Don Felder
By: Lori Smerilson Carson | Photo: Michael Helms
When you start off your career playing on your porch and end up playing in front of thousands of people with four Platinum studio albums, one of which is Diamond Platinum (while with the Eagles) under your belt, you can only be world renown Guitarist/Singer/Songwriter Don Felder. Now, this extraordinarily talented musician is releasing his fourth solo studio album on May 23rd called THE VAULT - Fifty Years of Music which is comprised of newly recorded versions of treasured songs that were originally demos written from 1974-2023.
Felder and his band will be touring with Styx and Kevin Cronin, the Brotherhood of Rock tour, and Florida fans will have the opportunity to see this show on May 30th at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, on May 31st at the MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre in Tampa, and on June 2nd at Daily’s Place in Jacksonville. Felder and his band will also be playing at EPCOT in Lake Buena Vista (Orlando) on May 25th and 26th.
Catching up with Felder just prior to the tour and his album release, he revealed some details about the new record and show, as well as some enlightening stories of his past, and what fans can look forward to.
SFL Music Magazine: I heard the first single from your fourth solo album THE VAULT - Fifty Years of Music which are songs that are newly recorded versions of music that were originally demos. How did that come about? What inspired this album?
Don Felder: Well, I had my recording studio out in Malibu for the twenty-nine years that I lived out there since 1980 when I took the guest house of this big property I owned and converted it into a recording studio. We as the Eagles used to rehearse there. I used to write a bunch of my demos out there. It was a real recording studio. So, when I moved after the fifth fire in Malibu, I went, that’s it! I’m done! I’ve had enough fires. I’m moving into Beverly Hills. I don’t expect to burn to the ground in there, and oddly enough it got fairly close to my Beverly Hills house, this last Palisades. So, I put my recording studio, the consoles, the tape machines, all the tapes that I had, in storage in 2000. About four years ago I was going, I don’t even know what’s in that storage unit. I’ve got to go look. So, I go out to this storage unit, we open it up, and there are reels and reels and reels of 24-inch tape, 1 inch tape which is 16 track recording which was where I first started, and then two track mixes and demos, and this giant box full of cassettes and CD’s and eight ads. Stuff that were my demos that I had mixed to submit for Eagles records. So, I said, I don’t even know what this stuff is. I’ve got to take this box home, well set it up in my digital studio here in Beverly Hills, and we’ll transfer it from cassettes into digitals. So, as we’re transferring all this stuff, I’m going, I remember that idea. That was a great idea! Goodness, that was the first demo I ever made in1975 and submitted it to Don (Henley) and Glenn (Frey), and it was of me playing slide. It’s the first song that’s on this record called “Move On”. It’s probably the oldest one, but it never had lyrics, never had vocals. It was just a rhythm track. When I first joined the band, Glenn and Don were the main songwriters. My friend Bernie Leadon said, “if you want to write songs for this band, write musical beds in a song format like introduction, verse one, verse two, chorus, verse three, chorus, solo, chorus out or something like that in a familiar song structure. Don’t write lyrics. Don’t write vocals. Just give them music beds.” So, that’s what I had done, literally the whole time we were in the Eagles. I even had little portable tape recorders backstage on the Hell Freezes Over tour where I was writing and recording. I write and record all the time, whether it’s here in my house or singing into a phone as I’m driving down the freeway (he laughed). This is a great melody, I’ve got to remember this. So, what happens is when I went back and started listening to some of these I said, these are great ideas! I should take these little embryonic starts, re-record them in today’s technology and write the lyrics and melody myself. So, that’s really what I did.
SFL Music Magazine: You also have on the record the song “I Like The Things You Do” which you wrote in 2023. Like I said, I did hear “Free At Last”. I loved the signature rock style with a very rhythmic sound, and of course your amazing guitar riffs and solos. I read you described the song as having a peaceful life after death. Is that what inspired this song?
Felder: I think we all go through from the time we’re first spanked on the butt, and we start crying, welcome to the real world. What do you do, you cry, right? So, from that day forward we incur all sorts of bruises and scars and broken bones, broken hearts as we go through life. It’s not an easy path. It doesn’t really matter what your dreams are, there’s stress and trouble and problems. So, when we finally leave this planet, that’s when we will be free of all that stuff. We will just be able to soar and dance in the midnight sun. That’s kind of what it’s about. If you go back and listen to road to forever my second solo record, probably ten, twelve years ago, something like that, it has some little undertones on some of those songs about that too that this is the road to forever and we will be free at last.
