddy Joe
Speaker 1: Wolf said, after he saw some of the honest things
Speaker 1: that Glenn Fry said, he went back and said, oh,
Speaker 1: I could be a little more honest also right, fairly, fairly,
Speaker 1: completely transparent and unvarnished. Well, I didn't see anything anyone
Speaker 1: said until I was asked to go in, and at
Speaker 1: one time I thought, well, maybe I don't want to
Speaker 1: be part of this. But then I thought, well, if
Speaker 1: I went in and I was just telling the honest truth,
Speaker 1: much like I had told him my book, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to use an opportunity to punch somebody in the nose,
Speaker 1: but just be respectful of what we had done together.
Speaker 1: Uh that I thought, Okay, I'll go into it. So
Speaker 1: I didn't even get to see the footage that I
Speaker 1: was in before they put it in the film, much
Speaker 1: less see anything else that anybody had said. The only
Speaker 1: regret that I have about that documentary was that the
Speaker 1: only two people that were had any history, which it
Speaker 1: was the history of the Eagles prior to the Eagles
Speaker 1: forming was Don Henley and Glenn Fry. Now Randy Meisner
Speaker 1: was in much bigger bands before done Henley and Poco.
Speaker 1: He worked with the Stone Canyon Ban, Rick Nelson, Stone
Speaker 1: Canyon Ban, He did a lot of touring. I think
Speaker 1: he was with a lot of other bands other than
Speaker 1: the Eagles prior to the Eagles, and had a lot
Speaker 1: of success doing it. And yet there was no mention
Speaker 1: of his prior history, no mention of my history and
Speaker 1: the people I had worked with in Gainesville and grew
Speaker 1: up with, and all of that stuff that led to
Speaker 1: the whole Eagles being who and what they are. So
Speaker 1: I thought it was a little bit more like the
Speaker 1: history of Don and Glenn versus the history of the Eagles.
Speaker 1: But but all told, I think everybody was pretty satisfied
Speaker 1: with how it came out. Yeah, I enjoyed it. We
Speaker 1: have been speaking with Don fingers Felder, lead guitarist for
Speaker 1: the Eagles, and all sorts of other musical ventures. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, we'll be sure and stick around
Speaker 1: for the podcast extra when we keep the tape rolling
Speaker 1: and continue discussing all things music related. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my daily
Speaker 1: column on Bloomberg dot com slash opinion. Follow me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Are at rid Holts. I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Don thank you so much for doing this. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: my a fan of your work for a long time,
Speaker 1: and I'm really intrigued by some of these stories that
Speaker 1: you don't hear all that often. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of questions I didn't get to that I have to
Speaker 1: ask before I get to my standard questions we ask
Speaker 1: all our guests. So what you mentioned a couple of
Speaker 1: people who played on the new album. Let me ask
Speaker 1: you this. Who are the guitarists that you admire? And
Speaker 1: why I like players that actually right sing and perform
Speaker 1: their own songs. Okay, to have a triple threat, which
Speaker 1: is what everybody in the Eagles did to me, is
Speaker 1: the highest level of development and the highest of artistry.
Speaker 1: If you look at people like John Mayer, to me,
Speaker 1: I knew you're going to go there, because he's the
Speaker 1: modern day Eric Clapp. He can write really well, he
Speaker 1: sings really well, he plays really well. He's like the
Speaker 1: whole package. He will have a career that spans decades.
Speaker 1: He's not like a great singer that has to find
Speaker 1: a great guitar player to play a solo or a
Speaker 1: songwriter to write him a song, or he self contained.
Speaker 1: Alicia Keys is the same way to me. Um, so
Speaker 1: I like and admire players that really carry the whole um,
Speaker 1: the whole triple threat to tell you the truth and
Speaker 1: um what about you know, after you do show after show,
Speaker 1: night after night, I'm sure they all kind of blur together.
Speaker 1: Any gigs stand out as unique or special, weather it's
Speaker 1: solo with the band, Any particular performances stand out in
Speaker 1: your mind as wow, that was really a special show.
Speaker 1: Couple of things. One we did right after I joined
Speaker 1: the band. I think Joe Walsh wasn't in the band.
Speaker 1: He was on the show. Bernie Ladman was still in
Speaker 1: the band. We played a show in Wimbley Stadium in England.
Speaker 1: Giant Right Elton John was headlining, uh and I think
Speaker 1: there were four or five other bands on the show
Speaker 1: as well, But it was for a hundred and ten
Speaker 1: or a hundred and twenty thousand people. And if you've
Speaker 1: ever been to a baseball field and you watch somebody
Speaker 1: strike a baseball and then you hear the delay a
Speaker 1: second or two later, the further way you are, you
Speaker 1: really get to appreciate the distance and the speed of sound.
