Printable View
Here's a video of Don performing Van Morrison’s “Gloria” with Huey Lewis, Bon Jovi’s Tico Torres, and actors Bill Murray and Damian Lewis at the Alfred Dunhill Gala Dinner in Scotland on October 4. Don does a solo from 1:30 to 2:10. Bill Murray sings lead on the song. He's so funny, especially when he “dances” during Don's guitar solo!
[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJtldTZMjC0[/ame]
This is a good, new interview with Don Felder and worth watching even if you're not a big fan of his. The questions are good and even when they get to the book (about 20 minutes in), there's no trashing. He's asked about changes in key on choruses, how the vocal harmonies are stacked and lots on guitars and other equipment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWtyIQGeye8
Thanks for sharing, very interesting indeed. I was surprised when the interviewer mentioned that Gibson sponsored them to invite Felder over. Makes sense though and he did give them a great interview and certainly great workshops and show ;-)
Thanks, UTW, I'm looking forward to watching it. I have to wait for these people in my house to go to bed so I can relax!!
Thanks for posting the link UndertheWire.Quote:
Originally Posted by UndertheWire
It looks like Don told the interviewer (Mitch Gallagher) that he's not going to talk about the bad stuff. I think the only Eagle he mentioned by name was Bernie.
I hope this signals the end to hostilities on Felder's part. Didn't Henley say in the History Of The Eagles documentary that Mr. Felder continues to be a source of problems for the Eagles, over a decade after they got rid of him?
This could be the first step to Hell Freezing Over for a second time and a future reconciliation.
Maybe the band reaching out to Bernie and Randy has had an effect or maybe just the passing of time has brought some clarity but even if the reconciliation is just a private affair, I'm very pleased.
I'm pleased even if there is no reconciliation. Thanks Don Felder! :xoxo:
He was indeed pretty mellow and had nothing bad to say about anyone... he did poke fun at Frey's stinginess perhaps when he told him how much he'd paid the Les Paul ;-)
A lot of credit goes to the interviewer who was more interesting in asking about how things were done rather than personalities.
I would be delighted if this signaled a new era of positivity!
It's a cynical thought but with Don being so dependent on Hotel California to provide his worth and identity within the media, he'll be hoping, the upcoming 40th Anniversary of the album will provide a fruitful harvest for him in 2016.
So there is a logical reason why Don would consciously decide that from now on he'll publicly only say positive things about those wonderful chums he used to have, Irving, Don H and Glenn.
He wouldn't want to inadvertently scupper any plans the Eagles may have to celebrate 40 years since the release of Hotel California.
[quote=Funk 50;292075]It's a cynical thought but with Don being so dependent on Hotel California to provide his worth and identity within the media, he'll be hoping, the upcoming 40th Anniversary of the album will provide a fruitful harvest for him in 2016.
So there is a logical reason why Don would consciously decide that from now on he'll publicly only say positive things about those wonderful chums he used to have, Irving, Don H and Glenn.
He wouldn't want to inadvertently scupper any plans the Eagles may have to celebrate 40 years since the release of Hotel California
Very Good Point Funk 50!
The Sweetwater interview with Don is great. I just wish he'd acknowledge Glenn as a guitar player even just once without someone dragging it out of him, like with the straight question "Did you play the I Can't Tell You Why solo on the album?". The interviewer mentions the harmony guitars on One Of These Nights. IMO it would've been nice if Don had mentioned that it's Glenn doing them on the album. Instead he starts to talk about how "I played this and I played that guitar on Hotel California".
By the way, wasn't it Glenn in the book who wanted the new introduction to HC and not Don H?
Page 258.Quote:
Originally Posted by chaim
People who keep hoping in their wildest dreams for a reconcilation should consider that Don Felder will never acknowledge that Glenn Frey has even a modicum of talent. You say you wish he'd talk about Glenn's guiitar work; it's the singing he utterly refuses to even mention.
