Felder Interviews and promotions

[Ive always been a dreamer]

First of all, welcome from me as well, OM. Glad to have you here on The Border, and hope you will stick around and enjoy yourself here.

Thank you so much for your review of Felder's show. I was particularly interested in what Don's set list would be. I am so glad that you enjoyed the show and agree with you that Felder is an extremely talented musician. I was wondering about his stage presence. Unfortunately, I never got to see him perform live with the Eagles, but from all the video I've seen, I always thought he brought a lot of energy to his live performances.

Having said that, I do wonder how successful Don can be playing old Eagles songs. With all due respect to him, even though he co-wrote a lot of the songs in the set list, IMHO, I really think most people would rather see them performed by the guys who originally sung them. I believe that if he is going to sustain a successful solo career, he is going to have to release some new material that meets with at least a moderate amount of success.

I'm looking forward to your thoughts after you read the book. I'll wait for you to post in the 'Heaven and Hell' book thread before commenting so I don't hijack this thread, but I did want to respond to this one thing that you said here:

If Henley and Frey had approached Felder and explained their position and tried to negotiate, maybe things would have been different. It seems to me that they just acted as if the previous contract no longer existed, and to treat a former 'equal' partner as a sideman by squeezing higher percentages for themselves with the aid of the group's manager.

Much of this has already been discussed in detail in the book thread. However, if you start reading the book by making this assumption, then you will have no problem agreeing with Felder's accounts. My point is that we don't have any knowledge about the details of any negotiations to support what you said. In fact you will find that Felder himself is very vague in his accounts.

[sodascouts]

Check out this brief interview to promote the Spotlight Casino Concert on The Desert Sun.

[sodascouts]

New radio interview:

http://dd.wcsx.com/?p=2579

Sounds like relations have improved with Joe Walsh. Also, I was surprised that he said he wouldn't tour again with the Eagles unless some changes are made, presumably in the power structure and money distribution. Of course, the likelihood of that is negligible, to put it mildly!

I thought the DJs going on and on about how hot Leah Felder is in a bikini afterwards was kind of tacky.

[Freypower]

He is not going to be asked to tour with the Eagles again. He still appears to be indulging in wishful thinking. The comment is redundant.

[luvthelighthouse]

Asked why he stayed in what he called a “toxic relationship” for nearly 30 years, Felder went back to the music.

“For those two-and-a-half hours that (the Eagles) were on stage, it was pure joy,” Felder said.

For some reason this comment just struck me funny... it's like saying, "we had a bad relationship, but stayed together because the sex was good". Don't know why that analogy came to mind, but it did.

[sodascouts]

Felder coming on the radio in a couple minutes:

http://www.wifc.com/

[sodascouts]

For anyone interested, they'll be playing it again tomorrow at 6:45 am Central Time.

He told one new joke (twice): "It's the most salacious life story I've ever lived." Compared the moment when he hit his answering machine button and heard Azoff say "The band has decided to go on without you" to a knife slashed across the throat. Otherwise nothing new.

[sodascouts]

Another interview:

http://www.majic1027.com/jocks/morningshow.aspx

Scroll down and click on the "Audio" tab.

He says unsarcastically that he has "dear feelings" for all of the Eagles, including Henley and Frey!

[Koala]

I am not sure whether this article in this Thread is right.