Speaker 1: So when we were standing on this stage and people
Speaker 1: were jumping up and down, you could see this wave
Speaker 1: of jumps across the floor of Wimbley, and Wimbley's got
Speaker 1: these overhanging kind of like terraces that hang out over
Speaker 1: the round the stadium there they're actually going up and down. Structurally,
Speaker 1: I hope they were engineered to carry that kind of weight,
Speaker 1: but it was just a phenomenon to be able to
Speaker 1: witness the speed of sound at a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand people in one room. The other thing is like
Speaker 1: I had to walk in and sing and play at
Speaker 1: six am, which is three am in Pacific time, the
Speaker 1: Howard Stern Show. I've done thousands of radio interviews, thousands
Speaker 1: of TV interviews, and I have never been as scared
Speaker 1: as I was walking into Howard Sterns radio show, because
Speaker 1: in those days, if he didn't like you, he just
Speaker 1: went straight for the goods, you know, and absolutely and
Speaker 1: I just went in, you know, with my fingers crossed
Speaker 1: and hoped. So I think that might have been one
Speaker 1: of the performances that I was really petrified to step
Speaker 1: in and play. But it ended up turning out great,
Speaker 1: and it catapulted the book to the top of the
Speaker 1: bestseller Howard was great kind to me. Really. He and
Speaker 1: Joe had spent a lot of time together before, in
Speaker 1: Joe's pre sober time, and uh so he knew from
Speaker 1: Joe that we had had a great relationship. If you
Speaker 1: want to repay the favor, he's got a new book
Speaker 1: coming out and he's starting to do the circuit, so
Speaker 1: you can bust his chops or or tell somebody else
Speaker 1: to bust his chops when he comes in begging for
Speaker 1: some for some publicity. Um, I think this is first
Speaker 1: book in like a decade, so he's really trying to
Speaker 1: trying to push it. So let me get to my
Speaker 1: favorite questions. I asked these of all my guests more
Speaker 1: or less. Um, let's let's plow through these. What was
Speaker 1: the first car you ever owned? Your making model? I
Speaker 1: think it was a sixty one sixty year sixty one
Speaker 1: Simca for Simca, That's exactly what I said. My older brother,
Speaker 1: who was just a brilliant academic in high school, got
Speaker 1: a scholarship to the University of Florida, got a scholarship
Speaker 1: to law school. Was like one of those five point
Speaker 1: nine g p A uh students. Uh. He got like
Speaker 1: a Chevrolet convertible, like a fifty seven Chevrolet convertible, beautiful
Speaker 1: car and a dual exhaust. And I got to wash
Speaker 1: it on Saturday if you give me a ride to
Speaker 1: teen time dance or something that night, you know, because
Speaker 1: I was still riding a bike anyway. So my dad
Speaker 1: decided he was going to go over to Jacksonville where
Speaker 1: there were all these car lots, and who was a mechanic.
Speaker 1: So he comes back driving back into the front yard
Speaker 1: the Simca. And I had never seen or heard anything
Speaker 1: like this. It was like a made by Citron or
Speaker 1: some French company. And I wanted to say, where's my
Speaker 1: fifty seven Chevy convertible, you know, But I was the
Speaker 1: kind of black sheep of the family. So I got
Speaker 1: the simca, what's the most important thing people don't know
Speaker 1: about you? Wow? Um that most people expect me to
Speaker 1: be a certain type of cliche rock star. You are
Speaker 1: not sure, not just a totally chill dude. You are
Speaker 1: not a cliche at all. Yeah, I think I'm surprisingly normal.
Speaker 1: The black leather coat and the boots are the closest
Speaker 1: thing to the rock star vibe, only because I was
Speaker 1: doing TV in there with sweats and you know, a
Speaker 1: T shirt and flip flops on. So but um, I
Speaker 1: do think people kind of jumped to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: what they see in typical rock personalities is part of me,
Speaker 1: and that's so not the case. So who were some
Speaker 1: of your early musical mentors you You mentioned Dwyane Allman
Speaker 1: and Elvis Presley who helped shape your worldview of music.
Speaker 1: You know, I learned and studied everything I could steal
Speaker 1: anybody that could play really well. I was fascinated by
Speaker 1: learning how they did at chat. Atkins was a huge
Speaker 1: influence on me. Bb King was a you. Albert King
Speaker 1: was a huge influence. A matter of fact, I think
Speaker 1: I have to acknowledge that Chad Atkins is the reason
Speaker 1: I wound up playing that double neck, and the reason
Speaker 1: was on Hotel Californ Hotel California. Um, my dad had
Speaker 1: been trying to learn thought that was Jimmy Page. I
Speaker 1: had no idea you're going to go with. I had
Speaker 1: been trying to learn a lot of chet Atkins things. Now.
