Don Felder is used to pain when it comes to music. I mean, the guy was in the Eagles, a band that epitomized the idea of seemingly seeking pleasure through agony. He took that to a new level when he was carted off the stage in February 2025 due to a pretty serious case of dehydration.

“My phone has never blown up so much in my life as it did when I had that little thing,” Felder says with a laugh.

That laugh is key, as it shows that at 78 – and now incredibly well-hydrated – Felder isn’t about to curb his touring career. “I’m going to rock until I drop,” he says. “But I didn’t think I’d be dropping in the middle of Tequila Sunrise! I thought I’d be dropping during Life in the Fast Lane, and they’d just drag me off the stage.”

Happily, there will be many more stages to drag Felder from. He has a slate of shows planned in 2026 and released a new record – The Vault 1975-2025: Fifty Years of Music – last year. There is, however, a bit of a gray area when it comes to the word “new,” as some, though not all, of the tracks from The Vault are, well, vintage.

For example, Felder wrote Move On, which features some tasty slide work, as an offering to Don Henley and Glenn Frey when he joined the Eagles. Henley and Frey didn’t dig Move On, but Felder did – especially when he recently rediscovered the original 1973 demo in a storage cabinet. He loved his slide work on the track, the roots of which date to an evening spent with Gregg and Duane Allman.

“We became friends,” Felder says. “One night, Duane was sitting on the floor playing slide. I said, ‘You’ve got to show me how to do that.’ He showed me the open tuning and how to pull down the fifth, slide up to the third and have a flat seventh on it. You know, the basics.”

After that lesson, as evidenced by Move On, Felder made the technique his own. “I’ve never tried to copy or emulate Duane,” he says. “He was so far ahead of me. I just felt like, ‘Now that I know how to get around on the instrument, I’ve got to learn to sound like me.’ I can’t sound like him; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do that. But I stole as much as I could from him, watching him play in the old days.”

The Vault is actually a perfect marriage of old and new – a middle ground, if you will. And that’s just the right fit for Felder, who’s sometimes overlooked when it comes to ’70s guitar titans. Not that he cares.

“I never did it for the money, the fame or the legacy,” he says. “I did it because I was fascinated with music. I love to play and write. I love to go to the studio when it’s dark, turn it on and have no idea what I’m gonna do. I pick up a guitar, see what comes out and put it on record.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I retired; I’d be bored to death! It’s fun to have something to be excited about, and I always hope somebody else will be excited, too.”

You recently released The Vault 1975-2025: Fifty Years of Music. What’s the story with that?

I moved out of Malibu in 2000 after going through five major fires – and all the mudslides and road closures – and moved into town. I had a little studio I dismantled and put into storage, and all my tapes and demos were in storage, too. I hadn’t seen that storage locker for 20-something years, so it was time to go through it.

There were boxes of cassettes, CDs and DAT machines that recorded half-inch four-track, half-inch 24-track, 16-track and all the stuff I’d been working on since 1974 and 1975 as demos. I said, “I don’t even know what this stuff is!”

One of the demos you mentioned is Move On.

I’d just been invited to join the Eagles, and [ex-Eagles guitarist] Bernie Leadon told me, “If you want to write songs in this band, just worry about song structure – don’t write lyrics or melodies. Give those ideas to Don and Glenn, and they’ll write lyrics if they like the track.”

So one of the very first things I did was, with a four-track, I recorded myself playing on a cardboard box for the drum track, and then I played bass and slide. It was a very basic, raw demo of the idea. I hadn’t heard it for 50 years.

What did you think when you heard it again?

I went, “I remember that slide part! I loved that slide part.” When I submitted it to Don and Glenn, they went, “I like the slide, but there’s really not much of a song there,” so that’s what I heard, the slide part. I said, “I like that track. I’m gonna finish this.” I finished it, reproduced it, re-recorded the slide part, did the lyrics and harmonies and brought new life to an old idea.

Steve Lukather plays on Digital World. What’s it like working with him?

When he comes over – and he’s played on just about every solo album I’ve made except for the first one, Airborne [1983] – we spend the first 45 minutes to an hour just laughing, telling stories and having a great time before we plug in and tune up. It takes 30 minutes for us to walk through an idea, trade solos and create harmonies. I enjoy working with Steve. He’s brilliant, and a lot of fun to hang out with.

You re-recorded 1981’s Heavy Metal (Takin’ a Ride). How’d you approach It?

When I hear the original recording, it sounds technically dated. It was all analog, and just the echo chambers; it doesn’t sound up to the level of technology today. I decided I’d re-record it in today’s technology, which sounds 100 times better. If you were to play the old two-track version of the stereo version and compare it to today, there’s a massive difference.

You’ve been at it for a long time, which probably means you’ve got gear you’ve had for just as long. It would be easy to fall back on all of that, but you’re leaning into what’s new. Why?

I use vintage microphones, and I have a rack of classic outboard gear I use to record. I just think the process of recording at 96 kHz with high-resolution, quality analog gear on the front end is a wonderful combination.

I use some great new guitars and amps, and I’ve got six or seven amps that Alexander Dumble re-did for me. I’ve got Bogners and tons of different amps and guitars. It’s easy to go in and multi-track. I was looking at something yesterday; I think it’s I Like the Things You Do. There might be 30 guitar tracks on that.

What’s the reason behind that?

Some of them are doubles; some are split left or right. Some are effects I use. There’s just a lot of different ideas and approaches to making a track. Instead of just playing a thing top to bottom with the same rhythm guitar, that, to me, is old school. I was trying to explore, taking old ideas musically and making them sound modern with new techniques and approaches.

Do you still fall back on your guitars from your Eagles days?

I have close to 300 guitars. They’ve all been photographed and given a name. They’re separated by manufacturer; everything by Gibson is in one rack, everything from Fender is another. If I want to pick up my ’57 Strat from the locker, I can open up my spreadsheet, walk into the vault, pull the guitar off the shelf and bring it back – or have somebody go get it.

Of those 300 guitars, which is the most important?

My ’59 Les Paul. I played that on just about every Eagles record that I recorded with a Les Paul. I’ve recorded with it a lot for my albums, and I used it on a couple of tracks on this record, too. I used it on I Like the Things You Do and Free at Last. It feels like home.

Do you see yourself working with Gibson on more signature gear?

No, not right now. I’ve dealt with Gibson since I started playing music, and they released the Don Felder Hotel California copy of my ’59 Les Paul and the white Hotel California [EDS-1275] double-neck guitars, probably 10 or 12 years ago. They sold out immediately.

I don’t know that I’ll do many more endorsements. I really respect the fact that Gibson did it, and was honored that they asked me to do it. I work very closely with them; their Custom Shop makes things for me that are spectacular.

You talked about rocking until you drop – and you’re still writing songs.

I write all the time – almost every day. I write, scribble down a little something while listening to something on TV. I’ll hear an orchestra and go, “That was a beautiful change, back that up…” I’ll grab an acoustic and figure out what chord progression this orchestra was playing, put it on my phone, record it and collect bits and pieces.

When I’m on the road, it’s hard to write music; I can write lyrics, but not necessarily music. So when I come back home, I’m in the studio writing, recording, producing and coming up with ideas. Not all of them will become finished products, but you never know what’s going to come out until you step into it.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

“The desert is where mirage and myth are created, and so is Hollywood,” Eagles founding member Don Henley tells Guitar World. “We are just as susceptible, now, to illusion as the pioneers were – if not more so.”

That mirage, myth and illusion was immortalized on Hotel California, the Eagles’ big American dream-come-true. “Hotel California was obviously our creative peak,” Henley says. “Every band, every artist, has one.” Released 50 years ago – on December 8, 1976 – it’s not only their personal best, but the third-best-selling album of all time, at 32 million copies and counting (the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) is Number 1).

The epic title track inspired a thematic album about the toll of dreams, touching on fame (New Kid in Town), the high life (Life in the Fast Lane), relationships (Victim of Love) and westward expansion (The Last Resort). The message throughout was that dreams often look different up close and have a way of vanishing in thin air.

“We were always keenly aware of the transitory nature of fame and fortune,” Henley says. “The entire Desperado album was basically about that. We had witnessed all the wreckage alongside the Yellow Brick Road. Pop culture, for lack of a better term – and which might be an oxymoron – is all about the new.

“You grind away for seven or eight or 10 years, and suddenly, boom, you’re on the radio; your face stares out from a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. Then your sophomore album flops, your record label drops you, and you’re right back to square one – ‘Please drive through.’”

While square one wasn’t part of the Eagles story, chasing the new was. And the turmoil and pressure to keep outdoing themselves led to substance-fueled power struggles that turned once-close friends into rivals and led to a breakup three years after Hotel California. As Glenn Frey once said, “We made it, and it ate us.”

Significantly, the mythic desert passage is one that all five band members on the album had made respectively in the late ’60s and early ’70s. It was a more innocent time, as they relocated from the South and Midwest with hopes of being part of the burgeoning hippie country scene in and around Laurel Canyon and nightclubs like the Troubadour.

The spot where everyone from Kris Kristofferson to Carole King made their debut is where Henley first joined Glenn Frey for a beer, starting a friendship and the creative nucleus for the Eagles. Back then, the two would ride around L.A. in Frey’s ’55 Chevy, nicknamed Gladys, “plotting and planning.”

It took a while for things to take shape. Both were already in groups signed to the same indie label. Henley’s Shiloh made one album, produced by Kenny Rogers. Frey’s Longbranch Pennywhistle (with J.D. Souther, a key collaborator on Hotel California) did one that included Wrecking Crew cats James Burton and Larry Knechtel. Neither record troubled the charts.

The duo joined Linda Ronstadt’s touring band in 1971, which soon added bassist Randy Meisner of Ricky Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band and guitarist Bernie Leadon of the Flying Burrito Brothers. The proto-Eagles quartet played together only once, during Ronstadt’s engagement at Disneyland, on the Coca-Cola Terrace in Tomorrowland. It was a prophetic spot for the birth of a band that would become as ubiquitous – and successful – as America’s favorite soda.

Within two months, thanks to help from Jackson Browne, they’d signed to David Geffen’s Asylum Records. Their first two albums – Eagles and Desperado – produced by Glyn Johns, were released in 1972-73, inside 10 months. And thanks to Take It Easy and Peaceful Easy Feeling, the group quickly climbed to the top of the country-rock heap. But they craved a bigger heap, especially when they found themselves on the bill with arena rock acts.

“Opening for Jethro Tull and Yes was odd because it was such a mismatch, musically, but it did have the effect of toughening us up,” Henley says.

“But our main problem was that we didn’t have a repertoire. We had released only one album, and Take It Easy was our only hit song at that point. But somehow we survived. Glenn was right saying so-called country rock had its limitations in terms of commerciality, but I think we defied those limitations as we expanded our stylistic perimeters to include more different veins of music. Ronstadt did that, too.”

