In his seventh decade playing music, Felder still has fans ‘shaking their booty’

Don Felder is one of rock and roll’s most durable performers. I’d put him up there for talent in playing the guitar, too. For 13 years, he was a lead guitarist for the Eagles, one of the greatest bands of all time. Felder’s new band will play a show on Saturday, May 11, at Chinook Winds Casino and Resort in Lincoln City.

Felder, now 76, was a member of the Eagles from 1974-80 and 1994-2001. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. During his time with the Eagles, they had 11 Grammy nominations and won four times. Felder was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2016.

At age 13, Felder started his first band, “The Continentals,” which included Stephen Stills.

In high school, Bernie Leadon, who became one of the founding members of the Eagles, replaced Stills, and they eventually changed the name of the group to Maundy Quintet.

After graduating from high school, Felder moved to New York City and formed the band “Flow.” He soon moved on to Boston, then in 1973 to L.A., where he wound up playing in a band led by David Crosby and Graham Nash. He also jammed from time to time with members of the Eagles, and in 1974, was asked to join the band as it moved from country rock style to more full-fledged rock music. In 1974, the Eagles released top-40 hit “Already Gone” and “Best of My Love,” their first No. 1 song. They were soon the top-selling band in America.

The first album released after Felder joined was “Hotel California,” for which he co-wrote the title track. It got to No. 1 in 1977 and is ranked 118th by Rolling Stone among the greatest albums ever. Felder re-recorded the song for the Eagles’ “Hell Freezes Over” tour in 1994; it is believed to be the only song recorded twice by the same band that has gotten Grammy nominations.

The 1976 album “Their Greatest Hits 1971-75” became the highest-selling album of the 20th century in the U.S., and has sold 38 million copies in the U.S. and 42 million worldwide.

The Eagles disbanded in 1980 and reunited in 1994, with Felder again playing a lead guitar role.

Amid much turmoil within the ranks, he was fired from the Eagles after legal disputes in 2001. Felder filed two lawsuits alleging wrongful termination among other things, seeking a reported $50 million in damages. Don Henley and Glenn Frey countersued for breach of contract after Felder wrote a tell-all book. The case was settled out of court in 2007.

Since then, Felder has released several albums, played with musicians such as Sammy Hagar, Slash, Richie Sambora, Peter Frampton, Mick Fleetwood, Bob Weir and toured with groups such as Styx, Foreigner and REO Speedwagon. Most of all, Felder has continued to play music. It’s in his blood.

We did a near-hour-long interview on what he described as a beautiful sunny day in Southern California.

KE: How familiar are you with Oregon?

DF: Two of my sons live up there. One lives in Bend and one lives in Portland. I go up to visit them sometimes. We’ll go fishing and have a good time. I like it up there.

KE: How is life in Southern California?

DF: I am living in Beverly Hills now. I lived in Malibu for 29 years and finally moved. Malibu is beautiful, but it is so far out of town. Now I’m closer to the airport. I can get in and out of town in a timely manner. I have a nice place with a good view.

KE: You look like you’re in great shape. How do you do it?

DF: The heaviest I’ve ever been was 12 pounds heavier than I am now. I’m 5-11 and run between 160 and 165 pounds. I always watch my diet. I exercise three to five days a week at the gym. Cardio, weights, core, sit-ups — I go through the whole body. I do my best to stay happy and healthy so I can have some longevity. A sedentary lifestyle doesn’t work. It’s like an old car. Gotta keep looking under the hood to see if anything is leaking.

KE: And that has allowed you to keep active in the music scene for so many years.

DF: I love what I do. So many people retire and are bored. What I do is very fun. I’ve done it since I was 10. I just love it to death. It keeps me creatively enthused, being on the road, playing for people.   

KE: What was it like growing up in Gainesville?

DF: I grew up on a dirt road in a white clapboard house with a tin roof that my dad and other relatives built with their own hands. It was very simple, very plain living. We never went hungry, but we were pretty close to destitute poverty. If you don’t know what you don’t have, you can still be really happy. We didn’t have TV for years. When I was 10, I was happy to get a guitar with missing strings from a kid across the street. I started learning how to play. There was nobody to teach me. My parents didn’t have money to pay somebody. But I fell in love with music.

KE: It is amazing the talent you had around you growing up. Stephen Stills. Bernie Leadon. Tom Petty. The Allmans.

DF: Stephen, Bernie, Tom and I went to the same high school. The Allman brothers were right down the street. Lynyrd Skynyrd was not far down the road in Jacksonville. It was an incredible amount of talent that went on to be platinum-record sellers and rock and roll Hall of Famers in that little triangle of area. People say, “There must have been something in the water down there.” I say, “It might have been something we were smoking.” (Laughs)

KE: You learned to play slide guitar from Duane Allman.

