Credit: TaurusEmerald
Sat 21 March 2026 19:57, UK
Touring tends to be both a blessing and a curse for any major rock and roll act. There will always be times when people get homesick or long to be anywhere but trapped on a tour bus or plane, but the romanticism of seeing the world and going to different locations that most people would kill to see isn’t something that most people would just pass up.
Don Felder didn’t take a minute of the touring life for granted, but when he figured out how much money he was taking home on the Eagles’ tours in the late 1990s, he knew that he couldn’t take it anymore. Things had gone beyond a joke, and his decision, though a huge one both artistically and commercially, had to be made for his own sanity. Felder knew he had to take himself out of the Eagles’ fire and cool down after one tour sent him over the edge.
Then again, Felder was always kept at a distance throughout most of his career with the band. Eagles were a powerhouse group before they opened up into touring. Felder had come into the group relatively late in the game on On the Border, and even when the rest of the band accepted rock veteran Joe Walsh, he wasn’t exactly treated the same way that the hard rock juggernaut was in terms of singing.
Since they were primarily a vocal group, Felder had wanted to sing a handful of tunes, but when he went through ‘Victim of Love’, they cut him out of the picture. It’s one thing to not have the greatest voice, but the last straw for Felder came down to finances, eventually having an onstage fight with Frey when he got pissed during a benefit gig.
Most people could argue that Felder was bitching about taking only a few more checks home, but when the band got back together for Hell Freezes Over, it at least looked like water under the bridge. Everything was running smoothly, the music sounded great, and each member was reminiscing on the good times. That is, until the chequebooks came out.
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When looking back on his decision to leave, Felder cited the lack of royalties being split equally between every member, recalling in his memoir Heaven and Hell, “It felt to me like we’d all been on the same farm eating from the same trough, but two pigs had gotten so fat they were crowding everyone else out. If I were to try to force myself into the trough, I would be run off the farm. Reluctantly, I signed their damn paper. The so-called equal partnership was over.”
From this moment on, things had changed. A hierarchy for the band had now been clearly defined, and while Felder wasn’t an original member, the musician deserved a certain level of respect. The decision would irrevocably damage the band’s realtionship.
It probably does sting knowing that he wouldn’t have seen the same money that Don Henley or Glenn Frey received, but it’s not like Felder was a hired hand or anything. He had been the one responsible for coming up with the chord progression for ‘Hotel California’, so it’s not like he didn’t have a case that he deserved more.
As Frey recalled in History of the Eagles, though, the business side of the group was always about the power of the song, saying that their dynamic was “more like a sports team. Not everyone gets to touch the ball”. But this wasn’t just about money; this was about friendships that had been strained for years finally breaking down.
While the Eagles would soldier on with Steuart Smith for the rest of their career and their long-awaited final album, Long Road Out of Eden, there does seem to be a little bit missing from their final hours. We’ll probably never know what going price Felder was looking for when he reunited with the band, but at the end of the day, he decided to focus on his role in the group rather than his job as a guitarist.