SFL Music Magazine: You explained how you wrote in beds, so I assume that’s how you wrote “Hotal California”, “Take It Easy” and Lyin’ Eyes”. What would you say inspires your music in general when you write?
Felder: Here’s what happens. When I was studying improvisation living in the streets of New York and starving on the streets of New York, I learned how to just set aside any sort of fear or paranoia or inhibitions and just play. So, if you really look at great jazz players like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, guys that are like that, they can sit down and just play out of their heart. It just pours out of them. And so, I have developed that ability to a certain extent. That’s why when I go in with the Eagles to record a record and they say, for example, when we did Hell Freezes Over, we were sitting on the sound stage at Warner Bros. getting ready to record two shows exactly the same so we would have a bunch of camera coverage between two different sets. So, we finish rehearsal, sound check, and Don Henley turns to me and says, “this song needs a special introduction.” And I’m like, well what are you going to say? I thought he was going to say how it came about or here we are in California. He said, “no, no, no. I’m not going to talk. I want you to make up something” because he knew I could just pull stuff out of the air. So, I said, Ok. Here you go. You guys play this chord. I’ll diddle around, play this chord (he laughed), I’ll diddle around, play that chord and I’ll diddle until we finally get up to where the percussion starts. I did like a quick arrangement to it. Nobody really knew what we were doing until that introduction was over and we hit the down beat of “Hotel California” where it starts playing that introduction guitar. Don knew that I had the ability to just make up stuff. That’s why I can walk into a studio, not have any idea what I’m going to do, turn it on, plug it in, hit record and see what comes out today. It’s the same thing kind of with lyrics too. I wrote “I Like The Things You Do” writing in the back seat of a car on tour with headphones where I was listening to the track and typing because I was inspired with that idea of saying how much you really care for somebody, but not in such just over descriptive terms. I wrote “Free At Last” on a plane, the lyrics for it about taking off and just being up in the heavens and skies on a plane. It was that kind of lifting feeling that I wanted in that song. So, I can’t tell you how and why it comes out. It just does.
SFL Music Magazine: On this record you had contributors from Toto like David Paich, Steve Lukather, drummers like Gregg Bissonette, Todd Sucherman and Brian Tichy. How did that come together?
Felder: I’ve known all of those players that are on that record for decades. I love them to death. As a matter of fact, when Lukather comes over, he’s played on every album except my very first album. He plays on one track or maybe two, but when he comes over, we spend the first forty-five minutes laughing, telling stories and jokes and having a great time. Then we pick up our guitars and make solos in thirty minutes and we’re done. So (he laughed), we spend more time having a great time hanging out in the studio. We also enjoy playing and making up these parts. I mean, Luke can just sit down and just make up stuff like I can. The same thing with a lot of these drummers and bass players. Whether it’s Jim Keltner or Matt Bissonette playing bass or whoever. I know these guys really well. I know how to cast Todd Sucherman for the most up roaring, heavy, fast pounding track we have. Jim Keltner would be the wrong drummer for that, but I know Todd and it just fit perfectly. My previous record AMERICAN ROCK ‘N’ ROLL had a ton of guests on it too. It had Mick Fleetwood who played the first half of AMERICAN ROCK ‘N’ ROLL while he was in Hawaii. I sent him tracks. He played on it and sent it back to me. Just a ton of people that were guests on it, but I didn’t want to repeat the same thing where I just had twenty-five name dropping guests on it, so I used the people that I thought were most appropriate like Mouse, Greg Phillinganes. You could bring him in, and he will make whatever you’re working sound absolutely amazing! His touch, his feel, his pocket, his tonality, is great! So, for the beginning of “Hollywood Victim” I wanted this really pretty lush piano introduction and then all of the sudden, wow, it just hits you in the face when the track starts. It sort of dangles this carrot in front of you about how wonderful it’s going to be out here in Hollywood, and then the stark reality punches you right in the face when it starts. We just try to cast the right characters and players for each song.
SFL Music Magazine: You were born in Gainesville. We have to plug Florida!
Felder: Absolutely! I love playing in Florida.
SFL Music Magazine: What would you say inspired you to become a guitarist, a musician?
