![\"Don](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Don-Felder-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credit: TaurusEmerald)<\/p>\n
Thu 11 December 2025 18:45, UK <\/p>\n
In a world where every guitarist wants to rock out first, Don Felder<\/a> was always interested in the craft behind his instrument. <\/p>\n Anyone could spend their days trying to pose in the mirror and maybe learn a scale here and there, but the kind of leads that Felder laid down with Eagles and during his solo career were all about trying to make a coherent statement whenever the spotlight was on him. A lot of that comes from practice, but Felder took it upon himself to learn from the greatest fretboard masters he could find.<\/p>\n For anyone of Felder\u2019s generation, though, a lot of the best guitarists tend to all lead to Jimi Hendrix. There are a million different doors that were opened the minute Are You Experienced came out, but when Hendrix took a solo, he helped paint with musical colours that most people didn\u2019t realise were on the spectrum yet. Here was a man on fire proving to everyone why he was the greatest, but Felder didn\u2019t always need to hold himself to that standard, either.<\/p>\n Any Hendrix licks wouldn\u2019t have worked on an Eagles song, and a lot of Felder\u2019s musical vocabulary came from what he was hearing in his backyard. He had grown up in Florida around the time that the Allman Brothers Band first started making waves, and from the first moment that Duane Allman played slide guitar, everyone started to pay attention to the beautiful voice that could come out of the guitar.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not like Felder wasn\u2019t a good student, either. From the first time his solo came in on \u2018Already Gone\u2019<\/a>, he was already earning his nickname of \u2018Fingers Felder\u2019. Bernie Leadon could certainly hold his own next to Glenn Frey whenever he played, but getting Felder\u2019s touch on their classic songs helped give them the rock and roll edge that Leadon\u2019s country picking couldn\u2019t really do.<\/p>\n A lot of it was homespun American rock and roll, but Felder also had another ear focused on what was happening half a world away. The British guitar scene had practically birthed hard rock guitar playing once bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who started making waves, but even for a subsection where Eric Clapton was considered a god, Felder knew that nothing was better than listening to Jeff Beck perform.<\/p>\n