Felder's "Heaven and Hell" Discussion Thread

[VAisForEagleLovers]

I'm only on Page 27, but I'm new and trying to catch up, but want to say a thing or two.

I've always been an Eagles fan. I was given a birthday ticket from my sister a few weeks ago when they came to Detroit, which is special since me and Glenn grew up kinda close to each other (though I'm only 33).

Usually after a concert, I want to immerse myself more and more. I re-reviewed their songs, found some gems I thought "How could I have missed THIS?" I saw the HOTE, and then read Felder's book. Then I joined here, even though I'm a member of a few other musical and non-musical boards.

I'm a musician, so I've tried to put myself in everyone's shoes, read as much as I can before making comments.

I really respected Glenn for telling Bernie that Felder "paid his dues" and was to be a full member. Great deal for Felder. And he wrote the music for Hotel California which put them in super-league. Without that song, who knows what "could have been". I think the change of pay later probably affected the ego. I think Frey/Henley probably deserved more from the beginning, because they have put the most work in. Everyone pays their dues, but paying dues for another band isn't exactly the same, but those experiences carry over to the new band. To me, the new deal was probably to "correct" overcompensation Frey/Henley gave early on. Also, never underestimate Azoff and others, who can only make money from their profits.

I think because we don't know the contractual details, it's hard for us to FULLY understand the situation, but it's tempting to speak our piece - it's what message boards are for. We also don't know what was redacted from the book.

I just wish they could have made it work. Anyone can play note for note what Felder played, but it's the creating part that's most difficult. If Felder would have written a lot more, I would be 100% on his side. I'm split.

It's too bad the money is never enough. I've played multiple times in multiple continents but never made even close to what they'd make, but once you're at that level, you probably expect it. The business decision could have come down to the numbers; how much business do they lose with the few fans who "ban" the Eagles, compared to how much they save by getting a replacement. Also, the new guy isn't going to complain much, so that part might be more stress relieving. I wish that the guys could have been more empathetic, for their sakes, not the fans.

I do think the "loser" is Felder. No one is every going to scrounge for rent, but when the Eagles do end, it will be without Felder,. The last album was also made without him, and the last few hundred concerts. Maybe this can be a lesson for musicians, hoping that some more good could come out of this. I will keep hoping that the bad feelings go away, again, for their sake. I think it would make us happy if they could focus on the better parts of each person.

Very well said, MSF, especially the part about it all being a lesson for other musicians, and I would add it should be a lesson to everyone and not just musicians.

[MortSahlFan]

I came back on here before I went to bed, because I know I forgot to mention how he changed them from a country based to more of a rock group. Also commercially speaking, since we're discussing money, the minute Felder got with the band, instead of going down (2nd album did LESS than the debut), he took them up. I guess I don't think he should have been fired, and compromise with less pay. It would have been nice if he came on for 4-5 songs a night, not as a member for the HOTE tour, which could be their last. Each guy think the album days are over. But who knows, maybe hell can freeze over again? One last rock album with Felder would be a pretty cool way to end their career and go solo and eventually retire. We can dream.

[MaryCalifornia]

It's too bad the money is never enough.

Welcome, MSF!

You are right. The more successful these guys get, the more money they need. At their level, they have so many employees on their professional staff, and so many on their personal staff. They have to travel by private plane, often solo. They take care of multiple generations of family. Timothy's trust has at least six residences in hyper-expensive locations, and those are just the ones we know about (without even digging for info or stalking) for his immediate family, not even including what he has put up for his mom (recently deceased) and brothers, and Jean's immediate family. Their expenses get so huge, they end up netting just as much after all is said and done as when they grossed less. And, they're thinking about retirement - they want to maintain the same lifestyle without bringing in any touring revenues, so they're trying to stockpile. It really is never enough...they make tens of millions per year and their expenses are tens of millions per year.

[chaim]

I'll go a bit off-topic now, but since Felder writing the music for HC was mentioned again in this thread, I'll write what just came to mind.