Felder: Well, I had no idea I would ever be musically inspired, but when I grew up, there was no internet. There was no cell phone, no iPads. There was nothing like that. There was just a screen. We had one television set in our living room. It had three channels, ABC, NBC and CBS and those went off the air at sundown. It was mostly news and stuff like that. It wasn’t what they have now. I have DIRECTV and I have five hundred and something channels and I don’t watch any of them (he laughed) because most of them are junk. So, I saw on that black and white television, I saw Elvis Presley play on The Ed Sullivan Show. I saw him shaking his hip and flipping his hair and shoving that guitar and the girls screaming, and I went, I might like to do that. That looks like it could be pretty fun! So, there was a kid that lived across the street from me. Might have been a year or two younger than me, and I had been over to his house several times and I saw this guitar up in the top shelf of his closet. Acoustic guitar. Pretty much a piece of junk. It had broken strings and stuff. I had just come back from North Carolina and my favorite uncle there had snuck a box of cherry bombs into my dad’s trunk for me and my brother to have fun with. My dad would have killed us if he had known we were lighting off cherry bombs. So, one day when it’s raining really hard in Florida, my brother and I run out and light these cherry bombs, some of them, throw them in the ditch, and they’re swept down this stream, and as they go under these big metal culverts, boom! It sounded like a cannon went off out there. So, this boy across the street comes running out and goes, “what are you doing? I want some of those.” So, I said, I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a handful of these cherry bombs for that guitar in your closet. Because we didn’t have any money. We were just starving, dirt poor. Well, he heads over and gets the guitar, brings it over. I give him the cherry bombs and about fifteen minutes later, he’s all out of cherry bombs and I had a guitar (he laughed).
SFL Music Magazine: That’s cool. Great story!
Felder: It was the way I started. My mom had this metal glider on her front porch, and I’d sit there after school. I had a bunch of chores to do like hanging the laundry in the washing machine up on the clothesline, and cleaning up my mom and dad’s dishes from lunch. I had stuff I got to do, but I’d get through that as fast as I could. I’d grab that guitar and sit on the porch; how do you sound like Elvis Presley? How do you make this thing sound like Buddy Holly? How do you make it go? We couldn’t afford instruction or teachers or lessons. Plus, there was no music school in Gainesville at the time. It didn’t exist. So, I had to teach myself, and it’s probably the best thing you could do is learn from ear and here’s why. Children learn how to sing that ABC song by the time they’re two. They don’t know what an A looks like. They don’t know what a B or C. They don’t know anything about the alphabet, but they can sing that song. So, there’s an old saying that says if you want somebody to remember something, set it to a simple melody. So, the kids can learn the entire alphabet before they even know what an A,B,C looks like, right? So, that’s how I learned was from listening to something and then trying to figure out, where are those notes on this thing? It’s like having a keyboard to type on. You don’t know what keys are where, but eventually you learn, and you can just type on it, right? So, I just taught myself, and today I can walk into a store and hear a song that I’m not familiar with, but hear the progression of it and go oh, I know what it is. They’re in E Flat. That was a D minor and it’s going to a G 7. I can hear it. Some guy wrote to me the other day and said, “do you have a tab for heavy metal?” I went, I don’t even have any tabs. I don’t need them. I listen and I play it, whatever it is.
SFL Music Magazine: Is that what you would recommend to a new musician to dig in and learn as much as you can?
Felder: Yeah, I think it’s a combination of both. Some people just are unable to hear musical harmonies. You know, like what notes are in a piano chord or where is the guy playing on the neck? Is he on the pocket or is he down low or where is he playing? So, some people just can’t hear that, and they need to look at a piece of paper. Here’s a great story for you. I don’t know if you know who The Young Rascals were. They were my young band’s mentor. They gave us a B3 (Hammond organ), a set of drums that Dino Danelli gave us. Gene Cornish gave us a guitar and an amp. We borrowed their PA for rehearsals and club kits. They were just our mentor. Eddie Brigati who was the lead singer, had this party over at his house one Saturday or Sunday, and he was dating this girl from Juilliard School of music who was a classical harpist. Absolutely beautiful woman, amazing harpist. She just could sit there and take you to heaven with that sound. So, finally, I went up and I closed her book that she was reading from. I said, just play something. Play you. She said, “well, I have some things memorized that I’ve learned from other composers.” I went, no, no.no, I want you to play you. Don’t play somebody else’s. You’ve got incredible dexterity, amazing control over the instrument, but let you come out of it. She said, “Oh, I can’t do that. They don’t teach us that.” So, to me, it’s like you can read a book, but can you write a book? To me it was more important to be able to write and create than it was to be able to read sheet music. I had to teach myself how to read sheet music when I got into the studio in Boston. I was learning how to engineer, produce, record, write arrangements, write charts for bands, write charts for strings. It was basically a Berklee education that I got paid fifty dollars a week to do (he laughed). It’s because I could hear something and know what was being played. So, I think that’s more valuable than just sitting down and reading stuff. Plus, I think you get a joy out of being able to just pick up an instrument and play whatever you’re thinking about at that time, as opposed to having to play somebody else’s parts or some other song.
