‘Road to Forever’: the album Don Felder used to “rebuild his career” after the Eagles
Don Felder never intended to rock the boat when he joined the Eagles.
When he first played on ‘Already Gone’ and got the gig in the California heavyweights, he seemed much more interested in playing the songs and keeping his mouth shut. He knew that it was a once-in-a-lifetime gig to have, but when the rest of them decided to fly on without him, there’s no rulebook on where someone’s supposed to go after that.
Because if you think about it, Felder wasn’t asking for anything unreasonable when he was first being kicked out of the group. All the tension that came from him and Glenn Frey during their last days in the early 1980s was more about things that had been building up and not being said half the time, and when things aren’t aired out like that, there’s bound to be a blow-up somewhere along the line.
While the rest of the group decided to call it a day after Frey and Felder had it out in front of a crowd, the reunion at least started off promising. Everyone seemed to be on good terms during the Hell Freezes Over tour, and the entire time that they were working, everyone was riding high off the nostalgia that they had for the early days. But once Felder looked at the books and saw the money he was making, everything started to fall apart.
It would have been impossible for everything to be completely democratic, but having Felder ask for more of a cut is at least understandable. After all, he came up with the chord progression and the idea for the solo that became ‘Hotel California’, but since Don Henley, Joe Walsh, and Frey were among the only major hitmakers outside of the group, it made sense that they would get paid more, especially if Walsh was playing ‘Funk 49’ and Henley was singing ‘New York Minute’ during the shows.
And if the bridges were already shaky after he left, releasing a tell-all book about his experiences practically destroyed his chances of ever getting back with the group. Henley had no problem saying that Felder was blowing smoke, but even if Felder was telling the whole truth, the scars that he had from losing his musical friends were all channelled into the next record he put out.
While he only made one solo album while the band was split up, Return to Forever was about much more than coming back to music for Felder, saying, “When I went through the process of writing that book, it was a very cathartic process. It was a healing process for me to be able to get it out. And some of the songs that I wrote for the following album of ‘Road to Forever’ came out of that transition from leaving the Eagles and going forward and having to rebuild myself, rebuild my life, rebuild my career, rebuild my identity.”
It’s not an easy feat to pick yourself up after that, either. Felder had this identity as being the Eagles’ guitarist, but since he was essentially starting from zero all over again, this was his chance to make the kind of album that he always wanted the chance to make but never got to ever since his old band got back together.
And judging by the people that he had to work with, it’s not like Felder was completely alone. Bringing in superstars like Crosby, Stills, and Nash and Steve Lukather for a handful of songs was bound to give him a boost, and while he left his real supergroup behind, Road to Forever was the moment where he tried to prove that he was at least able to move on and make it on his own.