What we often forget is that it's not only about who comes up with the initial spark, but also who recognizes the potential. For example, let's imagine a following scene when some band is rehearsing:

Something interesting comes out of the keyboardist's fingers when he improvises while the guitarists are tuning, but he just keeps going, ignoring what he just played. The guitarist goes "Hey, what did you just play? That was great!". The keyboardist says "Something like this?". The guitar player: "No, right after that. Something like E major with a flat fifth and...". And then the keyboardist probably remembers where his fingers had just been, and the guitarist goes "THAT'S IT!", and together they remember what the keyboardist had played.

Now, does all the credit go to the guy whose fingers happened to play it, but who didn't notice it? None of the credit goes to the guy who noticed it and recognized its potential? Not talking about official writing credit, but "artistic credit" (or however you say that).

Something like what I just described happened often at Genesis rehearsals, according to Mike Rutherford.

Don F gave a few demos to Glenn and Don H. They had a few ideas to choose from. They recognized the potential in a demo that was like "Mexican reggae". It was not Eagles-like material at all, but Glenn and Don recognized something they could build upon, and they did.

I realize that it's not the same as the imagined rehearsal scene, as Don F had carefully constructed the arrangement already. But Don F did not go to Glenn and Don H with the HC demo and say "this is going to be our biggest classic, we must work on this". Instead, as far as I know, Don F went something like "here's a bunch of ideas. Pick what you like". What became HC was just another demo for Don F - not even his favorite in the bunch, unless I'm mistaken (I may be wrong). Personally I give some credit (credit that has nothing to do with official credits) to Glenn and Don H for recognizing that this one demo had something special. Plus, would they have kept working on it if Glenn hadn't gone "This could be about the fantasy of California..." or "I can see this guy driving..."? Who knows.

[UndertheWire]

I came back on here before I went to bed, because I know I forgot to mention how he changed them from a country based to more of a rock group. Also commercially speaking, since we're discussing money, the minute Felder got with the band, instead of going down (2nd album did LESS than the debut), he took them up.

Hi and welcome!
I see similar comments to those above quite a lot and I find them a bit specious. There's no disputing that On The Border earned more the Desperado or that by Hotel California they were seen as being more rock and less country but what was Felder's part in that?

What did Don Felder do to change them from a country-based to more of a rock group? We know that Frey, Henley and Meisner wanted to move in a more rock direction which is why they changed producer. Szymczyk has said he was only interested in them because they wanted to make this change and it may have been he who suggested they needed a better rock guitarist. At that point, Felder was a tool rather than an initiator of change and whilst he had the skills, he didn't have the reputation as a rock guitarist.

What did Felder contribute to On the Border that made it sell well? He was brought in as a session musician to play on two tracks that had already been written (and one had already been recorded) and neither was a big hit. It was Best of Love, recorded in London with Glyn Johns before Felder joined, that took them to #1.

How much credit should Felder get compared with Joe Walsh? Walsh brought the rock credentials and an identifiable sound.

[Funk 50]

...does all the credit go to the guy whose fingers happened to play it, but who didn't notice it? None of the credit goes to the guy who noticed it and recognized its potential? Not talking about official writing credit, but "artistic credit"

Interesting comment chaim, Genesis shared their writing credits for much of their career, so they did believe the whole band was involved in the creative process. I think the creative working relationship of a band is more important than the ability of the songwriters, hence the great covers. The music evolves with the working relationship.

Hotel California is a great song but it's the title track of an outstanding album. It's not a one track album. I've read that it sold twice as many as all their previous albums put together (not counting the Greatest Hits, of course). Felder's impact was minuscule compared to Walsh's.

Since he was fired, Felder has really embellished his involvement with the track Hotel California. When he was still in the band, his anecdotes were about coming up with the chord progression and how he and Joe did the guitar parts, nowadays he claims all the guitar parts were on his original demo. He still inadvertently admits that it was Henley who was the main driving force of the track though.

Despite it being all about the money, I'm pretty sure Felder's sacking wasn't a financial decision. The last lengthy band lay off was before Felder's exit, so I presume that he was the major cause of it.

Lastly, judging by the results coming through on the One Of These Nights song survivor thread, ( https://www.eaglesonlinecentral.com/...ead.php?t=5824 ) Glenn and Don should have been getting double money in 1975, twenty years before Glenn insisted on it.

[VAisForEagleLovers]

You have a very good point, F50. The DJs on the radio stations I listened to were hyping the unprecedented success of whatever the next album from the Eagles was just because Joe was part of the band, before anyone had ever heard of Hotel California. It's a great album, top to bottom, don't get me wrong, but it was more than the music that sold it.