In the studio, the toughening up got a boost from a new producer. “My first thought was, ‘I don’t want to do a cowboy band!’” Hotel California producer Bill Szymczyk tells Guitar World.

“But they wanted to rock. They’d started their third album with Glyn, who was one of my heroes. But they weren’t happy. Glyn was a taskmaster and had rules about no drink or drugs in the studio. Meanwhile, the guys had heard The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get, which I did with Joe Walsh [in 1973], and said, ‘Who produced this?’”

“Bill was – and is – a lover of rock ’n’ roll, blues and funk music,” Henley says. “He had produced Edgar Winter and B.B. King, among others. After a long day of grinding away on our own material, Bill would put an Ohio Players or a Parliament album up on the big playback speakers in the studio, and we’d kick back and listen. It was fun. The great thing about Bill was that he was willing to let us follow our own instincts, which, at that time, were leaning more toward rock and R&B.”

Szymczyk called Johns to get permission to take over the album. “The answer was, ‘Better you than me, mate!’” A week later, they cut Already Gone, a rousing rocker that gave Frey a chance to bust loose with some razor-tooth lead guitar. Suddenly, the band was getting the edge they wanted.

“It was the beginning of a great marriage,” Szymczyk says, “with each album doing better than the one before, and then Hotel California, which was the high point of their career – and mine.”

For 1974’s On the Border, they added hotshot guitarist Don Felder, who’d been touring with David Blue and Crosby & Nash. Bernie Leadon, who’d played with Felder in high school bands, said, “Felder was a really great guitar player, but when he joined, I could see the writing on the wall for me. I thought, if I’m going to leave, better that a friend of mine gets the gig.”

Leadon stayed for 1975’s One of These Nights, which further upped the ante on extended solos (the title track and the underrated Visions were both six-string showcases). “We were balls to the wall on that album,” Szymczyk says. “They wanted to rock, and we proceeded to damn-sure rock.”

With each album came more fame, more pressure to outdo themselves and more substances. In the mid-’70s rock world, cocaine was the drug of choice. “It was a writing tool, but one that brought out the worst in everyone,” Frey once said. But even without drugs in the mix, there was always creative friction between Henley and Frey.

“It was the Lennon and McCartney thing,” Szymczyk says. “Don writes this way, Glenn writes that way, but together they write better than they do separately. There was always a lot of competition. Frey was competitive in everything! Darts, shooting pool, you name it. He wanted to win. Henley wasn’t as up front about it, but he knew very well what he had, talent-wise. We called him Golden Throat.”

Since the days of cruising around in Gladys, there was one thing the two leaders did agree on; they wanted their band to be the biggest on the planet. And that meant pushing the rock sound to the limit. As Leadon predicted, that put him in their crosshairs. The guitarist had played lead on Take It Easy and Tequila Sunrise. He’d co-written Witchy Woman. His background with the Flying Burrito Brothers had imbued the Eagles with country-rock cred.

For all that, his relationship with them was never easy. Exhaustive touring (he’d already logged five years of roadwork before he joined) and the drug use (he’d kicked those habits) only deepened his discontent. “None of it sat well with Bernie,” Szymczyk says. “The further we went into rock, the less he liked it.”

He remembers asking the guitarist what he thought of a take of One of These Nights with Leadon replying, “I think I’m going to go surfing.” Things came to a head one night in 1975, backstage at the Orange Bowl. As Frey was rallying the band, Leadon poured a beer over Frey’s head and walked out.

Enter Joe Walsh. Late of the James Gang, Walsh was three albums into a successful solo career in 1975. He was already friendly with the Eagles from crossing paths on the road. When they approached him, his response was, “Being part of a group would take a whole lot of weight off my shoulders.”

But it’s easy to forget what a mismatch it seemed. Walsh recalled in The Guitar Greats, “I think 80 percent of people said, ‘That’s stupid – there’s no way it’s going to work.’”

Not only did it work, it changed the band’s energy level. “For starters, things got louder,” Henley says. “Joe, being a bona fide rock ’n’ roll guitar slinger, was the perfect foil for Don Felder. They propelled one another in a friendly-but-competitive sort of way. We had upped our horsepower. This is not to take anything away from Bernie, who was – and still is – a highly skilled musician.”

“As we got into Hotel California, it was like, ‘This is a match made in heaven,’” Szymczyk says. “The friction with Bernie was gone, and it was replaced with somebody that could just blister with a forceful edge.”

Speaking of forceful edge, in Walsh, the Eagles now also had a resident bad boy and gleeful wrecker of hotel rooms. His instrument of choice was a chainsaw. Dressers, chairs, tables got sliced, diced and tossed from windows.

“Keith Moon and Joe were good buddies, and that, of course, led to some mischief,” Henley says. “It was amusing for a little while, but it eventually became a very expensive hobby, and we were beginning to get barred from some of the hotels we liked to stay in. So, after a while, the chainsaws got locked away in storage and other kinds of dramas replaced the ‘remodeling’ of rooms and hallways.”

He adds, “But, at least Joe got a hit song out of it,” referencing 1978’s Life’s Been Good.

In 1976, the Eagles played 68 shows worldwide, from Tucson to Tokyo. For most bands, that would not be a year to make a new album. But the Eagles did, grabbing studio time whenever and wherever they could.

“The demands of touring definitely made it more difficult for us to stay in a creative space, particularly in terms of songwriting,” Henley says. “But, because we were young – and driven – we managed to learn how to juggle. Did the work suffer? Probably, but we did the best we could, given the circumstances we were in. It’s a demanding job, feeding the machine. The machine is always hungry.

“But momentum is important,” he continues. “Once you’re on a hot streak, it’s wise to try to maintain it. Otherwise, you get forgotten or replaced pretty quickly. Back in the ’60s, the Beatles had set an impossibly high bar, both in terms of quality and quantity. So record companies had come to expect an album or two every year. But the Beatles had been able to stop touring and focus solely on recording. Touring was a necessity for us so that we could pay for rent and gas.”

The first sessions for Hotel California were in March at Studio C, the coveted big room at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, with Szymczyk back behind the board. “We’d do two or three weeks, then the band would go back on the road,” he says, recalling they had only one finished song – Meisner’s Try and Love Again. Beyond that, just a “handful of fragments, licks and phrases.”

As Walsh said in Buzz Me In, “We took all of that, put it on a table and said, ‘Okay, let’s pretend this is a jigsaw puzzle,’ and we started piecing things together.”

The jigsaw puzzles could be complex. On the surface, the album’s first single, New Kid in Town, is a soft-rock sigh. But structurally and harmonically, it’s one of the most-involved Eagles songs. Henley says, “That one was mostly J.D., with some essential input from Glenn in terms of words, melody and arrangement, and a few lyrical contributions from me. It’s a great piece of work.”

Modulations, shifting choruses, meticulous ornamentation from Felder on electric and Meisner on the guitarrón Mexicano, wrapped in a harmony cascade that earned a Grammy for Best Vocal Arrangement (“It had parts out the wazoo,” Szymczyk says). How did those beautifully complex arrangements get written?

“Well, nobody ‘wrote’ anything; it wasn’t that formal,” Henley says. “We did everything intuitively, including vocal harmony arrangements. First, we’d decide who was going to sing the lead vocal and then assign harmony parts around that, depending on the key of the song and where the melody sat within the chord progression.”

In the studio, they worked from “2 to 2, with a dinner break at 7,” usually at Dan Tana’s, a favorite red-boothed old Hollywood eatery, next door to the Troubadour. Though friends dropped by the studio, mostly it was the band and Szymczyk, who they nicknamed “Coach.”

“They said I was the Don Shula of rock ’n’ roll,” he says, referencing the Miami Dolphins’ legendary honcho (who was at the helm for their perfect 1972 season). “I was a player’s coach more than Shula,” says Szymczyk with a laugh.

He kept a keen eye and ear on the sessions and was a wizard with a tape-editing razor. And on Hotel California, he had to lay down what he called “the six o’clock rule” to make sure recreational activities didn’t derail progress, including his own.

“Everything was getting a little out of hand by three in the afternoon, so I was like, ‘Okay, enough of that. No beer, no blow, no reefer, no nothing until six.”

That worked for a few weeks; then the grumbling started. Szymczyk says, “I’d be changing reels in the control room, and I’d hear them muttering, ‘Is it six yet?’ followed by ‘It had better be.’”

On the initial pressings of the album, “It is six o’clock yet?” was etched into the runout groove of Side A.

On Side B, the etched phrase was, “VOL is five-piece live.”

“That’s because we were proud that we got that song, Victim of Love, in one take without any edits,” Szymczyk says. The rocker began with a Don Felder guitar instrumental that he passed to Henley and Frey. They brought in J.D. Souther again, who came up with the concept – that having a broken heart is like being a victim of a car crash. In that scenario, all three were frequent car crashers, burning through relationships. “Dudes on a rampage” was how Henley described it.

When it came time to do an album, he and Frey would usually move in together. Before Hotel California, they were briefly ensconced in a Beverly Hills house that once belonged to actress Dorothy Lamour. With panoramic 360-degree views, it was nicknamed “the Eagles’ nest.”

They were an odd couple – Henley the tidy one, Frey the lovable slob, leaving mountains of cigarette ash everywhere. The togetherness might not have helped their friendship, but it was great for songwriting.

Victim of Love’s tale of betrayal and disillusionment was paired with a stuttering, crunchy groove. Felder had assumed he would sing lead, but after a week’s worth of takes, his vocal was deemed “not up to band standards.” Henley recorded the lead while manager Irving Azoff took Felder out to lunch to break the bad news.

In the summer, Szymczyk moved the sessions to Criteria Studios in Miami. “The guys were actually quite happy to be out of L.A. and away from all the partying and the hangers-on,” he says. The only challenge in Miami was the occasional ear-splitting squall coming from the studio next door, where Black Sabbath were recording their 1976 album Technical Ecstasy.

Meanwhile, in the world outside the studio, the United States was basking in its bicentennial. On the surface, the country’s 200th birthday was all stars and stripes, but that was tainted by a Watergate hangover and relentless dark stories in the news.

“The ‘peace and love’ idealism of the ’60s had faded by the beginning of the decade,” Henley says. “The so-called counterculture, due in part to its own excesses, had disintegrated. The U.S. was trying hard to focus on the bicentennial, but the Cold War continued and the Boomer generation had slowly realized that the same corporate forces that had always been in charge were still, in fact, in charge, and there was an air of capitulation.

“There were now the realities of jobs and families to consider. Gone was the dream of a new kind of America; gone was the appetite for rebellion. ‘We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.’”

One of the album’s standout tracks was both a celebration and critique of L.A.’s decadence and the band’s own excesses – Life in the Fast Lane could’ve been subtitled Nervous, Edgy Feeling.