Yes, the singing. Of course. But sometimes I'm a little sick of this "Don Felder and Joe Walsh the guitar players" stuff. Bernie is mentioned too, of course. But Glenn is not, unless it's Glenn himself or Henley. I realize that Glenn may not be in the same league as those other guys, but he has recorded enough memorable and essential guitar parts for the Eagles to be mentioned once in a while. When the interviewer asks about the harmonies on OOTD, Don doesn't mention that Glenn did (most if not all of) them in the studio. Instead he says that they had himself, Glenn and Bernie to produce stuff like that live. But then he explains how he did all those guitars on HC and he had to have a double-neck to reproduce them live. No one has any doubt that Don Felder is a fantastic guitar player. Glenn too has said this many times.Quote:
Originally Posted by Freypower
Don F seems such a lovable guy. I just wish that he'd downplay his own role just a little bit sometimes, because the listeners/readers who are not Eagles diehards may get the picture that Don F was the main composer and arranger in the band.
I disagree that Felder is 'lovable' but I will go no further than that.
As a Glenn fan I suppose it doesn't really bother me at this stage that his guitar playing is ignored; I'm so used to that now that I shrug it off. As I said, it is when his singing is ignored or never mentioned that I get annoyed, and Felder, who these days happily sings songs like PEF & TIE on which he didn't even play, does not refer to Glenn's vocal abliities ONCE in his book. Even in HOTE he had to get in the crack during the VOL segment about how Henley was a better singer than everyone else in the band (and yes, I am well aware that this statement does seem to reflect many opinons, if not mine).
In any case regarding the song OOTN I thought Glenn's main contribution was the piano part. He plays guitar on it now, but I wasn't aware he did on the record.
The fact is a lot of people who sided with Felder decided to take at face value Felder's views on Glenn as a musician & a person & when they saw HOTE their prejudices were confirmed. They never tried to see it from Glenn's perspective. All they saw was how Felder had been 'wronged'.
These days Don F doesn't mention Glenn at all as a guitar player, but I remember that interview from the OOTN era, where he talked about OOTN and said "after Glenn does the introduction", referring to guitars. It was probably twenty years ago when I saw that interview, but I remember that well. And Glenn had done harmonies before, like in the Out Of Control solo.
A couple of years ago I asked Don about this on his Q&A page, because I suspected that Glenn played all those harmonized guitars in Too Many Hands too. I asked about those two songs. Don's answer was that in those days he and Glenn tended to do the harmony parts. Now, if at this point Don even mentions Glenn in this context, Glenn must have played quite a lot of those!
The harmony parts in OOTN were overdubbed later anyway, so whoever played them played something else on the basic tracks. On the basic tracks Don and Bernie were on rhythm guitars and Glenn on piano unless I'm very much mistaken. After that Glenn added harmonized guitars. I'm not saying that Don didn't play some of those. Maybe he did. But before I hear otherwise I suspect that they're all Glenn.
As for Too Many Hands, there's not a rhythm guitar part in the song that screams "Glenn!" to me. On the other hand it's very unlikely that Bernie played any of the harmonies. So I've always suspected that Glenn must be doing the harmonized lead guitars in the choruses. Don's response supported my assumption that Glenn was heavily involved with all of that.
You'll hate me for this, but Felder does mention Glenn's voice twice in his book and both are derogatory. For the "The Girl From Yesterday" he repeats a comment he attributes to Henley that "any country singer could sing it better" and then later he writes that "I love to Watch a Woman Dance" wasn't at all right for Glenn's R&B voice.
I believe it's just Felder getting revenge for the years in which he was "browbeaten into believing" his own voice was "mediocre at best".
I could find no reference to either ILTWAWD or the LROOE album in Heaven & Hell.Quote:
Originally Posted by UndertheWire
The reference to TGFY is on page 252. Yeah, the song was so bad that it was still being performed in December 1995 when I saw them, unlike the much vaunted Get Over It.
He makes another reference that TTITL was no good without Randy singing it on page 308.
I definitely consider Glenn a great musician and amazing rhythm guitar player, IMO he's the Keef of the guitar part of the band and holds that up very well. And I love the few solos he's done on WW, AG, and ICTYW, my favorite being ICTYW.
