The Eagles member Don Henley thought lied through his teeth: “If it was real”
There’s always a certain amount of acting going on in the music business. As much as people just want to put their heads down and make the best music they can, it’s still called show business for a reason, and some of the biggest names in music have made a better career out of running their mouths than actually having something decent to say. Although Don Henley might like to get up on his soapbox whenever he has the chance, he admitted that Don Felder was lying through his teeth when making History of the Eagles.
Then again, the entire story behind Felder’s journey into and then out of the Eagles has always been a bit touchy. He may have provided some of the great licks behind ‘Already Gone’ and even came up with the chord progression that birthed ‘Hotel California’, but there was always something missing whenever he played live.
Felder never just wanted to be the guy in the background playing guitar. He wanted a chance to be out front singing, but everyone in the group had other plans. In one of the most cutthroat moves a band has ever made, the Eagles worked on Felder’s track ‘Victim of Love’, only for their manager to take him out to dinner while they recorded over it with Henley on vocals.
Once that tension bomb went off during a benefit gig, it looked like Felder was never going to set foot onstage with the band again. That is, until hell froze over. Once they resurfaced for the reunion album Hell Freezes Over, the same problems happened again, with Felder ultimately quitting the group after he saw that he was getting paid less than his bandmates.
While it probably stung years later for frontman Glenn Frey to call Felder “the only asshole in the band”, Felder tried his best to put on a happy face in the documentary History of the Eagles. Even though they couldn’t settle their differences, Felder looked like he was clearly hurting, fighting back tears when saying, “It just broke my heart. It’s not just playing with Joe [Walsh]. I miss these guys, but mostly, I miss the friendship and the music.”
Although Felder looks genuinely hurt in the clip, Henley thinks it is nothing but another cheap shot back at them. When discussing the documentary later, Henley says Felder’s emotional retort was completely staged, telling Rolling Stone, “That was a poignant moment for sure—if it was real.”
Since then, Henley has been steering the band forward with Walsh as the fixture on lead guitar, with session player Steuart Smith filling out the rest of the guitar parts. Then again, even Smith claims that he’s far from being a member of the iconic group, recalling in the documentary, “I’m one part hired gun, and one part collaborator. I’m one of the guitar players, but I’m not an Eagle. I don’t know what it’s like to be one of those guys.”
And given that Frey passed away in 2016, there is probably no chance of them reuniting with Felder anytime soon. They started off as friends, but when you start becoming business partners, it doesn’t take long for those unbreakable bonds to be cut in half.