“There are a great many of our songs that could be retitled Note to Self,” Henley says. “Excess – too much of a bad thing or a good thing – was a subject we examined, both from a personal perspective and an American cultural standpoint.”

The song’s classic riff began as what Walsh called his “coordination drill.”

“I had this lick that I played that I would warm up for a show with,” he told Paul Shaffer on Plus One. “It’s an exercise between your right and left hand, faster and faster. I was just playing, warming up for the show, and Glenn comes busting in my dressing room and says, ‘What the hell’s that?’ ‘I don’t know, it’s just this lick I warm up with.‘ He said, ‘No, that‘s an Eagles song, dude!’”

On In the Studio with Redbeard, Frey said the title came one day after a crazy car ride with a drug dealer nicknamed The Count. Going 90mph, Frey asked the dealer to slow down, and the answer came – “It’s life in the fast lane!” With that title, he and Henley wrote the lyrics and melody together.

“We knew it was going to be the most rock ’n’ roll thing the Eagles had attempted so far,” Walsh said. “They turned me loose on that one.”

And what guitar was he using? “That’s a Strat,” Walsh told Total Guitar, “and the amplifier was probably this little orange Roland Cube I was using a lot back then. I found it to be a pretty darn good little amp for recording with a Strat, by turning it up pretty good to make it work.”

The killer riff doubled with guitar and bass, cliff-hanging power chords and trademark four-part harmonies on the chorus. This was a classic Eagles record, yet one that sounded like nothing they’d ever done. And as sonic icing, Szymczyk employed a Jimi Hendrix trick – the “Electric Ladyland two-track flange technique” – to add a whooshing sound to the song’s off-ramp exit.

“When I suggested phasing at the end of the song, Henley and Frey were skeptical,” he says. They thought it might sound too much like the Small Faces’ Itchycoo Park, which Szymczyk says was the inspiration. “I just wanted listeners to feel the rush of the wind in their hair!”

An ocean breeze was in Don Felder’s hair the afternoon he got the idea that would become Hotel California. In his Malibu beach house, noodling on a 12-string Martin acoustic, he hit on a Spanish-sounding chord progression. He put it down on a reel-to-reel four-track, then layered on syncopated electric guitars and a samba beat from a Rhythm Ace drum machine.

He sent it off to Henley and Frey on a cassette with another dozen snippets. They liked what they called “the matador in Mexico” vibe of it and experimented with lyrical and melody ideas.

Henley took the cassette in the car, his favorite place to write. He says, “I think it has something to do with movement and a constantly changing view. Just sitting in a room and trying to find inspiration can be stifling; it’s a static situation. Driving, if you’re not in heavy traffic, creates a feeling of flow that can free the imagination and call up memories and images while the music’s playing.”

After a week or two, the song took shape. “The hotel concept came first, and then the melody,” Henley says. “Sometime in May of ’76, Glenn and I had gone to see Neil Simon’s play California Suite in Los Angeles. But that was after we had come up with the hotel concept; seeing the play was a ‘field research’ trip, just to see if it would help us to flesh out our initial idea. But it wasn’t very helpful; it wasn’t dark and spooky enough for what we were after.”

Or maybe the title influenced them, because their spooky inn became the Hotel California, and in turn, a metaphor for everything from the myth-making of the American Dream to an artist’s search for the muse and spiritual meaning.

The recording of the song took some searching, too. “We cut the track several times, first at Criteria Studios, shortly after Felder had given me the demo,” Henley says.

“The Miami recording was a rough arrangement with the working title ‘Mexican Reggae.’ The second time we cut it was at the Record Plant in L.A., after Glenn and I had come up with some ideas for lyrics and melody, but that recording turned out to be in the wrong key, at least for singing.

“There was often a schism between what key was best for the guitars and what key was best for the lead vocal. At the end of the day, though, the vocal has to take precedence. There are workarounds on the guitar – tunings, capos, etc – but you can’t capo a voice. Or at least you couldn’t then. So we ended up cutting the final track in Miami in the key of B minor with the choruses going to G major.”

Szymczyk recalls that the final version consisted of “33 separate tape edits from five different takes.”

Aside from being the album’s thematic centerpiece and the Eagles’ best song, it also rode out on one of rock’s most iconic guitar duels, with Felder and Walsh trading sizzle and sting, one-upping each other, then finally merging in triumphant two-part harmony.

“We worked really well together,” Walsh told Guitar World while promoting Analog Man in 2012. “It was competitive. We brought out the best in each other. We liked to kick each other in the butt! He would play something, and I’d get an attitude, like, ‘Oh yeah? Listen to this.’ And he’d go, ‘Wow, listen to this!’”

“For two days, we workshopped the hell out of that,” Szymczyk says. “We had amps out in the studio, but Felder and Walsh were in the control room with me, one to the right, one to the left, like gunfighters! Felder was the ultimate technician, always a tad on top of the beat. And Walsh was the ultimate ‘feel’ guy, always a tad behind it. Together, they were phenomenal. Those two days were one of the high points of my career.”

“There are at least half a dozen guitar tracks on the original recording,” Henley says. “In live concert settings, this required Felder to play a double-neck guitar, with the 12-string neck being capo’d on the seventh fret for the intro and the breakdown, and the six-string with no capo for the single-line phrases and the tag solos.

“One of the unique things about the song is that it ends with extended dual guitar solos. Skynyrd had done something like that a couple of years earlier.”

Another thing it shared with Skynyrd’s Free Bird was a length that wasn’t exactly radio friendly – six and a half minutes, to be exact. “The label wanted us to do a single edit, and we all said no way,” Szymczyk says. “Obviously, we were right to.”

After seven months of off-and-on recording, the album wrapped in October.

The cover artwork, designed by John Kosh (who also handled Who’s Next and the Beatles’ Abbey Road), featured a photo of the Beverly Hills Hotel taken from a cherry picker 60 feet above Sunset Boulevard at dusk. Built in 1912 in a Mediterranean Revival style, the pink stucco hotel had hosted famous guests from Marilyn Monroe to Frank Sinatra.

A month after the album came out, when the hotel learned that the Eagles had used the image without permission, they threatened a lawsuit, then dropped it when they realized their bookings had tripled because of the record’s success.

Hotel California was released December 8, 1976, and certified platinum in its first week. It went to Number 1 on the Billboard 200, where it stayed for eight weeks. Reviews were glowing. Creem said there were “no weak tracks; the music flows majestically every step of the way.”

Phonograph Record praised its “peerless harmonies" and said it was “pretty and punchy, as the best albums of fellow troubled hedonists Steely Dan and the Beach Boys are.” NME said, “There’s no laurels-resting, and a lot has gone into its meticulous crafting.”

While Szymczyk calls the record a “quantum leap forward,” Henley’s estimation is more modest. “I don’t know if I’d call it a ‘quantum leap,’” he says. “One of These Nights had three big hits on it. But, in terms of growth and consistency and range, I’d agree that Hotel California was an improvement.”

But the 10-month, 72-date world tour that followed was grueling, so much so that the band’s road crew nicknamed it “The Prison California.” Everyone traveled with their own little entourage. Walsh and Felder had their faction, briefly entertaining the idea of forming their own band.

In History of the Eagles, Henley said, “Glenn and I saw ourselves as the leaders, but other people saw us as dictators. You just cannot have five leaders in a band. It doesn’t work.” But according to To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles, even the two leaders had stopped talking and would only communicate through second parties.

There were also cocaine-induced physical ailments. Stomach ulcers all around. Henley suffered back pain. Frey’s nasal lining was shot (he’d have two surgeries before getting his nose repaired with teflon). By the end of the tour, Meisner had become persona non grata after refusing to sing Take It to the Limit at one show; he left the band shortly after.

The Eagles managed one more album, 1979’s difficult The Long Run (“We called it ‘The Long One,’” Szymczyk says) then broke up after a benefit concert where Frey and Felder openly threatened to fight each other on stage during the performance. It would be 14 years before they reunited.

Despite one album of new material in 2007, the Eagles have become a heritage act, playing the hits – albeit one of the highest-grossing ones on the circuit. After Glenn Frey died in 2016 at age 67, they soldiered on with his son Deacon and Vince Gill taking his place. And so it’s gone over the past decade.

Meanwhile, there are at least 10 high-profile Eagles tribute bands who are on the road as much as the Eagles were in their ’70s heyday. And though classic rock radio has mostly disappeared, subscription services have kept the music playing. Hotel California alone passed two billion streams on Spotify in October 2025.

During the Eagles’ 2026 residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere, Henley confided to CBS Sunday Morning that “This year will probably be it. I’ve said things like that before, but I feel like we’re getting toward the end.”

Meanwhile, their Sphere setlist contains the three key tracks from Hotel California – New Kid in Town, Life in the Fast Lane and the title song. With sold-out audiences singing along to every word and guitar lick, this is music that is now an indelible part of musical culture. It’s a reminder of how the world felt and sounded in the mid-’70s, and also how the American Dream continues to roll along that desert highway, toward the light, but surrounded by the dark.

It makes the album sound just as relevant as it did 50 years ago. “I could make a case for it,” Henley says. “The political chicanery, the national delusion, the undoing of decades of environmental progress, the rebirth of the military-industrial complex. I’ve lived long enough to see that we go around in circles. I think it was Mark Twain who said, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Considering Don Felder owns nearly 300 different electric and acoustic guitars, it was always going to take a special six-string to stand out as the pick of the bunch. But one instrument holds its headstock higher than the rest, and the evidence is there to hear.

Speaking in Guitar World magazine, he has reasoned that his collection is justified. Each gets the same amount of love.

“They’ve all been photographed and given a name,” he says. “They’re separated by manufacturer; everything by Gibson is in one rack, everything from Fender is another. If I want to pick up my ’57 Strat from the locker, I can open up my spreadsheet, walk into the vault, pull the guitar off the shelf, and bring it back.”

It’s an insane level of organization that speaks to his care for each instrument. Every purchase isn’t just another one for the pile. But which is his most important?

“My ’59 Les Paul,” Felder confirms. “I played that on just about every Eagles record that I recorded with a Les Paul. I’ve recorded with it a lot for my albums, and I used it on a couple of tracks on this record, too [The Vault 1975-2025: Fifty Years of Music]. I used it on I Like the Things You Do and Free at Last. It feels like home.”

Felder has previously revealed he parted with $1,200 for his secondhand Les Paul from a man called Tony Dukes in Texas. He'd pass through the state with a pickup truck full of old Telecasters, Stratocasters, and Les Pauls. But Glenn Frey's “kind of derogatory” remark about the guitar led him to dub it the “cheap Les Paul.”

The guitarist has worked with Gibson on two signature guitars, with the double-neck EDS-1275 and 1959 Les Paul reissue dropping in 2012. He doesn't expect to reconnect with the firm anytime soon.

