Chords for Don Felder on Life After The Eagles | The Big Interview

The story's been told so many times, I don't feel like we need to go through it here.
You dealt with it in your book.
But basically, you left the Eagles twice.
You had the period of tremendous success through, what, the 70s?
Then you left, and you came back, had a long, good second run,
and then, to your surprise and shock, you get fired.
_ _ _ Without going into excruciating detail, _ _ what happened?
I think the first time we broke up,
Bernie Leden, who was my high school buddy, _ who we had played in bands together for a couple of
years and helped get me into the Eagles, he very wisely was concerned about his health.
And he said, you know, we should take a month off and just go to Hawaii and get some sun on
the beach and stop all this lifestyle, _ _ take a breath, and come back at it,
and kind of pace yourself for longevity.
And no, no, no, we've got the steam going right now.
We have to power this.
We've got this ball going uphill.
We've got to keep going.
So there was a little disagreement early on about how much we should work and how hard
we should work in light of, and I think Bernie was right in his suggesting that we take more
time off, off from each other, off from the drugs, off from the whole thing.
And Donna and Glenn really felt that that was not the thing to do.
And they've made some really great decisions during the course of the whole Eagles career.
They are great leaders in _ knowing what is best for the band to do, without a doubt.
_ So that was one of the reasons Bernie decided to leave the band.
And if we had adopted a little bit of his suggestion, I think, along the way,
we would have all been, A, in better health.
And the band may still have been together today if we had had more time apart to rest and relax.
So that was the first time.
The second time we were together, it had changed.
_ Originally, when I joined the band, it was a five-piece band.
Everybody was part of this corporation called Eagles Limited.
We all owned Eagles Limited.
We shared equally in the gross and the tours and everything like that, the record sales.
But when we got back together, Donna and Glenn felt that they should get a much larger share.
So when they decided they were entitled to more money,
_ I said, oh, OK, but let's just try this and see how this works.
And if there's still problems with it, we'll renegotiate.
So we agreed to do it for 60 shows _ and then renegotiate.
But when renegotiations came around, there were no renegotiations.
It just stood as it was.
And so it kind of constantly rubbed on me through the course of that Hell Freezes Over tour.
And every time, every couple of years, I'd go back and say, well,
aren't we going to renegotiate this as we originally agreed?
And the answer was no. _
So finally, _ _ I don't know who sent who a legal notice or whatnot,
but it just came down that there was no and you're fired.
So _ that's the way that happened.
Well, so much time to reflect on it.
It is, after all, _ quite a long time ago. _ _
Do you say to yourself, might have, could have, should have done it a different way?
_ You know, I don't have any regrets about the way I felt about it at the time.
I think that's a mistake to look back and regret your own decisions. _
A band like U2, they have been high school buddies.
They share equally in everything.
They go on vacations together.
They're families and kids and friends.
There's like a camaraderie there.
That seemed to have dissolved and gone away between that time when the Eagles first broke up
and when the Hell Freezes Over reunion took place.
All of that had changed.
And probably _ a lot of it was because of Don Henley's solo career.
And Glenn Frey had a good solo career in those years as well.
So they felt they were more entitled to a lion's share.
But I don't regret my decisions from the time.
_ You're fired by the Eagles and you go through a divorce.
Had to be, if not the low point of life, one of the low points of life.
How did you get through that?
What did you learn from that?
_ _ _ _ Well, I had really the hugest, the largest amount of success I'd had in my life, career-wise,
with the Eagles.
I mean, we were soaring.
And I'd been married for 29 years during that whole Eagles rise and success and everything.
And to have all of that stripped away in literally a couple of months, the loss of my wife, my
family, my kids, my identity as a father _ and as a parent, and then at the same time, my
success and career, my musical talents being stripped away and just being just me, not
part of the Eagles, per se, it really kind of took me back to a place where I spent a
lot of time every morning meditating.
_ And originally, I set out trying to find how I'd gotten from that little dirt road in Florida
where I grew up through all the courses of my life and career to get to that moment.
And I looked back to my dad, who had worked really hard as a kid, who went through the Depression.
He would lay bricks in the street for 10 cents a day.
You could buy a loaf of bread for a time.
He would come home with a loaf of bread for his other younger brothers and sisters.
He got through it.
Now, so I wasn't out laying bricks.
And I had a big war chest of money from being with the Eagles.
And I was lucky in that I had lost things that really caused me to redefine who I was.
And I think it was a blessing in disguise that all of that happened because I found
what was really an identity unto myself, unto my own.
_ And the strength to battle through that, to me, is what makes people grow and survive.
When you're given something really hard in life and you don't just let it kill you.
If it doesn't kill you, you can get through it and you'll be stronger for it.
Well, you said during this period when you were down that you were asking yourself, who am I? _ _ _
Who are you?
[Dm] Yeah.
You know, I think underneath it all, I'm a person that's very empathetic, _ very.
[C#] _ _ I like to give of myself to other people, whether I'm giving of my music to people that
makes them happy or giving of my time to be able to help people in charity work.
Very grateful for all the blessings I've received.
And _ it's only fair, in my opinion, that if you've been given so much in such abundance,
that you share it.
You know, and if I can share myself and my talents and _ my value in the marketplace with
other people that could really use it and help it,