Speaker 1: Chet has a special way of playing where he takes
Speaker 1: the low three strings and he plays much like the
Speaker 1: left hand of a ragtime piano on the low strings
Speaker 1: right and on the top three strings he plays the
Speaker 1: melody much like the right hand of a piano. So
Speaker 1: he's able to accompany himself and play a melody at
Speaker 1: the same time, which I found technically fascinating. And at
Speaker 1: fourteen I was trying to figure out how he did
Speaker 1: all this stuff. So my dad took me over to
Speaker 1: Daytona Beach and he played in the small like little
Speaker 1: Daytona Beach Civic Auditorium, and he had taken a guitar
Speaker 1: and he had wired it so that the low three
Speaker 1: strings went out of one pickup and went into a
Speaker 1: amplifier on one side of the stage. The top three
Speaker 1: strings went out of another output into another amplifier. On
Speaker 1: the other side of the stage, and when he played
Speaker 1: these things, First of all, it was the first time
Speaker 1: I had really heard stereo live. But secondly, he played
Speaker 1: this thing that he said, you know, the bloodiest war
Speaker 1: we had in America that caused the most American lives
Speaker 1: was the Civil War, Americans killing Americans, and I want
Speaker 1: to be able to heal those wounds. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to play the two themes. So he started playing don't don't, don't,
Speaker 1: don't do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do,
Speaker 1: Yankee Doodle Dandy on the low, three strangers coming out
Speaker 1: of one amplifier. Then he stopped and said, I'm going
Speaker 1: to play the theme of the South, and he started
Speaker 1: playing Dixie came out of the other amplifier, and he says,
Speaker 1: in order to unite these two spirits, I'm going to
Speaker 1: play them both at the same time. And he played
Speaker 1: both songs simultaneously, coming out of two different amplifiers, and
Speaker 1: the top of my head just exploded. How can he
Speaker 1: technically do that? And instrumentally how does he have So
Speaker 1: we stayed right where Chet went back and got a case,
Speaker 1: opened it up, packed up his own guitar. There was
Speaker 1: no road crew or roadie or anything, and he walked
Speaker 1: off the front of the stage and there were steps
Speaker 1: that came down. He was just gonna walk out of
Speaker 1: the front of the hall. My dad and I stayed
Speaker 1: there and I said, how did you do that? And
Speaker 1: he described how he had wired and split his pick
Speaker 1: up so he could do that. So when I got
Speaker 1: on the sound stage after recording all these guitar tracks
Speaker 1: in the studio to figure out how I was going
Speaker 1: to play that song live, I sent a ROADI out
Speaker 1: to buy the guitar and I rewired it. So it's
Speaker 1: literally two different guitars. One is a twelve string guitar
Speaker 1: that when the switches up, it goes out of one
Speaker 1: outputting into a Leslie amplifier, sounds just like the record.
Speaker 1: You flip it down to the other neck, it goes
Speaker 1: out of another output and threw a pedal board into
Speaker 1: an amp, and you got all that rock and roll
Speaker 1: electric guitar. So he not only influenced me in the
Speaker 1: playing and technical ability, but the concept of being able
Speaker 1: to do something as electronically technical as splitting the guitar
Speaker 1: into stereo, which really is the reason I had to
Speaker 1: wear that white double neck every night, quite quite fascinating.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about books. What what are some of your
Speaker 1: favorite books. You're on the road a lot. What do
Speaker 1: you like to read? What? What sort of stuff do
Speaker 1: you enjoy? Do you read books or listen to books
Speaker 1: or podcasts? What? What do you do to keep busy
Speaker 1: when you're traveling. I like to read. A matter of
Speaker 1: fact that I've got a great story. When my wife
Speaker 1: was working at Harvard Square. She was a search assistant
Speaker 1: research secretary for guys who were writing thesism books at Harvard.
Speaker 1: So I used to take a train over there when
Speaker 1: I got out of the studio, and I'd sit in
Speaker 1: this coffee shop and I was reading this book called
Speaker 1: written by Pdo Spinsky, call in Search of the Miraculous.
Speaker 1: And I was always I think I have always been
Speaker 1: and searched the miraculous in my life. So I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there reading this this guy comes down and sits down
Speaker 1: at older gentleman sits down and next to me. He
Speaker 1: looks at me, he goes, what are you reading? And
Speaker 1: I go, well, this book about this guy in Search
Speaker 1: of the Miraculous, and he was doing experiments with music
Speaker 1: where he would play different types of music and tonalities,
Speaker 1: Egyptian music, half town music, hold town music, Eastern, Western, Southern,
Speaker 1: to see what influence and how we responded musically and
Speaker 1: personally to certain frequency oscillations. And it was just fascinating
Speaker 1: to me. And I started explaining to this guy. He said,
Speaker 1: are you a student here at Harvard? No, I'm just
Speaker 1: a musician. He said, would you be interested in going
Speaker 1: to school here? And I went, no, I'm studying music.