“I really respect the fact that Gibson did it, and was honored that they asked me to do it,” he says, diplomatically. “I work very closely with them; their Custom Shop makes things for me that are spectacular,” but adds that another signature release is not on the cards.

Elsewhere, Felder's former Eagles bandmate Don Henley has explained how Bono helped inspire the band's comeback following Glenn Frey's passing, while also praising relative newcomer Vince Gill as a valuable asset to the band's latter-day line-up.

The band will retire after their record-breaking Las Vegas Sphere residency comes to an end this year, but that's proving enough time for Joe Walsh to debut some new toys on their stages, with a fast-rising electric the latest to make an appearance.

Felder’s full interview features in the latest issue of Guitar World, which can be ordered from Magazines Direct.

The Eagles has been the home to a handful of guitar greats – but the introduction of one such player into the mix helped spell the end for one of the band’s founding members.

The mid-1970s was a transitional period for the Eagles, who, after dropping their first two records – Eagles and Desperado – began to embrace a harder-leaning rock edge in a quest to be the biggest band on the planet.

To help, Don Henley and co recruited Don Felder – a hotshot young player who at the time had been touring with David Blue and Crosby & Nash.

However, his arrival helped speed up the existing creative tensions between the band and their founding guitarist, Bernie Leadon. When this sound became the priority, he knew his days were numbered.

“Felder was a really great guitar player, but when he joined, I could see the writing on the wall for me,” Leadon remembered in the new issue of Guitar World. “I thought, if I’m going to leave, better that a friend of mine gets the gig.”

Felder’s appointment coincided with the Eagles wanting to push their rock sound to the limit. And, speaking to Guitar World, Henley and producer Billy Szymczyk recalled how it led to Leadon’s departure.

“None of it sat well with Bernie,” Szymczyk says of the band’s new direction. “The further we went into rock, the less he liked it.”

Leadon stuck around for 1975’s One of These Nights, but it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing in the studio.

The friction between Leadon and the band was apparent. Szymczyk recalls asking Leadon one day what he thought of a take of One of These Nights. Leadon replied, “I think I’m going to go surfing.”

Things famously came to a head between Leadon and the band when, while backstage one night at the Orange Bowl in 1975, Leadon poured a beer over Glenn Frey’s head and walked out.

In the wake of Leadon’s departure, the Eagles hired Joe Walsh. He was, as both Henley and Szymczyk admit, a far better fit for the band, and the perfect companion for Felder’s high-octane rock style.

“For starters, things got louder,” Henley says of Walsh’s appointment. “Joe, being a bona fide rock ’n’ roll guitar slinger, was the perfect foil for Don Felder. They propelled one another in a friendly-but-competitive sort of way. We had upped our horsepower.

“This is not to take anything away from Bernie, who was – and still is – a highly skilled musician.”

“As we got into Hotel California, it was like, ‘This is a match made in heaven,’” Szymczyk adds. “The friction with Bernie was gone, and it was replaced with somebody that could just blister with a forceful edge.”

Head over to Magazines Direct to subscribe to Guitar World. The latest issue features a deep dive into 50 years of the Eagles, as well as interviews with Michael Angelo Batio and Jerry Cantrell.

A myriad of guitarists from different walks of life have paid tribute to Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, who has died aged 78, underscoring the scope of his influence and impact on American culture.

He co-founded the band, whose genre-fusing exploits earned them a status as one of America's greatest, amidst the burgeoning counterculture movement of the 1960s, and never slowed down. Just last year, his GD-adjacent group, Dead & Company, completed the longest residency at Las Vegas' immersive Sphere venue. There was also a cameo with Sammy Hagar’s band across town.

Weir was diagnosed with lung cancer in July, and continued to perform in light of the news, with his Dead & Company co-guitarist John Mayer leading the tributes.

“Okay, Bob. I’ll do it your way. Fkn’ A…” he writes on Instagram. “Thanks for letting me ride alongside you. It sure was a pleasure. If you say it’s not the end, then I’ll believe you. I’ll meet you in the music. Come find me anytime.”

Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, meanwhile, has reflected on his interactions with the man and what his passing means.

“There were times when I was talking to him when I thought he was the last actual hippie,” he says (via the Guardian). “Bobby was completely allergic to compliments in the most endearing way. I’d say, ‘Man, that guitar riff you were doing on that song sounded really killer,’ and he’d respond, ‘Well, I’m sure I’ll fuck it up next time.’ I loved that about him.”

Steve Vai, who had the “great fortune” of playing with Weir at a 2017 charity concert, says, “for a few sublime hours we just sat around and jammed backstage, earthy and inspired, opening up my ears in ways I’ll never forget.

“Bob was a sharp listener, and his choice of chords, melodies, and tempos created an aura that was at once cosmic and playful…where the lines between sound and spirit blur in the best possible way,” he adds. “It was an absolute honor to share these moments with him, and I’m grateful for every note of light he gave this world.”

Country star Margo Price, meanwhile, who has grown close to Weir over the past decade, compared him to one of Dr. Seuss’s most famous creations.

“He always had a twinkle in his eye,” she says. “Like a barefoot philosopher or the Lorax, he was mystical. The records he made with the Grateful Dead are woven into the tapestry of American music forever.”

The Eagles’ Don Felder says he was “blessed” to have him sing on his solo track, Rock You, and Brandi Carlisle wrote that “Bob had time for all of us. He came to our shows, helped us write songs, and got so many of us out on stage to jam and just stand in his light.”

In a move indicative of Weir’s widespread influence, a truly vast cross section of guitar talent including, Warren Haynes, Joe Bonamassa, Molly Tuttle, Alex Skolnick, Robb Flynn, Duane Betts, Scott Ian, Lee Ranaldo and Aaron Dessner have also expressed their love for Weir and his playing.

“I along with my friend James helped him find a bigsby equipped all gold parts 1956 Les Paul,” relays Bonamassa. “The guitar had a very old sticker of two aces on the original pick guard. He politely reminded me that his most successful solo album was called "Ace". Sometimes things are meant to be and the world works in mysterious ways.”

Meanwhile Bob Dylan simply posted a captionless image of the pair performing together, bluegrass virtuoso Billy Strings looked back on his interactions with the guitar hero.

“I’ll always cherish the memories I have of Bob,” he says. “Of hanging out in his hotel room and him showing me his record collection and mobile recording rig. Sitting there listening to Kind of Blue in silence. Soaking in the frequencies. Of him busting into When I Paint my Masterpiece at my wedding, and in an instant, he turned the place into a joyous musical celebration.”

Bob Weir is survived by his wife, Natascha, two children, Shala Monet and Chloe, and a sprawling discography that has forever changed the face of American music.

Don Felder is 77 and in February of 2025 he had a health scare, collapsing on stage due to dehydration. You’d think he’d be mulling the idea of slowing down, but when Felder talks about his career, there’s an urgency to his voice. “I’ve got to work and produce as much as I possibly can while I’m still in good health, and still happy and inspired by it.”

To that end, Felder is holding up his end of the bargain, releasing The Vault – Fifty Years Of Music earlier this year. The album is a collection of old, new and reworked material. “I walk into my studio with it being totally dark, [thinking], ‘I have no idea in the world what I’m going to do,’” Felder tells Guitarist.

His approach seems a bit whimsical, if not entirely romantic. But given his prowess – which has produced classic solos on songs like the Eagles’ One Of These Nights, Hotel California and his beloved cut on Heavy Metal – who can argue?

But that’s not to say that Felder isn’t without a plan. In fact, he’s downright techy: “I open up Pro Tools and I’ve got everything set up,” he says. “Then I grab an electric guitar and see what comes out.”

Though many of Felder’s iconic solos present as pre-composed, it’s his underrated improvisational nature that guides his playing. “I love walking into my studio and going, ‘Let’s try this….’ The worst thing that can happen is it goes to digital heaven. But I don’t erase anything, to tell you the truth.”

Felder’s solo career is booming, with his live shows well attended, but there’s no denying his association with the Eagles, a band he left under difficult circumstances in the early 2000s. Nevertheless, the veteran guitarist is past all that and keeps a cheery outlook bred through the Malibu sunshine he finds himself in while off the road. And unlike the Eagles, who are currently playing out a residency at Las Vegas’s Sphere following the ‘Long Goodbye’ tour, Felder isn’t hanging up his six‑string anytime soon.

“It’s a great life,” Felder says. “I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to do this. I’m still in good health and writing and recording good stuff, so I’m going to keep doing it. My philosophy is: I’m going to rock till I drop.”

You had a health scare mid-performance earlier this year. How are you feeling now?

“I’m feeling fantastic. I didn’t realise what dehydration is, or what it could do to you. When it hit me in the middle of the set on that cruise ship, I had no idea what was going on. It was like somebody reached over, took the light dimmer and just slowly dimmed it down to zero.

“I was holding onto the microphone stand just to keep myself from collapsing when Jaden [Osborne], my girlfriend, who was on the side of the stage, recognised it immediately and came over to help me get off the stage.

“Ironically, there happened to be a paramedic in the crowd from Gainesville, Florida, of all places – where I come from – who came backstage and took me down to the medical place.

“They gave me an IV and 30 minutes later I was back, saying, ‘Let’s go finish the set.’ But they said, ‘No, everybody left,’ so I took the rest of the day, and the next day I continued the show. But I didn’t realise how important it was to stay hydrated, especially at sea.

“I don’t drink alcohol or do any drugs, so I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was. But it was just a total matter of not drinking enough electrolytes. So I’m back to 100 per cent.”

You have a new record, The Vault – Fifty Years Of Music. What’s the story there?

“I lived in Malibu for 29 years and after the fifth major forest fire running through, though I’d never lost a home, I was at the point where I was tired of the roads closing and the mud slides from the rain. I said, ‘I’m just going to move into town.’ So I packed my studio up and carted it into town, and in 2000 we put it all in a storage unit.

“I hadn’t seen anything in that storage unit for over 20 years, and about four or five years ago I took a look and found a huge box of four-tracks, cassettes and CDs. I thought, ‘I don’t even know what this stuff is…’ but as I played them, I kept hearing some of these ideas, which were great. They were just thumbnail sketches of song ideas, so I took those and finished them – and also wrote two new songs.”

You’ve got a reworked version of Heavy Metal on the record. What led to that?

“After listening to it since 1981 or ’82, just the tonality and the quality of it sounded kind of dated, you know? I thought, ‘I really like that song. I love playing it, and I play it at almost every one of my live shows. I just want to do a fresh version of it.’ I used 96k Pro Tools and with the remastering that we have today you can make things sound really great. So I went back and re-recorded it. It was fun to do and it just sounds a lot better to me.”

Is it true that Heavy Metal was a song that started with the Eagles but found life after you broke out the solo?

