A Short Run To the Top
Axe Magazine, 1980
David Gans

It seemed as though Don Felder came from nowhere to join The Eagles during the recording of  On The Border  (he is listed with the band members as a "late arrival"), but that could hardly be further from the truth. The 32-year old guitarist has been studying music and recording and paying dues since he was a youth in Gainesville, Florida, where he was born.

"I traded a handful of cherry bombs to the kid across the street for a horrible acoustic that was full of holes," he says of his first guitar. "I was around 11, and everybody on the block was playing the guitar. I conned another kid out of his guitar somehow. I had a lot of different guitars when I was a kid." Early Elvis Presley tunes were big on Felder’s block.  When his father bought one of the first stereo tape recorders with sound-on-sound capability, young Don jumped right into overdubbing and soon became fascinated with the processes of recording and songwriting. Like most teenagers, he played in bands, but he also spent a lot of time working with the tape recorder, becoming proficient at organizing his ideas and getting them on tape.

One of his bantams in the Continentals, which he joined at the age of 15, was Stephen Stills. "We played junior high schools, the usual stuff," recalls Felder. "We were pretty successful, considering that we were all teenagers lying about our ages." When Stills left the Continentals, he was replaced by Bernie Leadon, who came from California with some hot bluegrass licks. "I wanted to learn his country stuff, and Bernie had never played electric guitar," says Felder, "So we traded lessons." The band evolved into the Maundy Quintet, which played on the same Southeast circuit with bands which became the Allman Brothers and Mudcrutch (later Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). Felder taught guitar to Tom Petty and did arrangements for Mudcrutch.

"The Cyrkle came through town when they had their single, ‘Red Rubber Ball,’" Felder says, "and we opened for them. ?Their manager took us to New York to play club gigs.  "Our drummer took the exam to leave ninth grade before the end of the school year and we went, but he got homesick pretty quick. We went back to Florida and broke up." Leadon went to the West Coast, and Felder went right back to New York with a jazz-rock band called Flow, which recorded one album for CTI Records.

Although Bernie Leadon kept in touch and continued to urge Felder to go west, Don saw New York as a place where he could learn all the things he wanted to know about the recording business. "I had to develop a lot of styles to get by," he says. "Frat-rock, jazz, Top 40, country--and I picked up a little pedal steel, classical guitar and so on.

"Then I moved to Boston and got a job in a recording studio, learning how to make records and be an engineer. Bernie kept calling me and saying, ‘Come to LA--there’s tons of work out here!" But I had contact with West Coast acts that came through town, and I was writing, playing and learning. It was two solid years of woodshedding. I made practically no money, but I stayed busy all day and all night. I worked at the studio all day, then I’d play rhythm and blues from 9 to 2. I played and played and played.

When The Eagles came through on their first tour, Felder met the rest of the band and jammed with Leadon backstage. "I played slide guitar," Felder recalls. "Glenn Frey freaked out and invited me to LA to work on sessions."

Felder finally made the move to Los Angeles in 1972. He was hired to play guitar on a David Blue album which was being produced by Graham Nash. Blue had never toured wit ha full band, so when the record was completed, Felder was asked to stay on and put together the tour. "We opened for Crosby and Nash for about nine months," he says.

Nash asked Felder to play guitar on his solo tour. "I was getting ready to out with Graham when The eagles called me to come in and add some slide guitar to ‘Good Day in Hell.’ I did the session and the next day they asked me to join the band." Needless to say, he backed out of the Nash tour and accepted the eagles’ offer.

"I felt as though I’d joined a band that was breaking up," he says. "Bernie was going to quit, Randy was quitting, and everybody was really pissed off.

"Those were hostile times," he says. "We argue about things sometimes even now, but there’s a lot more respect for the individuals." There were quarrels over the band’s direction --country versus rock, it seems--and Felder was brought in to play "hot rod" guitar. Leadon wasn’t rock and roll enough for some of the band’s material, and Frey’s playing was still a little too basic to cover the necessary ground. "They wanted the record to be a little more rock and roll," says Felder.

As the grumbling from Leadon and Meisner continued, Felder began jamming with Joe Walsh, another client of producer Szymczyk. "Joe came around to smoke joints and jam after sessions," says Don. " He told me, ‘If Bernie ever quits, I’d join you guys in a second.’"

The Eagles started rehearsing Walsh when Leadon didn’t show up for a flight to a gig. Felder worked with Joe on a live album  (You Can’t Argue With a Sick Mind) and a television show. "That was Joe’s audition, in a way," says Felder. "It turned out that not only is he a great player, but he’s a positive, humorous, great guy.

People said it’d never work, that Walsh was too heavy-metal, but he backed way off and let me write and arrange. It just worked out great--we gave each other plenty of room."

The guitar duo of Joe Walsh and Don Felder is the most impressive symbiosis since Dickey Betts and the late Duane Allman. Felder and Walsh make up in breathtaking tightness and dynamics what they lack in spontaneity. The Eagles’ performances are meant to sound as much like their records as possible, and to that end each guitarist takes literally dozens of instruments on tour. I concert, Felder and Walsh often stand inches apart, leaning into their mutual work as if to connect their minds. When they played "The Long Run" at the Oakland Coliseum in March, they were joined by saxophonist David Sanborn. The three men played together with the guitarists doing perfectly-synchronized slide guitar chords, as rich as a Bob Wills swing string section, with Walsh hand Felder doing vibratos in perfect phase and Sanborn riding along in between the Les Pauls.