Chaim, the scenario you described above is nearly exactly the scenario Glenn described with Joe and LITFL. It was a warm-up riff (he mentions it in the documentary). What annoys me in the documentary is that the director got it backwards. Glenn had 'Life in the Fast Lane' before he heard the riff, and when he heard Joe's riff, he knew that's what it would be. I believe it's detailed in the thread about Glenn's appearance at the Songwriters Master Session at NYU.

UTW, I agree with what you said about Felder's contribution to On The Border. Glenn and Don had the vision to give themselves a harder edge, and Felder was merely guitarist they'd already met and could use the work. They asked him to join because he was there. Felder is extremely talented and Glenn respects talent and saw potential, but it was unused potential for that album. Any competent guitarist would have done the trick. On The Border would have been more successful (at the time) than Desperado no matter what, and one could argue that a different guitarist may have made a bigger impact and made it even more successful. As Glenn said in concert, they'd given up trying to pull a single from it when BOML finally made it big. Doesn't exactly ring up as an album to get Felder full money on, let alone for the rest of his life.

There are people out there who have co-written one great song, and have co-performed it with others who could then rest for the remainder of their life on the laurels of it, but never in a situation that I know of where the other writers and performers worked their tails off before and after and were expected to share their success on all songs forever because of one co-written song. It was a chord progression, for heaven's sake, with perhaps a hint of a melody here and there. Who made the song 'sellable'? I realize the dueling guitar part at the end was written with Joe in mind, but Joe made it possible, and Joe came up with the most popular segment of it. Right or wrong, since it comes down to a difference in styles and not really talent, but Joe is the one who sold it during performances.

Felder is the primary song writer because he came up with it initially. He didn't recognize the potential as Chaim said, and didn't even invest enough in it to remember it. While recording, they had to call his housekeeper to play it over the phone. For this, we're all being punished by his constant carping in the news about how he is the one who was treated unfairly. I don't want to downplay his primary role in one great song, but I'm really, really sick of it being blown out of proportion. In my mind, LITFL could easily have been worked on differently and been their 'epic' song off that album if HC had never come about.

[chaim]

To be fair, what Don F says he didn't remember was the guitar solo. I can understand that. It may have been semi-improvised, although I must say that if it was, it was some piece of improvising!

[MortSahlFan]

To an earlier quote, "Anyone could have filled in" is speculation, and probably false. No one knows what another guitarist would have done. We do know that Felder's playing was amazing.

If you ask a person to name an Eagles song, they know Hotel California. It was the only English song my cousin knew who came from Europe, so I would play it for him all the time.

And the earlier replies were very correct how a band usually works. One guy has an idea, someone says "What about playing it in Bm (instead of Em)" because Don couldn't sign that high for example. And the world is glad that Glenn/Don recognized the great song, because they had the power to say, "No" - it usually has to be great, otherwise the main duo would think "We rather have our songs" (and not just for royalties). Don't forget, Felder, Frey, and Henley all get royalties for the single "Hotel California" and I think it solidified the album. I watched the HOTE doc at 3am yesterday after I replied, and Don says himself that they wrote all the other songs around the Hotel California theme - the American Dream/Nightmare.

I'm just saying they should have negotiated, given him lower pay, because the duo did do more work, even though it wasn't the initial agreement. It's legal, but not necessarily moral.

But, at that point, they weren't going to write any more (we thought), so they could find a guy to play Felder's stuff note for note, and pay SOOO much less, and not have to deal with a guy asking about finances, or saying things like "I guess".

Basically, I see each members' point of view. I try to understand them all, so I did as much research on this as I could, including tiring myself out today after watching the HOTE doc yesterday since I couldn't sleep because it was on my mind - this conversation.

Maybe they should have all taken peyote and then reconsidered

[UndertheWire]

Since posting earlier, I've realised I forgot an important contributor to their success from On the Border onwards - Irving Azoff - and I'm not being sarcastic. It seems that he was the one who suggested Szymczyk and also who went to fight for them when it came to the financial deals that got the money to the band, not just their record company or management.

None of this is in Felder's book because most of it was in place before he joined.