“It was going to be a follow-up on The Long Run to Hotel California. It had a real kind of heavy hand to it and I wrote it so that Joe [Walsh] and I could play even harder than we did, or edgier than we did on Hotel, against each other. It had harmony parts, trading-off solos and a much harder rock edge.

“We went in and recorded the basic track for The Long Run but never got around to finishing the lyrics. So we had a basic track, but it just died in the Eagles’ vault until I got a call years later about doing a song for the Heavy Metal movie [released in 1981].

“Without the title Heavy Metal, that song could have, and should have, in my opinion, been finished on an Eagles record with Joe and I following up on Hotel with some dazzling guitar solos and stuff. It didn’t happen, we just didn’t have time.

“We had a tour booked and planned, and we were just dying to get through this record [The Long Run], the final mixes, cleaning up vocals, mastering, artwork. We just didn’t have time to do everything we needed to do. There were a lot of dropped ideas along the way, but I took the idea and turned it into Heavy Metal.”

How about the opening track, Moving On, which dates to 1974 when you first joined the Eagles?

“It was the first demo I wrote for the Eagles as a contender for a song that might wind up on an album. Bernie Leadon, my high school friend and [Eagles] bandmate told me, ‘If you want to write songs for the Eagles, don’t write lyrics, only write music, like a song structure.’

“So it was like intro, first verse, second verse, chorus, third verse, chorus, solo, chorus, chorus, chorus, outro, right? Every time I would write song ideas, I wrote them with no lyrics, no vocals, no nothing. Don Henley loved that song, it was just that we had no time to actually do a basic track of it.

“We were interested in finishing an album, getting it out and getting back on the road, doing promotion and live shows. That song literally sat in that cardboard box since 1974, I guess, until I pulled it out, and said, ‘What is this?’ I listened to it, and went, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember this… this was a great idea.’ That’s how I breathed new life into some great old ideas.”

On the subject of the Eagles, people often talk about your Hotel California solo, but you had a lot of improvisational moments with the band, too.

“I guess my most famous improvisation was the introduction on the acoustic version of Hotel California for Hell Freezes Over [1994]. We had worked it out at rehearsal, and Henley said we needed an acoustic version because everybody was doing the unplugged thing back in the mid-90s.”

It seems precarious to alter such an iconic song, especially given the reunion nature of Hell Freezes Over.

“I worked up an arrangement where I didn’t use steel-stringed acoustic guitars because we’d have sounded like a bunch of flat-top country pickers [laughs]. I have pretty good acoustic chops on nylon-string guitar, so when we went and got on stage, we were ready to do the soundcheck, Henley says, ‘Hotel needs a special introduction.’ I said, ‘Well, what are you going to say? Are you going to talk about how it came about or what it means?’

“Henley said, ‘No, no, it needs a musical introduction. Make up something.’ So I’m sitting on stage, there are about nine to 10 cameras, and an orchestra behind us all sitting there waiting for me to make up the introduction of Hotel California…

“I said, ‘Well, okay, you guys play a chord and I’ll diddle with this chord and then I’ll diddle some more.’ I played a chord, diddled all the way up to the end of it, and when I hit the last note, I said, ‘I want you guys to strum the last chord and then we’ll start percussion.’

“We did that, made two takes of it – because we did two shows in the same outfits and clothes so we’d have a lot of footage – and when we got to the studio, we listened to it and that one was the one, the first one was what wound up on the record. A lot of times, my first shot from the hip is the best thing that I’ve got.”

Your acoustic work on The Sad Café from The Long Run seems to have an improvisational quality to it. Was that the case?

“The ability to just make something up on the spot and being able to improvise has just been a wonderful thing for me to explore. But when we were doing The Sad Café, I’d been playing acoustic on it and Don said, ‘Why don’t you do a guitar solo here?’

“I said, ‘Well, I can’t do an electric guitar solo in the middle of that song. Let me come up with something that’s an acoustic solo.’ It was the first time I had multi-track harmony acoustic guitars playing a solo. It was just something new, different. I said, ‘Let’s try this…’”

Given that your fans expect you to play a lot of well‑loved Eagles material live, are you able to improvise as much as you’d like?

“When I walk out on stage, I have to play a lot of things that I recorded and wrote with the Eagles and co-wrote with those guys. I have to play it pretty much verbatim. I can’t go out and jam on the end of Hotel California; people will go, ‘What is he doing? That’s not like the record!’ So I’ve got to play stuff like people have heard it for the last 40 or 50 years. To be able to open my creativity in my studio is really a blessing and I love doing it.”

We’ve heard a lot about your Gibson Custom Shop guitars in recent years, but what else are you using these days?

“I have a little over 300 guitars and just about every name, brand and model you can think of. I met Leo Fender out in Corona at the Custom Shop when he was still alive, and I’d go out there, grab four or five necks out of the trash can and they’d give me unfinished bodies.

“If I wanted to have pickups, I’d go up and see Seymour Duncan, my buddy, and we’d wrap some pickups up there, which I still do.

“So I’d build these Strats – I’ve probably got six or eight Stratocasters that I just built out of parts that are in my locker. That, to me, is really kind of fun because I’m building things that are totally different from what you’ve ever seen, heard or used in the past. It’s a different-sounding Strat. I love experimenting with just building stuff.”

Do you have one guitar to rule them all, so to speak?

“My original ’59 Les Paul that I spent $1,200 on. When I bought it, I got it from a guy named Tony Dukes in Texas. Every time [the Eagles] came through Texas, he would show up with either a station wagon or a pickup truck full of old Telecasters, Stratocasters, Les Pauls – you name it. And we’d buy everything he had.

“I bought that Les Paul for $1,200, brought it to soundcheck, opened the case and Glenn [Frey] went, ‘Wow, that’s really nice. What’d you pay for that?’ I went, ‘1,200 bucks…’ Now, that was a lot of money then and so Glenn said, ‘Cheap!’ in a very kind of derogatory way. So I have always called my ’59 Les Paul ‘the cheap Les Paul’. But now, today, it’s probably worth well over a million bucks, if not more. I think it was a good investment at the time [laughs].”

How do you view your solo career versus your work with the Eagles?

“Looking back, the Eagles were a very controlled environment. We were all trying to do the absolute best that we could do, from writing lyrics, vocal tracks, guitar parts – everything. And whoever was the one who came up with the strongest idea and had the greatest energy in a certain direction, that’s what we followed.

“But it wasn’t like I could walk in and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this rough idea for a song here,’ and I’d start playing a groove and have everybody just jump on it. It didn’t work quite that way. A lot of what happened was under a kind of group control, if you know what I mean.”

What does the future look like for you in terms of live performances and new music?

“The future looks really bright. I love touring, despite the fact that when you tour, you spend more time every day tracking than you do actually playing music. That’s why when I’m going from A to B, I always break out a laptop and start writing down song ideas.

“I hate to have that time just evaporate and not be productive. I got to the point where there’s nothing else I would rather do, and there’s nothing more fulfilling, exciting and that I’m more passionate about in life than writing, recording and touring.”

• The Vault – Fifty Years Of Music is out now via Frontiers

In 1976, The Eagles released one of the best guitar songs – and, in turn, one of the best guitar solos – ever committed to tape when they dropped Hotel California. A few years later, plans for a spiritual sequel were in motion – but they never came to pass.

Instead, that song, which had been mooted as a follow-up to Hotel California, found life outside the confines of The Eagles – and ended up as the theme song for an animated feature film five years later.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitarist, Eagles guitarist Don Felder addressed rumors that his solo hit Heavy Metal had originally been conceived as a song for the band, confirming it had been intended to be another excuse for him and Joe Walsh to let loose on some “dazzling” guitar work befitting a Hotel California sequel.

“It was going to be a follow-up on The Long Run to Hotel California,” he states. “It had a real kind of heavy hand to it and I wrote it so that Joe [Walsh] and I could play even harder than we did, or edgier than we did on Hotel, against each other.

“It had harmony parts, trading-off solos and a much harder rock edge. We went in and recorded the basic track for The Long Run but never got around to finishing the lyrics.”

The track went unfinished, but Felder would bring it out of its early retirement a few years later when he got tapped to write a song for animated sci-fi feature film Heavy Metal. He had the perfect song in mind for the gig.

“We had a basic track, but it just died in the Eagles’ vault until I got a call years later about doing a song for the Heavy Metal movie,” he continues.

“Without the title Heavy Metal, that song could have, and should have, in my opinion, been finished on an Eagles record with Joe and I following up on Hotel with some dazzling guitar solos and stuff.

“It didn’t happen, we just didn’t have time,” Felder continues of Heavy Metal’s fate. “We had a tour booked and planned, and we were just dying to get through this record [The Long Run], the final mixes, cleaning up vocals, mastering, artwork.

“We just didn’t have time to do everything we needed to do. There were a lot of dropped ideas along the way, but I took the idea and turned it into Heavy Metal.”

Back in 2021, Walsh discussed the makings of Hotel California, revealing the iconic lead lines were not pre-planned – and were instead entirely improvised.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitarist, which also includes an interview with Mark Knopfler and his former guitar tech – who discusses why he convinced Knopfler to swap Strats for Les Pauls.

After Hotel California, the Eagles’ landmark 1976 album, saw them rise from country rockers to just plain rockers, Don Felder and his bandmates should have been on top of the world – but all was not well in paradise.

The warm smell of colitas was not rising up through the air, and there was a distinct lack of cool wind in the band’s collective hair. Exhaustion, infighting, drugs and alcohol – basically the tropes that were supposed to drag down rock bands, as per Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous – had all but derailed the Eagles.

After the supporting tour for Hotel California, they could have stopped – and they should have stopped… for the night (okay, that’s my last Hotel California reference) – but they didn’t. Instead, they hit the first of what would be five studios in 18 months and kicked off the sessions for the aptly titled The Long Run.

Don Felder, one of the classic Eagles lineup’s trio of guitarists alongside Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh, remembers this period well. “The Long Run was a kind of crazy album,” he says. “We started without very many song ideas.”

Given the sheer strength of Hotel California, it’s strange to think the Eagles suffered from a lack of songs, but it’s true.

“Joe had joined during the Hotel California album,” Felder says. “When we got to The Long Run, we were right off the road, going into the studio, and nobody had a break or time to start writing. It was a difficult time personally, physically, emotionally and creatively in every way.”

On the surface, The Long Run doesn’t seem too far off from Hotel California. But Felder refers to The Long Run sessions as a dark time, adding, “If you look at it, that’s why the record is black. And when you opened it up, the photo of us was dark.”

To Felder’s point, if you dig deeper into The Long Run, themes of darkness linger. Be it The Disco Stranger, with its overt disdain for four-on-the-floor beats, or the bewilderment of I Can’t Tell You Why, The Long Run is a snapshot of a band on the brink of self-destruction. But it wasn’t all bad, as Felder and Walsh traded off plenty of quintessential riffs and solos.