The Eagles are the epitome of the big-time rock band--they invent themselves anew in the studio each time they record an album, and they tour expensively and elaborately. Everything Don Felder has learned over the years comes into play--guitar styles, studio wizardry and attention to detail--in the eagles thoroughly professional attitude.

How many guitars do you have on the road?

I really don’t know, to tell you the truth. A roadie could look at the insurance forms and tell you, I guess.

The reason we take so many guitars is that we want the live performances to sound like the records. I use a different guitar-and amplifier combination for almost everything in the studio, so I have to take a lot of guitars out on the road.

How many amplifiers do you tour with?

(Laughs) Only three-a Marshall with a preamp, and two Fender Tweed Deluxes which are set behind the stage and miked.

I use a lot of stereo guitars with a Boss Chorus and stereo pan for a good spread. Our stage setup is designed around the monitors--we have to be able to hear the vocals, and we don’t need a lot of loud amplifiers. The quietest place in the arena at an Eagles show is probably right there on stage.

We keep it around studio listening levels. I fact, we monitor at pretty low levels in the studio, too. We use JBL 4311s, not those huge, loud speakers. But I do won around 25 amplifiers.

Why so many of everything?

I’ve found that there are subtle differences between virtually identical guitars. I often double track a guitar line using a different guitar. Playing a part again on a similar but different guitar--if you can do it exactly enough, without any flams--gives you a meatier, not a busier, sound.

We doubled the drums on "Heartache Tonight" for the same reason. Don Henley went in there with a big bass drum and doubled the kicks. That track has a lot of presence because of that.

How do you choose your guitars?

It’s very simple. If you pick up a guitar and tune it and it stays in tune, you buy it. No matter how good the sound and the action are, if the intonation isn’t good, the guitar isn’t good.

The Eagles work on our guitars a lot. When we get back from a tour, our guitars are delivered directly to a guy we know, who checks them all out, and makes any necessary repairs to the frets, electronics, intonation, and so forth. He also knows a lot of tricks. He thinned the top of a Martin D-35 of mine, around a ‘63 or ‘64, so it "speaks" just beautifully, better than even an old Martin. It is the Eagles main acoustic guitar. Glenn, Joe and I all play it at various times.

Do you have a favorite electric guitar?

The ‘59 Les Paul Sunburst, of course. That’s the one I sit around and tinker with.

Do you have any custom built guitars?

I’m having one built by Mark Erlweine, also in Texas. He’s making me a six-and twelve string double-neck guitar with left-handed necks, out of flamed maple and with a sunburst finish

Why left-handed?

For the same reason Jimi Hendrix always played right-handed necks strung upside-down. With the bass strings anchored farther back from the nut, you can really bend them beautifully.

Do you have an ultimate guitar in mind?

No, it’s too diverse--you can’t get everything in one guitar  If you’re still inspired by a guitar after having it for nine years, then it’s a good guitar.

What instrument was used to produce that bizarre solo near the end of "Teenage Jail"?

That was a guitar, a Les Paul with a flanger, and echoplex, an Ibenex chorus--mono--and a tweed Deluxe cranked up. It was recorded on two tracks, which is a trick we use a lot: one mike is placed close to the speaker as usual, and another mike is set back in the room to get that fat room sound. You can then crossfade between the room track and the tight-miked track.

We recorded the acoustic, 12-string line in "Hotel California" on three tracks. There was a regular mike on the acoustic as usual, and we ran a pickup--Takemine 12s have great pickup--to an amp and split the output of a stereo Leslie left and right. It’s like you’re inside a 12-string guitar when you listen to that on headphones.

"Hotel California" is one of my all-time favorite tracks. The composition, performances and recording values are truly great, to my mind. Tell me more about the recording of that song.

We actually recorded the basic three times. I wrote it at home on my Teac four-track, and I did all the guitar lines and the melody and presented it to the band. I was written in e-minor, but as Don and Glenn and I worked on the lyrics and the vocal arrangement, it turned out we needed it to be in B-minor. We recut the basic twice in B-minor which is a terrible key to play guitar in. It took us ten or twelve days just to get the basic tracks together.

How long does it usually take to record an Eagles basic?

A lot of them are actually recorded live in a couple of days. "Victim of Love" was actually recorded as a five-piece stereo basic. Szymczyk inscribed, "VOL is five piece live" on the end-band of that side of  Hotel California  Look on your copy!

What about the guitar duel on "Hotel"? How long did that part take?

We worked on that for about three days

Don’t you and Walsh work out the parts ahead of time?

We really prefer to create in the studio. Szymczyk is a genius at combining takes. We’ll do eight or nine passes on a solo, then he’ll take three bars from one, a bar and a half from another, and so on. Then we’ll either keep the compiled track or learn it from the tape and cut it again.

Glenn has written some great guitar licks just by singing parts to us.

Do you ever sing any lead vocals?

When Joe is singing, I have to carry about 75 percent of the guitar load. And besides, I’m in a band with four great singers, so I’m content to do harmonies.

I was going to sing "Those Shoes", but we realized that I couldn’t do it in the concerts because I have to play the guitar. So Don sings it.

What are you doing until The Eagles go back to work?

I’ve been working with Joe on his solo album, and I’ve been helping Chicago out on guitar since Donnie Dacus split. I worked on an album Mickey Thomas of the Jefferson Starship has been doing with Bill Szymczyk.

I play all the time. I’m not the kind of guy to just sit around when The Eagles aren’t working. I’ve got to keep playing music.

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