Speaker 1: I'm a musician. I don't want to go study at Harvard.
Speaker 1: So I had the opportunity not only to be a
Speaker 1: teacher at Berkeley, but because I was reading that book
Speaker 1: he was he was a professor at Harvard, and he
Speaker 1: was going to get me out as a student, just
Speaker 1: because I was so obsessed with trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: read and learn stuff. So what do you do today
Speaker 1: for fun? What do you do when you're not in
Speaker 1: the recording studio? Well, I used to play golf a lot.
Speaker 1: I was a seven handicap and I loved playing golf
Speaker 1: when I have the time. But over the last five years,
Speaker 1: my life has just gotten so full of writing, recording, producing, touring, promotion,
Speaker 1: everything that my golf game has really suffered dramatically I'm
Speaker 1: up to a twelve handy happen. There's moments where you
Speaker 1: see the old seven show up, and then there's moments
Speaker 1: of twelve and fourteen, which are you know, not quite
Speaker 1: quite as welcomed into my golf game. So what sort
Speaker 1: of advice would you give a millennial or recent college
Speaker 1: grad who was interested in a career in music. You know,
Speaker 1: if it's something you're not absolutely obsessed with for the
Speaker 1: love of doing that, don't do it for the money.
Speaker 1: Don't do it because you think you're going to become
Speaker 1: rich and famous, and you know, uh, overtake the world,
Speaker 1: because at the end of the road, when you look
Speaker 1: back at your life, if you have not lived a fulfilling, loving, challenging,
Speaker 1: passionate life doing what you want to do, then you've
Speaker 1: lived your life wrong. You'll you'll have regrets that you
Speaker 1: It's not the number of zeros that you have on
Speaker 1: the end of your bank account number it to me,
Speaker 1: it's how much thrill and passion and excitement you had
Speaker 1: in your life while you were here doing what you
Speaker 1: chose institute, and our final question, what do you know
Speaker 1: about the music industry today that you wish you knew
Speaker 1: back in the early seventies when you were first starting out, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I became kind of self educated about the
Speaker 1: music business. I my brother was a lawyer, like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, and I really wanted to know how it worked,
Speaker 1: everything from accounting. I took accounting classes so I could
Speaker 1: read a general ledger. I got involved with overseeing a
Speaker 1: lot of the investments my business managers were doing, because
Speaker 1: so many artists wind up, you know, starting out rich
Speaker 1: and for bad business investments, wind up not being so rich,
Speaker 1: you know, just being ripped off. Its legend I was.
Speaker 1: I refused to let anybody put out a check out
Speaker 1: of my account more than five thousand dollars and list
Speaker 1: I sign it today it's a matter of fact. So
Speaker 1: you know, I just stay really keeping a close eye
Speaker 1: on the business side of it as well as I'm
Speaker 1: sort of self managed today. I mean I have management,
Speaker 1: but I literally look at every contract that goes in
Speaker 1: and out for show performances. We run spreadsheets to see
Speaker 1: what the gross is going to be, what the costs
Speaker 1: are going to be, what the net's going to be.
Speaker 1: Is this worth doing and going and doing and just
Speaker 1: really involved in the business side of the music business.
Speaker 1: Every document I signed, whether it's a publishing deal for
Speaker 1: for um my book or a new recording contract with BMG.
Speaker 1: Who's a great record label right now? Who my new
Speaker 1: record is on American rock and roll Great. I look
Speaker 1: at every contract, discussed it with my lawyers, go over it.
Speaker 1: And if you go through life with your eyes closed,
Speaker 1: you are just a turkey waiting to be shot. True
Speaker 1: true words were never spoken. We have been speaking with
Speaker 1: legendary guitarists and musician Don Felder. If you enjoy this conversation,
Speaker 1: well look up and entered down an inch on Apple
Speaker 1: iTunes and you can see any of the other nearly
Speaker 1: two d and fifty such chats we've had over the
Speaker 1: past five years. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions.
Speaker 1: Write to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1: Give us a review on Apple iTunes. I would be
Speaker 1: remiss if I did not thank the crack staff that
Speaker 1: helps put this conversation together each week. Um Medina Parwana
Speaker 1: is my engineer slash producer. Michael Boyle is our booker.
Speaker 1: Michael Batnick is my head of research. Anatica Val Brunn
Speaker 1: is our project director. I'm Barry Retolts. You've been listening
Speaker 1: to Master's business on Bloomberg Radio