“Joe and I always had a great personal relationship and a great deal of respect for each other,” Felder says. “We developed, without even talking about it, the ability to dance together, where somebody would take a step back and support the person who stepped forward, and that person would step back and support the other person to step forward.”

After a year and a half of self-inflicted damage, The Long Run hit shelves in September 1979. Although not as lauded as Hotel California, The Long Run eventually sold in the millions, giving the Eagles a proper followup.

Still, critics weren’t initially kind to The Long Run, likely as a market correction for lavishing so much praise on Hotel California. But no shade thrown the Eagles’ way could do more damage than the wounds already inflicted, and by 1980, the Eagles had imploded.

Darkness, sadness and an eventual public breakup will always be inextricably linked to The Long Run. But like most things in life, there are two sides to every story, and with separation, Felder can see some positives.

“We made the absolute best product we could,” he says. “Fortunately, it’s kind of stood the test of time. Even though it took a long time to produce, I think it was well worth the effort, the energy and not letting stuff slide by that really shouldn’t be on the record.”

Did the Eagles feel pressure to follow up Hotel California with a great album?

“I think Glenn [Frey] said it best when he said we “created a monster with Hotel California, and it ate us.” We were trying to get back up over the bar because we had raised the bar every album with the songwriting, performance, vocals and guitars; it was more and more refined toward being spotlessly perfect.”

Notoriously, The Long Run took 18 months to record – in five different studios! That had to be draining.

“Bernie [Leadon] had left the band during the very end of the One of These Nights album [1975] because he kept saying, ‘We need to take a break. We just needed to take three weeks or a month off, stop doing it, go to Hawaii, get some rest, get off drugs and drinking and just recharge ourselves, and then regroup.’ Nobody wanted to do that.”

Why not?

“Everybody kept saying, ‘We’re pushing this uphill, we’ve got to keep going.’ [Bernie’s advice] was probably the most sound advice anybody gave that band, and it was only upon his departure that I realized how right he was. The longer we stayed at that pace, the more difficult it became to be happy, in a good mood, have fun and write great songs. It was just very heavy to continue on.”

Despite the heaviness and darkness surrounding the band, The Long Run boasts several great songs, including Those Shoes, which features you and Joe on dueling talk boxes.

“I wanted to do some unique stuff with Joe, so I wrote the music for what became Those Shoes. I wanted to do two talk boxes, like two trumpets that would play that line. So Joe and I played harmony talk boxes, and we had a place for a talk box solo, which had never existed on any of the Eagles’ records. It was a new sound in those days.”

You also wrote the music for one of the more rocking tracks on the record, The Disco Strangler.

“I wrote the song that Don Henley started writing lyrics to called The Disco Strangler. It was back in the disco days, and [Don] hated disco. [Laughs] He hates the four-on-the-floor beats; he just wanted to kill disco, you know? So he took this little music track I had written and he wrote [the lyrics for] The Disco Strangler.”

It’s it true that your solo song Heavy Metal originated from The Long Run sessions?

“I wanted to do a follow-up to Hotel, where Joe and I could play off each other, much like we do in Hotel. We recorded a basic track tentatively titled You’re Really High, Aren’t You? but we didn’t have lyrics, and I was just writing the music. It was much heavier, sort of toward the heavy metal edge, but it would have been more refined, like Hotel was, but with a harder rock edge. We loved it.”

If you loved it, why didn’t that track end up on The Long Run?

“We ran out of the time we had allocated to finish the album. We had a tour starting, so there’s a track that was written by me and played live by the Eagles, but it never got finished. So when I got a call from a movie director to come to the studio and write songs for this crazy animated movie called Heavy Metal [1981], I thought of the track and said, ‘Maybe I could take the idea musically and turn it into something for this movie,’ because it was never going to happen with the Eagles at that point. So I did.”

How did you, Glenn and Joe divide the guitar parts on the rest of The Long Run?

“A lot of that just kind of fell into place as things happened. It really fell into what was needed for each song and who was going to play what. We never played three Gibsons; it was always a Strat, a Tele and a Les Paul, or a Gretsch, just to have tonal separation. You could recognize one player because his sound was so different from the others.

“I remember Joe came into the studio one day with this old Strat. He brought it in, plugged it in and was sitting there playing, and I said, ‘That thing sounds great. Let me hear that,’ and I picked it up, and it sounded like me. [Laughs] It didn’t sound like Joe. So we just kind of figured out, ‘Okay, who’s gonna play what?’”

As far as lead guitar goes, how would you describe the yin and yang between you and Joe while recording The Long Run?

“As we were soloing together, he would go up and be playing high and I’d be playing a solo underneath him halftime, and he would be playing faster, and I’d be playing low and slow. Then he would start coming down, so I’d start going up, and he’d be playing low and slow and I’d be playing fast and high.

“It was a dance we worked out without ever having talked about it. It was just a natural way we figured out how to play together, sense each other and respect each other.”

Despite it being a long process during a dark period, did you feel good about The Long Run the first time you listened back to it?

“I thought we had done a really good job with what he had. We had people with casts and wounds and crutches to get through the very few last months of finishing that record. But when you listen to it, you don’t hear any of that. It just came across really great. I was happy that we had done it, you know, put a bow on it and put it out.”

Do you look back on The Long Run fondly now that you’ve had some separation?

“Yeah. I think the combination of all the players I was in the band with, like Bernie and then Joe, and Randy Meisner and then Timothy [B. Schmit], who joined to replace Randy, the music and the writing were of a really high quality.

“We just kept setting the bar higher and higher and higher in songwriting, lyrics, vocals and guitar parts and in the way the band sounded and the way it was recorded.”

• The Long Run is out now via Elektra.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

After recently being ushered offstage due to a medical emergency, former Eagles guitarist Don Felder is sharing his side of the story about what really went down last Thursday during his Rock Legends Cruise performance.

“I have always said that I'm going to rock till I drop. I never [thought] it would be in the middle of Tequila Sunrise, instead of like [Life in the Fast] Lane or Hotel [California] or something really fun,” he quips in an interview with Sal Cirrincione from iHeart Radio.

“I was feeling fine before the show – all day long, I felt naturally my 100 percent or my 99.9 percent, and I went onstage, and I started the introduction forTequila Sunrise. I stepped back from the microphone, and I just was like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. This feels like acid.’ I just felt like I'm leaving my body.”

Felder recounts how he looked over to his girlfriend, who was standing at the side of the stage and “knows every look I've ever made to her.”

She saw him losing his balance, and within seconds, “came right out on stage, grabbed me and had to get me offstage. She saved me from one of the most embarrassing things, which would have been to fall down onstage by myself. So I owe her big time.

“We got down to the medical room, and they did a heart check and they did all this stuff. They realized that I was just dehydrated, [and] they put me on an IV. 30 minutes later, I was back making bad jokes, and everybody in the place was laughing.”

Guitar legend Robin Trower, who was also part of the panel, then chimes in with a similar on-stage experience.

“Five years ago, that was the last time I was touring in the States,” he recounts. “And same thing, dehydration. Nearly collapsed on stage, but managed to make it to the side and then collapse. It's scary, though, when it happens, because you think, ‘Is this where I finish up?’ but thank God I didn't!”

Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder has released a statement to fans after suffering a medical emergency on stage last Thursday when he was rushed offstage during a Rock Legends Cruise performance.

In a video shared with TMZ by an attendee, Felder was introducing Tequila Sunrise [from 1973’s Desperado] – which he dedicated to Eagles founding member Glenn Frey – when he suddenly stopped strumming his acoustic guitar and appeared to lose his balance.

A crew member promptly came to his assistance and escorted him backstage, alongside the rest of the band members, who looked visibly concerned.

A day after the event, Felder's team shared an update via Instagram. “We appreciate everyone’s concern regarding Don Felder’s abrupt stop to his show last night on the Rock Legends Cruise,” they wrote. “After receiving medical attention he was deemed to be suffering from dehydration. He was given fluids, and is feeling much better.”

The statement further announced that the remainder of Felder's cruise performances will be rescheduled to “ensure he has ample time to rehydrate and recover fully,” before adding, “Thank you for your understanding and remember – drink your water!”

Felder served as the Eagles' lead guitarist from 1974 to 2001 and contributed to some of the band's best-known albums, including 1976's Hotel California. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of the band in 1998. In 2001, Felder was fired from the Eagles, which led to a lengthy legal battle.

Felder's incident follows the announcement that his successor, longtime touring guitarist Steuart Smith, is stepping down from the band due to his recent Parkinsonism diagnosis, amid the Eagles' Las Vegas residency.

The Eagles’ 1976 song Hotel California makes just about every list of best guitar solos, including ours.

Credit for the guitar majesty of Hotel California is often given to Joe Walsh, who toughened up the Eagles’ laid-back California sound when he joined the band just prior to the Hotel California album’s recording.

Actually, the primary guitar heard throughout the solo belongs to Don Felder, who wrote the music for the track and actually conceived and played the solo’s intricate harmonies on his initial, instrumental demo.

“Every once in a while it seems like the cosmos part and something great plops into your lap,” Felder has said.

In the video below, Felder explains the inspiration behind the song, which he cowrote with Don Henley and Glenn Frey.

More importantly, he also shows you how to play it, with an in-depth, unaccompanied playthrough of the iconic chord progression, followed by its epic solo section.

The original studio version of the song was recorded in B minor with a capo at the 7th fret, but Felder would play the track live in A minor, and uses a capo at the 5th fret for his lesson. He removes the capo for the solo.

In his book Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles, Felder described how he wrote the track.

“I had just leased this house out on the beach at Malibu – I guess it was around 1974 or ‘75,” he recalled.

“I remember sitting in the living room on a spectacular July day with the doors wide open. I had a bathing suit on and was sitting on this couch, soaking wet, thinking the world is a wonderful place to be.

“I had this acoustic 12-string and started tinkling around with it, and those Hotel California chords just kind of oozed out. I had a TEAC four-track set up in one of the back bedrooms and I ran back there to put this idea down before I forgot it.”

The Eagles are one of the most successful bands to emerge from the '70s country-rock scene. The group’s mixture of styles can be heard on countless hit songs that are embedded in the very fabric of popular culture. Indeed it’s hard to imagine rock music without The Eagles. 

As well as their wealth of hits – including Take It Easy, One Of These Nights, Desperado, Lyin’ Eyes, and Tequila Sunrise – they are also responsible for some of the most iconic guitar performances ever committed to tape. 

The guitar solo on Hotel California is seen as one of the greatest of all time, and is the perfect example of two guitar players totally in sync with each other. But listen to the rest of the song – the rhythm parts, the acoustic picking, the harmony counter melodies. It’s just incredible. But it isn’t just Hotel California. The guitar plays a massive part, in both sound and appeal, throughout the band's immaculate catalogue of hit songs.