DF: We were in rival bands in high school. I have the proud distinction of losing three straight battle of the bands to the Allman Brothers. Lost three trophies to them. They were the best, the most talented players and singers, and 95 percent of my admiration went to Duane. Nobody could surpass Duane Allman in those days.

KE: You were working at a music store teaching guitar students when Petty was in high school. You worked with him on both guitar and piano?

DF: I didn’t get paid, but for every lesson I taught there, the owner of the store would put $10 on my credit. I could save up and buy an amp or something. I worked with Tom on both guitar and the piano. I can crawl my way around on piano. I play guitar much better. There are a lot of songs that I wrote while playing the piano, but I don’t consider myself a keyboard player.

KE: You left Gainesville for New York City, and then Boston, and finally L.A. For a time, you played in a band that toured with Crosby and Nash.

DF: Let me provide some history. Stephen Stills and I have been friends since we were 14. Today he lives less a mile from me down Mulholland Drive. We still see each other and grab dinner now and then. He was in my band in high school. He left the band, and a week later Bernie showed up and replaced him. Fast forward, I moved to L.A. and I hadn’t seen or heard from him in some time. I hear a song on the radio by Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth,” and I’m hearing this voice that sounds like Steven. He was making his path, and then I saw him at Woodstock, and he was telling me that everybody was moving to California. So I’m thinking, “I guess I got to move to California.”

When I first got there (in 1973), Bernie told the people that managed the Eagles and CSN and a bunch of other bands that I was there, and if anybody needed a guitar player to give me a look. I got a call from David Blue, a songwriter. He was kind of a Bob Dylan guy. I went out on tour with him and his band. We were opening for Crosby-Nash. I’d listen to them after we were done playing. After five or six times seeing the show, I knew all the songs. We were at the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. It was the afternoon of a show. Graham called my room and said, “Don, I need you to grab a guitar and come up to my room.” He said one of their guitarists, David Lindley, was ill and couldn’t play that night. I’d heard his stuff enough. We went out and I had the best time. I played great with those guys. I played with them for the rest of the tour. They kept me on.

KE: Then in 1974, when Leadon was with the Eagles, you were called to add slide guitar to “Good Day in Hell” and some guitar solos in “Already Gone.” And the next day, you were a member of the band. How did that happen?

DF: When Bernie was in the band, I’d go to see them play (shows). I’d go backstage and hang and out Bernie and I would play. Glenn (Frey) really liked what he heard. I went to two or three of their rehearsals and jammed and we had fun. Glenn wanted a slide guitar on “Good Day in Hell.” I set up my amp and guitar and we played. We did four passes through it and they liked what they heard. The next day I got a call from Glenn saying, “We want you to join our band.” When I hung up, I called Graham Nash. I was supposed to go out on tour with them. My wife was pregnant with our first child. Crosby-Nash was paying me $1,500 a week, good money in those days. I was about to join a band that Bernie told me was about to break up any day. But Graham told me, “Don, you need to join that band.” It was some of the best advice I’ve been given in my life.

KE: It was Frey who nicknamed you “Fingers.”

DF: When I’m playing the slide, I play all over the neck. When I was in New York City, I had played in a jazz fusion band. We just made up solos. I love the ability to improvise. I can go into a studio and just make up a solo. It served me well. Glenn really enjoyed that along with my level of dexterity and physical ability to play guitar.

KE: I’ve read excerpts from your memoir — “Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles” — that indicate it was pretty crazy on the road with the band in the late ‘70s.

DF: A lot of my memories of that period have a smoky haze. I’m told I had a great time. Thank God I hit the pause button after we broke up in 1980. I was married with four kids — the only one in the band who had kids. I’d been on the road so much, I wasn’t around (the family). When we finally woke up, I stopped everything. I stopped drinking. I became Mr. Mom. I was driving carpools, taking kids to practice and sporting events. I got involved in my kids’ lives for the first time. I am glad it happened at that time, before you get so deep into party mode that you can wind up dying, or destroying your life. That has happened to so many.

KE: And you haven’t drank alcohol since?

DF: Only on rare occasions. Maybe a flute of champagne at a wedding, or if somebody brings out a really nice bottle of wine. I have my happy inch of a glass. It’s good. I don’t feel hung over anymore.

KE: Your lawsuit, and the countersuit filed by Frey and Henley, were settled out of court in 2007. Were you satisfied with the result?

DF: A good settlement leaves neither side really happy. One side thinks it is giving too much; the other side thinks not enough. I was happy to be finalized with this thing that we all agreed to. It took seven years of litigation to get there. After a while, that dark cloud of uncertainty starts affecting your daily happiness or life. That was the biggest struggle for me. I had to overlook the negative legalities and put a smile on my face and go play music. I started playing a lot of charities — for St. Jude’s Hospital, for autism, for several things.

