(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Thu 30 October 2025 19:58, UK
No Eagles fan would dispute that the famed Los Angeles soft rock outfit’s core duo of Don Henley and Glenn Frey stood as the centrepiece of their sunshine harmonies and breezy songbook.
Yet, if one were to figure out the third essential ingredient, Don Felder’s entry to the fold would likely be plumped as ushering in their real classic period. Impressed by his slide guitar for 1974’s ‘Good Day in Hell’, Felder’s permanent recruitment would eventually lead to considerable input toward their defining ‘Hotel California’ three years later, propelling the namesake album to ungodly levels of commercial success and still standing as the sixth biggest selling album of all time.
While fans loved him, Felder’s place in the band would hit rocky waters. Calling it a day in 1980, Henley and Frey would embark on mammoth solo pop careers across the decade, and Felder would carve a role for himself scoring for TV. An MTV reunion special would reinvigorate the Eagles’ stature for a new audience, and their 1998 induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame looked set to bring the team together for another roll of the soft rock dice. Yet, in 2001, Felder found himself dismissed just as the Eagles were finally ready to cut a new record.
“The guy wasn’t bringing anything to the party,” Henley curtly stated in a Rolling Stone interview. “He showed up on time, and he played his instrument well, but in terms of creativity, nothing was happening. He was making a lot of money, and he couldn’t leave it alone. He was obsessed with power”.
It was a take Felder disputed vigorously. Taking to a Q&A with Westword in 2008, Felder emphatically reminded the music world of his alleged reels of tapes he’d bring to every album session right up to 1979’s The Long Run, including the basic sketches of their immortal ‘Hotel California’. Such scoffing clarification pushed Felder to hold a spotlight on one particular song that found its way to 2007’s Long Road Out of Eden double album, the first without Felder.
“I don’t see how they can say that getting rid of me unlocked their creative ability,” Felder opined. “As a matter of fact, if you look at that album – and I haven’t looked at the writing credits – but it seems very odd to me, and peculiar, that they would select a JD Souther song that was written in ’72 to be their first song. If I was the one who’d kept them all locked up in terms of their ability to create and write together, it seems quite ironic that they’d blame me for their inability to write when they couldn’t stay in the same room together, much less sit down and write”.
The song in question was ‘How Long’, a number the Eagles had been performing since the mid-1970s. Originally released on Souther’s debut album, he and the Eagles had been good friends, their live rendition an affectionate take on a pal’s number they all held reverence for. It might be much to suggest hypocrisy regarding a lack of artistic juice, considering Long Road Out of Eden only has one cover, but it being promoted as its first single perhaps alludes to a lack of faith in their songwriting prowess later in life.
The Eagles needn’t of cared, Long Road Out of Eden shooting to the top of the album charts in both the UK and US.
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