The Eagles were formed in 1971 by drummer and vocalist Don Henley and singer-guitarist Glenn Frey, with the band originally put together as the backing group for Linda Ronstadt. The original lineup also included Bernie Leadon on guitar and vocals, and bassist-vocalist Randy Meisner. Their blending of country and rock as well as their rich vocal harmonies helped to quickly establish the band’s unique sound. 

Guitarist Don Felder was brought into the fold for guest solos on the band's 1974 album, On The Border. This record has more of an overt rock sound, as it showcased Felder’s tasteful and feel-drenched lead playing, with the opening track Already Gone featuring a guitar duel between Felder and Frey.

Leadon’s final album with the band was One Of These Nights, which included the instrumental track Journey Of The Sorcerer, which would be used as the theme tune to the original television version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. 

Although the album was a huge success and included two of the band’s most popular songs, One Of These Nights and Take It To The Limit, Leadon felt the group’s new rockier appproach was not for him, so he left. 

Joe Walsh was brought in as Leadon’s replacement, and the pairing of Walsh and Felder took the band to new heights. Walsh added a more gritty rock element to The Eagles’ polished sound. 

This unrivaled guitar partnership recorded the band’s most popular material, with 1976’s Hotel California being the first album to feature Walsh, who made an instant impression with his performance on such songs as Life In The Fast Lane, Victim Of Love, and, of course, the title track itself, which not only became the band’s signature song, but also a textbook example of rock guitar done well.

Felder had a turbulent relationship with Henley and Frey, leaving once and then being fired after the band had reformed. He was replaced by guitarist Steuart Smith.

So what makes the guitar style of The Eagles so great? At its heart we have incredible songs with satisfying chord changes, and a wide variety of guitar-driven textures. One musical tool we see throughout is subtle tension and release, using slash chords within a progression. A chord move heard a lot in their early music is based around the open G, shifting up to C/G and resolving back to the G Major.

And then there’s slightly more elaborate chord harmony and movement; listen to the picking during the conclusion of the verses in In The City. Here there’s an open D Major chord which shifts up a tone to E/D, which is simple yet very effective. As well as chord rhythm we have riffs; Victim Of Love and Life In The Fast Lane both provide a more classic rock backdrop to their sound. Harmony plays a big part, too, and not just in the solos.

Listen to the intro to One Of These Nights, or the counter melodies in Hotel California; these harmony lines add movement and richness, not obtrusively, just perfectly orchestrated and arranged. There’s also a mixing of styles, including country and western, rock, bluegrass, and even reggae. So, from a guitar perspective, there’s a mixture of approaches that you wouldn’t normally hear in a rock band from this era. 

When it comes to lead guitar, once again we see lots of different approaches. Country lead work plays a big part in the early songs, mixing double-stops and pedal steel-style bends, mostly played by Leadon. Blues rock is also plainly in evidence, with the use of traditional Pentatonic licks but also with a focus on chord tones outlining the accompanying progressions.

Then there’s slide playing; Joe Walsh favours opening tunings for this approach, often choosing open E. And let’s not forget the twin leads, from intricate harmony lines to the classic arpeggios of Hotel California, played by Walsh and Felder in 3rds. 

In the following four examples we’ll examine different approaches to rhythm, looking at powerchord-based riffs and country-style parts. We’ll then look at two lead examples, with slide in open E tuning, plus a ‘guitar trading’ style solo that also includes that legendary arpeggio sound.

Dig back into your Eagles albums and listen again to the sheer brilliance of this great group. And, above all, have fun! 

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 3, Bass 7, Middle 6, Treble 7, Reverb 3

Both Don Felder and Joe Walsh favoured a mixture of Gibson and Fender guitars and Fender amps during the classic era of The Eagles. Aim for a bright, slightly pushed clean tone for the country rhythm, while opting for a mildly driven tone for the more rock orientated rhythm parts. For the solos aim for a classic overdrive tone with an American edge. 

Example 1. PowerChord Riff

This example kicks off with a descending harmony riff idea, and illustrates how orchestrated harmony guitar is used by The Eagles as a way of setting up the feel and mood of a track. 

The main riff kicks in at bar 5 and is based around powerchords. Really pay attention to the space of the chords, as well as how the delay repeat fills in the gaps. 

We also have some ‘pushes’ during this riff, with chord changes appearing on the ‘off beat. I have have tipped the hat to one of my favourite examples of Joe Walsh’s rhythm playing with the use of the F to the G/F triads, which add interesting harmonic movement. 

Bar 13 introduces a tight 16th-note figure which is based around triads. Once again, pay attention to space, and keeping the rhythm tight.

Example 2. Country-Style Rhythm

Our next example looks at the band’s country style. This example kicks of with the G to the C/G slash chord but is embellished by sliding the the shape up a whole tone. Bars 5-8 introduce the A to D Major chords, and here we embellish with stylistic intervals including 6ths and 3rds. Following the repeat we conclude this section at bars 15-16 with some country-fueled bends. 

Bar 17 introduces the second half of our progression as well as changing the feel with the addition of Minor chords. This section uses country inspired string bends and intervals, as well as including fills based around C/E and D/F#. 

The track concludes with a classic harmonic move where we modulate from C Major to C Minor, before returning to G Major with a classic country bend.

Example 3. Slide Soloing

Here’s a Joe Walsh-style slide solo in open E tuning. Raise the fifth and fourth strings by a tone and the third string by a semitone. This makes it easier to play vertically as well as allowing the notes to blend into each other during phrases. Bars 1-8 kick off with us playing over the A-G Major chords, before resolving to C-D Major. 

Due to the tuning we can largely stay around a single fret! But what makes it interesting is how we phrase, sliding in and out of notes and adding tension by lowering either the 3rd or the 5th before resolving back to pitch. In bar 5 you’ll have to jump out of position to achieve higher chord tones. 

The solo concludes with a harmonic shift as we play over a tight E5 chord riff. Use the position of the E barre chord at the 12th fret as your point of reference. Concentrate more on the phrasing for this example.

Example 4. ‘Duel’ style Guitar solo

For our final example I’m emulating the sound of Don Felder and Joe Walsh jamming over a colourful chord progression. Although we are using predominantly B Minor Pentatonic, the focus is on chord tones, targeting notes that are relative to each chord of the progression. Pay attention to the pitch of your bends, especially at bar 3, bar 4, and bar 5. 

Also look out for the string bending lick at bar 7; for this lick you’ll bend up a whole tone on the first string, but release a pre-bend note on the second. This is a very tricky lick to master, so take your time practising it. 

The example concludes with a take on those legendary arpeggios, performed on the top three strings, so you’ll need to pay attention to your picking as well as the position shifts.

Earlier this year, Eagles guitar maestro Joe Walsh teamed up with PRS to create a new signature Limited Edition McCarty 594 Singlecut electric guitar.

Though that guitar served as the primary catalyst for Walsh joining Paul Reed Smith for a recent episode of the master luthier's Long Distance YouTube series, the two ended up discussing a number of other topics, including the legendary solos to the Eagles' 1976 mega-hit, Hotel California.

Now, if you've spent more than, say, 15 minutes listening to classic rock radio in your life, Hotel California needs no introduction. The song is approaching a billion streams on Spotify, and its climactic dual guitar break – courtesy of Walsh and Don Felder – was ranked by Guitar World readers as the 5th greatest guitar solo of all time earlier this year.

As memorable as those solos are though, they were not, as it turns out, composed beforehand. 

When asked by Smith, "How much of the solos in Hotel California were thought of ahead of time and how much of it was in the moment, playing melodic, when the tape machine was running?" Walsh revealed that the process of their creation was a fairly spontaneous one.

"Well, Don Felder and I sat down and we worked all the descending lines," Walsh said. "After the basic track was done and Don [Henley] had sung it, it was our turn.

"We agreed on who was gonna play when at the end at the big solo, and we tried to complement each other and build it up to the very last part. 

"So the solos were not planned, they were spontaneous playing off of each other," he continued. "We were really good at that, and the rest of the song was kind of planned out, we put those descending lines on because that was the first set of overdubs."

Smith went on to share an anecdote about how he – after seeing Felder perform live recently – went backstage to personally compliment Felder on his playing, to which Walsh added, "He's brilliant. Before I joined the Eagles, there's a body of lead guitar that speaks for itself. He's brilliant, he was a joy to play with."

The PRS founder went on to ask Walsh about how he approaches soloing in a live setting in general, and whether he tries to capture "the feel and the energy of what happened in the studio" onstage. Walsh said:

"I think so. I like to do that but I like to leave spaces so it's different every night. I like to improvise. In Rocky Mountain Way, I leave everybody to, 'Play whatever you want, just make sure I like it,' that's my instructions.

"Those songs, that was a long time ago, and we tried to play it like the record first, and probably later, a couple of years later, we took more and more liberties."

In honor of Veteran’s Day, Gibson’s charitable arm Gibson Gives has teamed up with Guitars4Vets to launch the inaugural Rock to Remember virtual concert.

Rock to Remember will be hosted by Jared James Nichols and feature all-original performances from more than 20 artists across the U.S, among them Don Felder, Joe Bonamassa, Phil X and The Drills, Orianthi and Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger.

Also on the bill are Big & Rich, Travis Denning, Lee Roy Parnell, Meghan Patrick, Tesla’s Frank Hannon with JT Loux Band, Jimmy Vivino and Friends, Meghan Linsey and Tyler Cain, Honey County, Bones Owens, Nick Perri and the Underground Thieves, Laine Hardy and more.

Additionally, a handful of U.S. veteran graduates of the Guitars4Vets programs will be featured performing their original songs.

The artists join Gibson Gives and Guitars4Vets to raise funds to provide music programs for returning US military veterans afflicted with PTSD. 

Rock to Remember will livestream in its entirety today, November 11, at 7:30 PM CST simultaneously on Gibson Facebook and LiveXLive.

Fans can contribute directly at the Guitars4Vets music program website or by texting a donation to “G4V” 707070.

For more information, head to Guitars4Vets and Gibson Gives. 

David Myhre - session whiz, solo artist and right-hand guitar man to ex-Eagle Don Felder - was raised in Anchorage, Alaska, but shifted to Nashville in the early 2010s in the (ultimately, successful) pursuit of musical opportunity. 

While the closest most of us get to Alaska is re-runs of The Deadliest Catch, Myhre’s early days in Anchorage offered, in some ways, the ultimate training ground for the touring guitarist. 

“I tell a lot of guitar players that I think the long winters there really do the trick when it comes to honing the craft,” he says. A gig in the next city would involve a seven hour drive through the snow, the temperature played hell with guitars. “There was a lot of variables,” he deadpans. “But it made for a crazy adventure.”

Maybe it was the environment, maybe it was the busy mind, but Myhre found time for hockey, soccer, tae kwon do (gaining his black belt) and boxing (“maybe not the best for the hands…”). The discipline he developed outside of music was crucial to sticking it out on guitar.