As far as him as a person, I don't know him but I do probably side more with Felder as far as the way he was treated and his portrayal of events on HOTE.
But in no way do I believe by any stretch that Glenn was a subpar player or singer in general or in comparison to his bandmates. Sure Henley is my favorite singer (of any band I might add), but I love TIE, PEF, AG, ATTIG, NKIT, HT and think he does a great job on those songs. I also believe he should have not been so hard on himself as a singer in comparison to Henley.
The ILTWAWD reference is in Chapter 18 where he's describing their attempts to record in 1999. Sorry, I don't have page numbers.
Sorry, i'm going OT and I'm feeling bad about it. The Don in the recent video interview is a lot more likeable than the one in the book. I guess he's just happier and more fulfilled.
I, on the other hand, tend to get too angry when I see/hear Don F talking only about his own contributions in interviews. It's not Don's fault after all that interviewers never discuss guitar stuff with Glenn!Quote:
Originally Posted by WalshFan88
Page 293. Gripe, gripe, snipe, snipe.Quote:
Originally Posted by UndertheWire
It was Glenn who vetoed the reunion at that time, not Don Henley. Not that facts ever mattered to Felder.
I will stop now as well. What's the point.
I disagree, of course.Quote:
Originally Posted by chaim
I feel that it is a bit unfair to Felder... They are interviewed to talk mostly about themselves.
Back on topic, I loved the Sweetwater video. Very informative for a guitarist like myself.
I will say one more thing. You can talk about yourself without completely distorting or minimising or ignoring the work of other people you worked with who contributed just as much if not more than you did.
That’s an interesting and informative interview.Quote:
Originally Posted by UndertheWire
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freypower
Do the other Eagles ever praise Glenn’s singing? As far as I know, Don Henley never does. Timothy never does either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Freypower
Funny, SM, I never thought of that. I don't remember any of them praising the others' singing! Or musicianship! I think its just a given that they are what they are - they are all epic singers in a very successful band. It's like, obvious. The only comment I can think of is Glenn's in HOTE re: We had Don Henley. It's funny to think about - Joe: "OMG, Timothy, you have such a good singing voice." "So do you, Joe! And you're a good guitar player!" "Thanks!"
Not complimenting his singing but when Long Road Out Of Eden was released, Henley singled out special praise for Glenn's line in, It's Your World Now. "Be part of something good, leave something good behind." He may even have said it was the best line on the album. More's the pity that they've never performed it live.Quote:
Originally Posted by SilverMoon
Henley also praised Joe's guitar playing, something that I've never heard Felder do. :scowl:
I'd love to know what Felder thought of the idea to add Joe to their ranks in 1975. Having 4 lead singers is one thing but 3 lead guitarists in an M.O.R., harmony vocal, mainstream, country rock band is really pushing it. It all kinda makes sense when you hear Try And Love Again, though.
Sorry I haven't got a Felder vid to enjoy.:shrug:
If you wish to put in such blunt terms, no, I suppose they don't, and they don't really need to do so.Quote:
Originally Posted by SilverMoon
Glenn, on the other had, Mr Ego, was the one who said 'I sang less because we had Don Henley'.
My point was that Felder wrote a book about the Eagles in which he refused to mention either Glenn's songs or his lead vocals. He pretended they didn't exist. He then made his big statement in HOTE that Henley was the best singer in the band as if that was a given & there could be no argument with it.
He is enttiled to his opinion, of course. But it's a bit sad that he could work with someone for so long and apparently believe for all that time that his colleague was a talentless hack.... while taking the money. If nothing else, despite his intense dislike of Glenn, isn't there something called professional courtesy which should mean you can acknowledge that someone is talented even if you hate them? Glenn, on the other hand, went out of his way to praise Felder's guitar work even after the band broke up.
