Don Felder and the Eagles

Aah, so that's what that lousy bonus track, Sensuality, on Felder's solo album Road To Forever was all about? Or maybe not.

 

The Reggae elements appear to be more predominant on Felder's demo. The Eagles' finished take seems predominantly Spanish flavored.

 

My wife and I watched the History Of The Eagles documentary last weekend. Once we finished I dropped by here to see that this thread had just started. I have been addicted to reading this thread ever since but I gotta say that of the 27 pages about 25 of them are the equivalent of watching a dog chase its tail....around and around and around and.......

 

That's usually what it's like, when it comes to Eagles threads on this forum. And there are plenty of Eagles threads here.

 

Not having read the entire thread all I can say is "we haven't had that spirit here since 1969" and moreover "saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, you can never look back..." and finally "... money doesn't talk, it swears." That last quote being by his royal Bobness.

ps... I wonder who's Cadillac that was?

 

As the OP...I where it as a badge of honor. I felt there was a lot of unfinished conversation concerning one of the notorious bands in history. Love or hate them they evoke a lot of rhetoric concerning a very talented but dysfunctional band. The end is near ...hang it there.

 

That's like when KISS said their tribute album and the reaction to their Unplugged appearance led to their reunion. I would bet it's the opposite and that things like the Common Thread album are cooked up as a sort of pre-promotion before the reunion announcement.

 

I dont get why people get so worked up either way. Is there anyone here related to either Frey, Henley or Felder?

 

Don't forget Pretty Maids All In A Row...and the lick for Life In The Fast Lane helped make the song catchy enough to be a top 40 hit. Plus, he played on the latter albums, which counts. And, Joe brought a harder edge to the band. The band didn't miss a beat...they were on a roll.

 

Not sure that it makes a difference for this discussion but there apparently were some significant changes in key and tempo from the original demo that I never read or heard about previously ---

"The first version we recorded was just a riff,” says Bill Szymczyk, who earned a 'Producer Of The Year' Grammy for his efforts producing and engineering the album. "However, once Don Henley began to write the lyrics, it turned out to be in the wrong key. So, then we recorded it in the right key with largely the same instrumentation and a smattering of lyrics, but after we'd developed the song a little more and Henley and Frey had fine‑tuned the lyrics, we came to find out the tempo was too fast. When we recorded it the third time, that was the charm.”

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep10/articles/classic-tracks-0910.htm

 

Correct for the most part, except that I believe Frey and Henley listened to Bill Szymczyk's mixes in different studios in different states and did overdubs as necessary. H&F requested changes and approved the mixes, but yes, after Long Beach I am told the five didn't get into the same space until the Travis Tritt video shoot.

 

Welcome to the Steve Hoffman forum! This is a place where we discuss music and musicians, whether or not we're related to any of the musicians we talk about. We're glad you decided to join. Let us know if we can be of any more help in your confusion.

 

I love the Eagles. Love all of Henleys solo albums, think both him and Frey were the driving force for the Eagles and are were very very talented while being to assholes. Felder is a very talented guitarrist who helped shaped the harder rock sound that Glenn wanted. But i wont defend or accuse either side. Ill discuss their music thsnk you.

 

Desperado didn't make the top 40 as a album.
Tequila Sunrise didn't make the top 40, neither did Outlaw Man. Post Felder's arrival, neither did James Dean, and Already Gone only made #25.

I don't know who their peer would have been at that point. Eagles would have been seen as lightweight compared to most of the big rock acts of the time. America was around, but they were selling better than Eagles at the time. They weren't going to get a favorable comparison to Neil Young or CSN. Credibility issues with all of the covers.

Basically, they were weak in FM rock credibility. AM was better, but that was less respected by 1974. Plus they were coming off a couple of flop singles anyway, and they weren't writing half of their singles. That's taking off?

Bands got a longer leash then, and no they weren't going to lose their contract. But they didn't take off until the Best Of My Love single, the third from On The Border, and Felder was already in the band for 10 months by that time.

 

I hadn't heard that before either, but here's an interview with Felder in which he also talks about the key changes that were made to the song. So when he says (on Stern) that the finished record was "almost identical" to the demo, the key change must be one of the things that accounts for the "almost." Wish we could hear the demo... that would answer a lot of questions.

 

And if that demo proved anything, we'd have heard it already. Not to say it wasn't important, but if it was a total blueprint of the song I think someone would have heard it outside the band.

 

We are all just prisoners here, of our own device!

 

Regardless if they were topping the charts, they had charting singles. They were receiving airplay (and who cares if it was AM in 1974?), they were building an audience. And you keep bringing up Felder being in the band at the time Best Of My Love hit number one -- he wasn't on the track! It isn't as if his presence is what lead to the band's success or the airplay for Best Of My Love; the band's established formula lead to its first number one hit, not Don Felder's lead guitar work and presence in the band. On The Border was the break-out album that helped the band take 0ff, an album largely recorded without Don Felder -- he came by the studio as a session player one night and laid down two solos, not exactly a recipe for putting his stamp or predominant presence on the album. But feel free to continue giving Felder more credit than he deserves.

 

Yes, and Tequila Sunrise, Already Gone and Best of My Love are all classic Eagles songs. Felder had nothing to do with any one of them except Already Gone. Yes, he had joined the band -- but he was not the key for those songs. As you note, Best of My Love was the break-out single, but Felder was not present. Recorded in England with Glyn Johns long before Felder was involved.

 

Thanks for that link with that very detailed interview. I guess we can add the E Minor version of Hotel California along with the demo and the Felder sung version of Victim Of Love to the track list of the fantasy deluxe album reissue.

 

But in your post you accused people of being talented and being assholes. So you ARE defending/accusing and not discussing the music, despite your final statement. Thsnk you.

 

An old Henley quote about the demo: "All that music was written by Felder," Henley says. "He had a little studio in his house. He'd been an engineer at one point, before he began to play full-time, so he was really good at it. He created the music track, and although we rerecorded it, basically all the parts were there. I put the melody on to of it while driving around in my car."

 

A heck of a lot more people listening to AM at that time then FM. Especially in the small towns, like where I lived, across America where FM didn't exist. AM seems to be talk now days but it was a different story then.

 

I don't think there's much of anything to prove or disprove here, since there doesn't seem to be significant disagreement about what was on the demo. Felder and Henley's descriptions seem to agree. It was a demo with multiple guitars, bass, and a drum machine that had basically the same music as the finished track, except in a different key and tempo. The only real area of uncertainty seems to be how similar the soloing at the end of the demo was compared to the finished track. Felder says Henley told them to replicate the demo exactly and that they did listen to it and try to replicate it, but he's also allowed that Walsh added his own ideas and that the finished result was not identical to the demo. Meanwhile, Szymczyk suggests Felder and Walsh improvised their own solos, and Walsh (whose memory is probably the least reliable due to his alcohol consumption) has said that he thinks he and Felder each made up their own parts. That's the main reason it would be interesting to hear the demo, to find out how closely (or not) the dueling solos replicated what was on it.

 

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