Felder proud of his career in Eagles

Ted Shaw, The Windsor Star
Published: Saturday, May 23, 2009

You can't dance to it, it's too long, and the vocals don't start until a minute in.
Nothing about Hotel California fit the mould of hit radio in 1977.
But it went on to become an anthem for baby boomers. It was the last gasp for California-style country-rock, not to mention the band that recorded it, The Eagles.
Along with American Pie and a couple of others, Hotel California is a sort of Lord's Prayer of rock. You can mouth the words by rote even if their meaning doesn't register anymore.
It's a song forever locked in the era of eight-tracks. But it can still get the juices flowing.
At the time Hotel California was recorded, Don Felder was The Eagles' primary lead guitarist. During those album sessions, he'd share duties with Joe Walsh. But the music of the actual song Hotel California, along with its structure and the solo near the end, were his doing.
The 61-year-old Felder -- who once learned slide guitar from Duane Allmann and who gave Tom Petty guitar lessons when he was a teenager in Florida -- these days is touring a rock revue devoted to Hotel California and the enduring legacy of The Eagles.
He brings the revue to the Colosseum at Caesars Windsor tonight.
"If you think you've made a record that you believe will end up being known as your legacy," said Felder, "nine times out of 10, you'll be wrong."
The Eagles knew they had a great song. They had no idea it would be the ultimate Eagles song.
"Honestly, you never know from track to track or record to record what's going to strike a chord with people on a huge level. Underlying all of your hopes and dreams there is always that wish, that desire that you have made something that will last."
Asylum Record executives didn't know what to make of Hotel California, Felder said. Even Felder had his reservations when bandmate and lead singer Don Henley declared Hotel California would be the lead single from the album.
"I thought no way. AM radio at the time only wanted songs that were three minutes, maybe three minutes and 30 seconds long.
"FM radio wanted uptempo songs, maybe some R&B feel, or a big, wet, sloppy ballad. This song was none of that.
"It was over six minutes long and it had an instrumental introduction that was a minute long. Then it stops in the middle and there's this legato section of a vocal part. Then at the end there's a two-minute guitar solo. Everything about it was wrong for radio."
The band's previous release from the Hotel California album, New Kid In Town, was more in the style of hit radio.
But for a magical few weeks near the end of 1977, programmers and radio listeners suspended their belief long enough to turn Hotel California into the biggest hit in The Eagles' career.
Felder originally wrote the music in a key that was too high for Henley -- "When he sang it the first time in the studio, he sounded like The Bee Gees," Felder recalled.
So he went back home and worked out a darker-sounding version in B-minor, a key most guitarists prefer to avoid. Henley and fellow Eagles founder Glenn Frey composed the lyrics.
"Don (Henley) had this knack of being able to sit down and come up with lyrics in a matter of minutes," said Felder.
The song's Hitchcock-like imagery and allusions have been the subject of debate ever since. But Felder, even if he has his own ideas about its meaning, doesn't engage in such debate.
To him, the music was all that counted. And it is music which has shaped his thinking from the day he was 10 years old and saw Elvis Presley on television at his parents' Gainesville, Fla., home.
"The hair stood up on the back of my neck," he said.
"I immediately went out and traded a handful of firecrackers to a kid across the street for an old, beat-up guitar in his attic."
Three years later, after he'd taught himself to play, Felder and a friend saw B.B. King perform in a bar in rural Florida.
Felder played in high school bands which included fellow Florida natives Stephen Stills and Bernie Leadon, who later helped form The Eagles in 1972.
He also got to know contemporary and Gainesville High alumnus Tom Petty, even teaching him some licks on guitar.
Felder went north out of high school and found session work and club gigs in Boston and New York. It was when he hooked up with old friend Leadon, who was on his first tour with The Eagles, that Felder met the musicians who two years later asked him to join the band.
"The first song I did was Good Day in Hell on the On The Border album," said Felder. "It was the first of many good days in hell with The Eagles."
Felder wrote about his tempestuous days in the band, and the series of lawsuits that followed his being fired in 2001, in the bestselling 2008 memoir, Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (1974-2001).
The bad divorce from the band didn't sour Felder's enthusiasm for music or, more particularly, the songs of The Eagles. In his revue, he performs about a dozen Eagles tunes, most of which he didn't write but was featured on as the lead guitarist.
"Just because The Eagles decided to end their association with me," said Felder, "doesn't mean it was going to end my desire to play music. To tell you the truth, I think I get more out of (the music) than most of the people who attend my concerts."

[Freypower]

So he has no interest in the lyrics of Hotel California, only the music because he 'wrote' it (I am sorry but I don't believe that Glenn at least did not have some hand in the music).

And I must say AGAIN that Hotel California was NOT the lead single from the album. It was the SECOND single. The lead single, which went to Number One first, was New Kid In Town. I do not care how dismissive Felder is of NKIT (although he played the solo on it). Facts are facts.

As for always wanting to play music, what was he doing in the 'vacation' period? He put out one contractual obligation album and was silent the rest of the time.