(Credit: TaurusEmerald)
Fri 26 December 2025 20:30, UK
When talking about the Eagles at the peak of their powers, it’s a lot easier to forget about what Don Felder contributed to the equation.
Don Henley and Glenn Frey may have been the two champions of the band leading them to one musical height after another, but without Felder’s licks and song ideas, we wouldn’t have had the bass line to ‘One of These Nights’, the massive solo in ‘Already Gone’, and the basis for a little song called ‘Hotel California’. He was a key part of half of their classics, but he was the first to admit when he wasn’t playing the most original tunes in the world.
But when looking at the guitar scene that Felder grew up in, it’s not like he was some hack fumbling his way through rock and roll history, either. He had studied every piece of the neck that he could before he had even started jamming with Eagles, and anyone who helped give a few guitar lessons to someone like Tom Petty was sure to have more than a few tricks up their sleeve when they were called up to the big leagues.
And when listening to him in tandem with Joe Walsh, Felder could always hold his own next to his fellow legend. Walsh may have been the court jester of the band half the time they performed live, but when listening to them going back and forth on ‘Hotel California’, it’s almost like watching a bunch of kids trying to outdo each other with every single lick they played. But both of them wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good as they were without a healthy dose of American rock and roll.
They would be the first to say that every guitar player would have bowed to someone like Jimi Hendrix when they were starting out, but there’s a piece of musical history that sometimes gets lost when talking about the South. Hendrix is a deity for a reason, but for anyone who grew up south of the Mason/Dixon line, The Allman Brothers Band took everything that Hendrix was known for and put a Southern accent behind it.
While The Allmans often get labelled as ‘Southern Rock’ half the time, that’s not exactly an accurate description of what they do. Listening to At Fillmore East, a lot of what they are playing is almost closer to fusion jazz than anything else, especially with the odd time signature changes that are going on in ‘Whipping Post’. But beyond the style of music, Felder was transfixed by nearly everything that he heard coming from Duane Allman’s guitar.
Felder had developed his own sound by this point, but when it came to slide playing, he felt that there wasn’t a single note that he played that wasn’t taken from one of Duane’s solos, saying, “I like to say I stole most everything I know about slide guitar from Duane. If you’re going to steal, steal from the best. I was always so impressed with what a great slide player he was. Although if you listen to me playing slide guitar and you listen to Duane, we don’t sound like the same guy.”
If we’re being realistic here, there aren’t many people on this planet that could even hope to sound the same as Duane when making their own slide solos. Even Eric Clapton recognised the kind of genius that he was working with in Derek and the Dominos, and had he not passed away tragically in a motorcycle accident, maybe we could have had even more creative avenues opened that most didn’t think were possible.
Felder might not sound like Duane whenever he picks up a slide, but it’s also hard not to listen to his songs and not hear a little tip-of-the-hat to the music legend. It may still be classified as Southern Rock by people that don’t know any better, but after getting the basics under your belt, Duane is as important to the evolution of rock guitar as someone like Eddie Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix.
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