SFL Music Magazine: That’s good advice. You’ve been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (in 1998 with the Eagles) and the Musicians Hall of Fame (in 2016). What would you say attributes to your longevity and success?
Felder: Well, I’ve been taking good care of myself physically, emotionally and with my heart. I’m very happy doing what I do in life. I think it’s really important that you spend your time here on this planet doing something you love to do. Not for the money. Not for the status. Not so you could drive a Mercedes, but you do it because you just love it. If you do something like that, it’s not hard work. It’s a labor of love that you’re doing. So, for me, literally I work just about 365 days a year. I probably do about ninety-five to one hundred shows a year, but then I’m in the studio when I come home. I’m writing and recording in there. I’m doing interviews to promote the record. I’m reviewing a contract. We’re putting together different gear to go out on the road. It’s a full-time job, but I love it! I know how all the little cogs to this wheel work and I really enjoy it. Plus, I have an amazing band. I’ve got a band of probably some of the greatest players and singers I’ve ever worked with. I’ve got a guy named Derek Frank who is probably the best bass player I’ve ever had in any band of mine. He worked with Gwen Stefani. He was Shania Twain’s bass player for the last six years. Worked with Shakira, Kelly Clarkson. I mean, these guys are not just your local pickup musicians. They are top notch, amazing, amazing musicians. My drummer, my favorite drummer in the whole world is a guy named Seth Rausch. He’s played with Rascal Flatts. He played with my old friend Sheryl Crow. Worked with a little band called Little Big Town. I think for years he worked with Brad Paisley as Brad’s drummer. He worked for six years with Keith Urban as his touring drummer and now, when he’s not working with me, he works with Carrie Underwood. So, these guys are just phenomenal players, great singers. If I‘m going to go out and play my songs and the Eagles songs, I have to do them more than just a mediocre presentation. They have to be stunning, so people go, oh my God!
SFL Music Magazine: How did the Brotherhood of Rock Tour come together with you, Styx and Kevin Cronin?
Felder: We have toured together for decades literally back to the early 2000s and maybe even 2017 or something. We’ve toured together. I’ve toured with REO (Speedwagon). I’ve toured with Styx. I’ve toured with Foreigner. We all know each other. There’s no drama, there’s no devas, there’s no temper tantrums. There’s none of that stuff (he laughed). We all know each other far too well and love each other. It’s a lot of fun. I mean, that combination gives you four hours of solid hits. All of the Eagles stuff. All of REO and all of Styx. It’s just an amazing night of rock star, fantastic hit after hit after hit after hit at a level that these guys are just playing, not only my band, but Styx and those guys and Kevin, his band is just on fire! So, I think everybody is going to be very, very pleased if they come out and see the show. As a matter of fact, by the time I get down to the last four or five songs of my set playing stuff like “Take It Easy”, “(Life in the) Fast Lane”, “Hotel (California)”, down towards the end of the show, everybody in the place is standing up, clapping and dancing and having fun and rocking out, and just walk out of there saying, “oh my God, that was a great night of music and fun!” So, I know that doesn’t happen at a lot of other shows, but that’s our philosophy. If we can have fun with the audience, then everybody walks out happy, and that’s what you want to do.
SFL Music Magazine: Was there anything else new coming out? Any new videos or anything else for people to know about?
Felder: Yeah, there’s a new video coming out for “I Like The Things You Do”. We just shot it about a week ago. I think it’s going to come out probably closer to album release. We’ve got a little thing we’re putting together for charity for this tour also, which I can’t talk about it right now, but I have determined that I can’t go out and just do this for fun, so we’re going to do some stuff for charity as well. We’re hoping to raise between ten and twelve million dollars for this charity by doing this all summer long. I don’t need to make another dime for the rest of my life, to tell you the truth. I don’t do this for the money. I never did. I do it because I just love to play. Especially when you walk out and you’re playing for five, ten, fifteen, twenty thousand people and by the end of your show, they’re all going YEEES! Massive roar. It just sends so much adrenaline to you. It’s good stuff. That to me is what keeps me going. You know, I have to watch my health. I have to watch my fitness. I have to watch my diet. I have to keep my girlish figure together for the show (he laughed). Even if I’m not on the road, I’ll go in and run the whole show top to bottom where I sing and play it with my rehearsal tracks. So, I just keep myself physically and musically and emotionally in a good place. As long as I can do that, I’m going to keep doing it. My plan is that I’m going to rock ‘til I drop.