See my post above about ignoring or minimising the work of your colleagues. Now I have said as much on this subject as I wish to say.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ1tDjcH4nU[/ame]
I can see what you're trying but it's not entirely accurate to say that they were adding another lead guitarist, they were replacing Bernie (who played lead guitar on several songs on One Of These Nights) with Joe, which leads on to my second point which is that they ceased to be a country rock band when Joe joined, and had been shifting away from this direction as from On The Border onwards. Out of all the band members past and present, Bernie was the member who was most 'country rock', Joe the least so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Funk 50
In any case, I don't hear any country on Hotel California, I've sometimes seen NKIT described as a country rock song but I don't hear it, The Last Resort features pedal steel but that alone doesn't make a song 'country' (I don't consider Joe's Second Hand Store, for instance, to fit this category either) and Try And Love Again I see as a rock ballad, more in the vein of Is It True? than Peaceful Easy Feeling. I certainly don't hear it on The Long Run either, an album made up almost entirely of rockers and R&B-type songs - if that had been the first Eagles album I'd heard I certainly wouldn't have though they were once a country rock band.
Don Felder has said that Joe Walsh is one of the greatest guitarists alive. I may be wrong, but I don’t remember Joe ever praising Don Felder's guitar playing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Funk 50
He wasn’t "taking the money." He was EARNING it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Freypower
Can't remember the first time I saw this but I spent many years after trying to discover the Jackson Browne track that included the phrase "sweet tenderness".
I encountered quite a few great JB tracks before I found Your Bright Baby Blues.
The Eagles being brilliant without singing a note. Felder particularly great on free and easy, acoustic slide. I'm not 100% sure but it could be Davis Lindley, rather than Bernie on pedal Steel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HBYyMbl5lo
Great performance by Jackson Browne and Don Felder! I love that song!
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L9_SuxikKM[/ame]
A youtuber that I'm subscribed to has uploaded this video of Don Felder playing Tequila Sunrise in June 2014. It's audio only.
https://youtu.be/-NbUJQn0poo
Is Don lip-synching here or is there someone else singing the lead vocal part with him? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ef-m3jL5qs
There are a few places where we still hear the note when he has already moved away from the mike.
At 2:39 mark, when we hear "what kind of love have you got?" his mouth seems to be doing something else. And the word "got" lingers when he has obviously stopped singing. At 3:15 mark he moves away from the mike, but it doesn't change the volume of the word "heart".
But then there are moments where it looks like he sings live, because his phrasing seems spontaneous - there would be an awful lot to remember if it was pre-recorded! The "got" at 3:30 mark for example looks real.
His singing sounds very compressed. Perhaps that's why we hear his voice as loudly even when he has moved away from the mike?
EDIT:
I have learned since writing this post that Auto-Tune can maintain the volume of a note and increase the sustain.
He must be lip-syncing.
It seems like most live acts these days (except the Eagles) have a backing track that they sing over - so, it's probably both. He is singing, and there is a track of him singing as well. The usual excuse is "I'm dancing strenuously for 2 1/2 hours, I need to bolster my voice, but I do sing live." Even on "live" shows like SNL they do this, and think Superbowl halftime performances - and yes, they do memorize the backing track down to the note.
Yes, maybe he does both, although I must admit I only hear one vocal. I compared these three performances, which according to the description are from different dates. I went through them line by line, and the lead vocal parts are definitely identical - phrasing and all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVM4MtY3Ppk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkOw4DWsPnA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzcBmlZANlw
There's are 100% identical too in terms of the lead vocal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9M4LAQcOmU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6JGvcSVHgk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPen2w5PB3Y
I've been listening to some of Don's live performances lately and been surprised how great his singing sounds. This would certainly explain it! Of course it is possible to sing things exactly the same way all the time, but...
EDIT:
Here at 1:05 mark, at the end of the first chorus he says something barely audible, so his mic is definitely coming out of the PA, although not as loud as the pre-recorded vocal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8pJNQADIiY
I guess the pre-recorded vocal track was autotuned. Not that lip-synching or duetting with a pre-recorded vocal is a big issue in Don's case, since it's not his voice that brings people to his concerts anyway. And having said all this, I do like his voice.