It gives me the greatest satisfaction to help people who don’t have food on their plate or can’t pay medical bills. You get to a point where you don’t need more money. It’s then about how can you spend your energy and talent to help people? I started doing that, and said, “I’m not going to let this destroy what I do.”

KE: “Hotel California” is one of the great albums of all-time. How does it feel to be such a major part of that?

DF: The five of us with the Eagles at the time (Felder, Frey, Henley, Joe Walsh, Timothy Schmit) were like a Super Bowl football team. We had the strongest talent at every possible position in the band. Everybody sang. Everybody played great. Everybody wrote. The energy when everybody was in there putting the music together was absolutely magic. The character shifted from song to song and person to person. What was heard from being in the studio … we’d look at each other and go, “By God, that’s amazing.”

KE: You seemed to have a symbiotic on-stage relationship with Walsh and how you shared lead time while with the Eagles.

DF: Joe is an absolutely phenomenal person. He was a graceful person to play with. We figured out early, if I was going to go on a higher part of a solo, he would play lower, slower parts. If I came down from that point, he would be going up. We’d cross going up and down. It was like a dance, where you dance together without stepping on somebody’s toes. Joe and I locked into that. We had played together quite a bit before we joined the Eagles. I was delighted he joined the band. When I wrote “Hotel California,” I wrote it with Joe in mind, so we could trade off and do solos with each. I thought that would be a great place to show that off.

KE: I saw video of you playing “Hotel California” with Sammy Hagar last year. Do you ever tire of playing the song?

DF: It is one of the most challenging technical songs I have to play every night. Everybody knows every single note. You can’t just go out and jam on the end of the song. You have to play it exactly like the record. To play that note perfectly night after night is challenging. Even today when I’m off the road, I’ll go to the studio and play our set — everything we do in the show — at least twice to keep my chops up to the level it needs to be.

When we did the “Hell Freezes Over” tour (in 1994), we would camp out in an area. I would get up in the morning and play for an hour or so to wake up and get my circulation going. Then before sound check, I would sit backstage and play a little. I was playing between five and six hours a day to keep my skills at the absolute peak. You can’t go out in a big stadium like we were playing and be sloppy or make mistakes. I feel the same way now.

KE: you have five kids, including one with your second wife, Kathrin. Do you have grandkids? How is family life?

DF: Great. My youngest son is going to be 15 in July. He is younger than one of my daughter’s kids. Brilliant kid. Been a member of Mensa since the fifth grade. He’s like 6-1. I’m looking up to him literally as well as mentally.

I also have nine grandkids and am about to have my second great-granddaughter. I never thought sitting and talking to my grandfathers, who were spitting into a coffee can in the old South, that I would be here today. I have reached the age where I’m thankful I am able to enjoy life and my continued career, and especially now that I have more free time. I try to balance how much time I tour and how much I get to spend with friends and family.

KE: Are you still playing some golf?

DF: I was a 7-handicap until Covid hit. After that, I did not leave my house for almost two years. People my age were winding up in the ER, dying. I got every vaccination to try to avoid that. My golf game suffered. Recently I went with my son — he’s a pretty damn good golfer — to the driving range. I was afraid my (golf) muscle memory might have Alzheimer’s. I worked the wedge to the irons, and started hitting my driver and thought, “Hey, I can still actually hit the ball.”

But I don’t have the time right now to invest in my golf game with what I have to do on the road and mix that with time with friends and family. I don’t want to give up an entire day to play a round of golf.

KE: You are in your seventh decade playing music professionally. How does that feel?

DF: It’s incredible to me that people still want to come out and hear it. Life has been wonderful. I love that I can do stuff that makes so many people happy and makes me happy. I can’t retire. I am going to rock til I drop — probably in the middle of some solo.

KE: You use a rotating group of musicians in your shows. Do you know who you will bring with you to Chinook Winds?

DF: Not yet. But I can tell you, I have an amazing show. I have some of the best people on the planet to play in my band. These guys have played with some of the biggest stars and musicians and groups, like Chicago, Billy Joel, Peter Frampton, Carrie Underwood, Bad Company, Katy Perry, Foreigner. I have been meticulous about the people I put in my band. This is not a cover band. We play songs I co-wrote and co-produced. You can’t get out and sound like a bar band. We have incredible singers, incredible players. The last five songs we do each night, everybody in the place is up on their feet dancing. We are rocking the place. You have to have that kind of musical muscle in the band to be able to do that.

KE: So you’ll play a combination of Eagles hits and some stuff off your later solo albums?

DF: Exactly. I do a lot of the songs people love to hear from the Eagles catalog. Some of the solo stuff. And a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan. I love a chance to play the blues, a chance to have some fun. You watch. By the end of the show, the last five or six songs, people will be up shaking their booty.

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