“Ready to go”: One bandmate made Glenn Frey want to quit the Eagles
The Eagles never claimed to be the most functional rock and roll outfit in the world. Even though Glenn Frey and Don Henley were the two leaders of the group, their ability to call the shots probably wouldn’t sit well with everyone else trying to add their signature touch to any of their greatest songs.
That tension between leadership and collaboration would come to define much of the Eagles’ internal dynamic. While Frey and Henley saw themselves as the creative architects of the band, the other members often felt like hired hands rather than equal partners. In a group full of talented musicians and strong personalities, that imbalance was bound to create friction sooner or later.
Building a band, let alone a successful band, is incredibly difficult. To be pushed into leaving that band, especially one with so many record sales, is almost unthinkable. Even though Frey could overcome most interband tension, he knew that this guitarist made him want to throw in the towel on the group for good.
Then again, Frey always seemed to need another guitarist to fill out everything. He certainly had impressive songwriting chops, but looking back on the early years of the group, everything worked because Bernie Leadon incorporated his country roots into nearly everything they played.
But that’s not always what the Eagles were destined to play. They may have been proud to put pieces of country into their sound, but there was a fine line between them playing a bluegrass song before they started edging even closer to the Kenny Rogers section of any record shop. So when Don Felder joined during On the Border, it felt like a match made in heaven.
Felder was all over the neck when playing the tune ‘Already Gone’, but since Leadon wasn’t happy getting shafted, he was sent packing after One of These Nights. And after getting Joe Walsh in the group, the California band turned in some of their greatest rock songs of all time, whether that was ‘Hotel California’ or ‘Life in the Fast Lane’. After being with the group for a while, though, Felder knew he wanted more than being a sideman.
Walsh’s arrival pushed the band further away from their country-rock beginnings and toward a sleeker, more aggressive rock sound. His distinctive guitar style added bite and swagger to the Eagles’ music, helping them evolve from laid-back California storytellers into one of the biggest arena rock acts of the decade.
He had been shafted when working on Hotel California on ‘Victim of Love’, but seeing Frey and Henley become the co-captains got too much to bear when he started to get less money. Despite Frey’s claims that Felder was “never happy” in the documentary History of the Eagles, that didn’t stop the singer from losing his cool the minute they played a benefit show for Alan Cranston.
Even though Felder could have cared less about politics, a backhanded remark he made before going on left Frey furious when he went onstage. Frey even claimed that he was squaring up with Felder during their performance that night, saying, “I keep going, ‘Three more songs, asshole’. And I look at him, and I am ready to go. I can’t wait to get my hands on him.”
Although there had been blowup fights before that led to bassist Randy Meisner leaving, his replacement Timothy B Schmit remembered that friction as the reason why Frey disbanded the band, saying, “I called [Frey] a few weeks later, and he said, ‘Yeah, it’s over.’”
The music business will probably never run short of artists who disagree amongst themselves, but considering Frey came to blows with Felder during their reunion on Hell Freezes Over, chances are the old wounds never fully healed. They could still harmonise beautifully onstage, but remember that none of that perfection can happen without going through some hell behind the scenes.