“I think there was never a ‘limit’,” he says. “Where I was like, ‘I did enough time. I can stop today.’ Then the more I discovered bands and new music, I just couldn’t stop. I wanted to be like those players where the guitar looks like a part of them. That’s what I was attracted to.”

Gigs with his first band turned into 2am blues bar sets in high school and then national tours with the likes of Static Cycle. His break came, though, with a move to Nashville. Sticking-out as a rock player in a country town, he landed shows with The Band Perry and Tanya Tucker, before Don Felder recruited him in 2016. Now he’s focussing on a diverse run of new solo singles, which will drop over the coming months.

We talked to Myhre about his rise through the ranks, landing the Felder gig and musical method acting.

Things took off for you after you moved to Nashville. What made you make that move down from Anchorage?

“Well, I graduated and did one semester of college in Anchorage, and realized there wasn’t really anything for me at college at that time. I wanted to do music. I don’t know why I didn’t push for LA or New York, but I had a family connection in Nashville and a couch I could sleep on! 

“Musically, my upbringing was blues, rock, jazz and some old-school country, but I was never really a chicken picker. I was much more of a Les Paul, overdrive kind of guy, so moving there forced me to open up and learn some other stuff. But also, sticking to my strengths [as a rock and blues player] allowed me to stand out there, too.

“Then it just spider-webbed, like anything. I got the call to do the CMAs performance with The Band Perry and that was a big moment. Then, in 2015, I got the call to do the gig with Tanya Tucker.

Was that the first gig of that size you’d be involved in?

“Totally. And it was great. She was relaunching her career at that time - so that was a process I got to see from the ground up, which was cool. Also, I wasn’t a totally a fish out of water, but it was the most country stuff I’ve played. It allowed me to grow in that area but I got to mix it up some, as Tanya’s got this great rock/blues vibe to her vocal and her persona. She loved blending the two at the time.”

What was the most challenging element of that first big job with Tanya Tucker?

“You couldn’t really hide, you know? I came in as band leader, helped to form the band and you really just had to be wide open, work as a team and make strong decisions to help the artist. 

"The artist is expressing what they want and you have to become really intuitive to cater to that. Also, just playing onstage in front of bigger crowds and having to deliver a consistent show really helped open up my stage presence. It allowed me to start to take on that lead guitar player role, too.

“I remember, the very first show, at soundcheck my amp literally caught on fire. The very first show! I was like, ‘This has never happened in my life and it happens at the very first show!?’ It was crazy, but it felt like we’d got that out of the way early on and then I was ready for whatever.”

After playing all those gigs for others and now writing your own music, where do you think it’s left you as a player?

“I feel like I’m more in tune for myself, now that I’m focussing on my own writing. As a guitar player, I’m not being a chameleon, so it’s just sticking to what feels good. Trying to play with genuine feeling - and not letting my brain get in the way! You learn all these things that are like muscle memory and then you get onstage and you’re like, ‘I’ve got to play my hot licks!’ [laughs] 

"So I’m trying to eliminate the thought and just play with emotion and fun, like when I first picked it up. Once you do that, I feel like nobody can take that from a player. When it’s honest like that, that’s when people notice. I feel like that’s the most beneficial way to stand out.”

Gary Lucas once described that to me as ‘going for god’. That sense of removing your brain from the process.

“Yeah, that’s an awesome way to word it. I think that’s the goal for a lot of us. When you’re trying to play music and you do it for a living, it becomes a career. You have to really protect the innocence of it all and stay rooted in that.”

What have you found helps to get you into that headspace?

“I think it’s helpful when you’re playing with players who are like-minded and you feel you can do that. But at the same time, even in those instances where it’s a super last minute jam, I still try to zen out and focus and not get caught up in overthinking it - being mindful and not trying to control it. 

"It’s reaffirmed when you play with musicians that you idolized growing up, too. Seeing their approach and philosophy helps you to feel like you’re on the right path.”

We haven’t talked about Don Felder yet. Was that the case with him?

“Yeah, for sure. He has such a sound and style. It is just like ear candy. It has feel, it’s got articulation, you can sing what he’s playing. I’m such a melody guy and I love crazy fast riffs and he’s the perfect blend of all those worlds. It’s what I’ve always taken to as a listener. I think it’s the singer/songwriter side of me – then your playing starts mirroring that. 

“We’re playing Hotel California, all these songs from the Eagles catalogue and you can sing those solos. Everybody knows every lyric, every part. It also helped me, when I was onstage, to be like, ‘OK, this is the feeling that you’re trying to chase’, or ‘I need a song like Heartache Tonight that gets people off their seat.’”

You got the gig after you sat in with Felder during a soundcheck jam in Nashville. What do you think helped you to land that job?

“A lot of it was that he saw some of my improv playing and, like I say, saw we were cut from a similar cloth as players. I think that was the biggest thing. The blues and rock background was something that he connected with. I also really rehearsed the songs and dived into the live arrangements, the original recordings - all the details, articulation - and really tried to embody the parts. 

"There was no fooling him, so it was like method acting. I had to really immerse myself into that music and that catalogue. Over the years, I’ve definitely gotten more comfortable and perfected parts and, looking back now, it was a lot of gradual learning.”

Does Don Felder let you play his guitars?

“He has an insane guitar collection. It’s awesome. Just recently, we added a couple of Les Pauls into my rig that are ‘59 Reissues that he has, so you get spoiled really fast. It’s also been really awesome just seeing what kind of pick he plays with. He has like a nylon pick, which has the grip on it. That’s a big part of his sound, how that pick grabs the string. If you go back and listen to some of the stuff now, you’ll catch that.

“Our gear is pretty straightforward, though. My pedalboard has the Talk Box on there, we both do the Talk Box for Those Shoes, and some overdrives, which get plugged into a Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue. Then it’s just your skin tone. It’s pretty straight ahead.”

Does your setup differ for your solo work?

“Right now, I’m using a 38-watt 3rd Power amp, Wooly Coats. It’s a local firm, based in East Nashville. Growing up, I had the Marshall amp stack, the ‘59 100-watt Plexi and it was just like, ‘Oh my gosh! I wanna be Hendrix!’ Then when you go to Nashville, from gig to gig, you quickly learn everything is mic’d up and you just need an amp that you can throw in your car. 

"The Wooly Coats has built-in reverb and a hybrid master control, so you can crank it, turn down the hybrid master and have that control over the tubes. It has those kind of fat, warm Fender tones, but at the same time, punches like a Marshall. 

“I’ve been working, too, with this pedal company called Vertex FX. They’re based out of LA and their pedals are awesome, so I’ve been incorporating their stuff into my board.

“But I’ve never been much of a gear head. I’ve always just learned by ear and feel, so I sometimes struggle with that side of my brain. I’ve also noticed I tend to get the most compliments on my tone when it’s really simple.”

You’ve just released a new solo single, Disguise. What are your solo plans?

“Well, songwriting has always been a part of it as much as the guitar playing for me. A lot of my time in Nashville has been spent co-writing and learning to write. They tend to start on acoustic and the production is fun, because I listen to all sorts of styles, so you can listen to Disguise and hear my pop influences and RnB melodies. 

"Then some of the singles that are to follow, you’ll hear the country side and the rock ‘n’ roll side. Right now, I want to release the stuff as singles and create a world around each song. I’m excited. I’m not just a country artist, or a pop artist, it’s really everything and I’m trying to get that across.”

The capo is to electric and acoustic guitars what sugar - or Stevia, if you prefer - is to food: it makes everything sweeter.

Musicians started noticing the capo's inherent sound-sweetening properties in the early 17th century, when primitive versions of the handy accessory were employed to raise the pitch of a host of fretted instruments.

The point of a capo is, of course, to be able to perform a song in a different key while using the same fingerings and chord formations you'd use in an open position. This enables performers to stick to positions they're more comfortable with and to enjoy all the benefits - including ringing, open strings- high up on the neck.

Capos also facilitate or create alternate chord voicings and help performers accentuate certain melody lines in a song. Of course, the higher up the neck you go with a capo, the more you change the voicing of the guitar - to the point that you can even imitate a mandolin.

Former Eagle Don Felder says it best in the video below, which he created for Guitar World:

"When I originally wrote [Hotel California], it was in the key of E minor, which is a really great guitar key to play in and write in. We recorded the whole track in E minor, and then Don Henley went out and tried singing it... and it was way too high for him.

"So I took a guitar, went out in the studio and said, 'OK, let's move it down to D minor.' Still too high... C minor, a little bit too high; A minor; no, that's too low. It wound up being in the key of B minor, which is on the seventh fret."

The seventh fret is exactly where Felder's capo wound up; the song is played as if it were in E minor.

Below, members of the Guitar World staff - including Jimmy Brown, tech editor Paul Riario and online managing editor Damian Fanelli - have rounded up 15 essential 'capo songs' - out of hundreds of worthy choices - that show off the benefits of, and alternate voicings created by, the capo. We tried to make sure no bands are repeated (although three bands are, indeed, repeated); we also set out to create a well-rounded list.

Note also that we've chosen videos that aren't necessarily vintage or classic- or that don't even show the 'classic' line-ups of certain bands; they do, however, show the capo'd guitar being played (in most cases, at least).

• Pop a capo on your axe with our guide to the best guitar capos you can buy today

1. Eagles - Hotel California | Capo 7

As stated earlier, to play the Eagles' Hotel California in its original key, try using a capo on the seventh fret. The song is played as if it were in E minor, the song's original key, as explained by Don Felder above (and in the video below). This makes the song 'sound' in B minor. Note: The capo is used on the acoustic guitar part that starts the song.

In the top lesson video below, Fender also shows you how to play part of the guitar solo (Note that Felder plays Hotel California in A minor now because he sings it when he performs it, and it works better with his vocal range).

2. Jethro Tull - Aqualung | Capo 3

This classic 1971 Jethro Tull tune features a capo on the third fret - for the acoustic guitar part, that is, which is performed by Ian Anderson in the vintage live video below.

The acoustic part is played as if it were in E minor, but it 'sounds' in G minor. Don't worry, we'll have more classic Tull for you later in the list!

3. Oasis - Wonderwall | Capo 2

Jumping ahead to the height of the Britpop-dominated mid-'90s, we bring you one of the songs Oasis will be remembered for - Wonderwall, which was composed by Noel Gallagher.

To play the song in its original key (as thousands of wide-eyed kids of all ages sing along with you), put a capo on the second fret and play the song as if it were in E minor. It, of course, 'sounds' in F# minor.

4. The Who - The Real Me | Capo 3

Although this one doesn't normally leap to mind when one thinks of "popular capo tunes," this rocking Quadrophenia track from 1973 was recorded by Pete Townshend using a capo on the third fret.

The song, which is played as if it were in a power-chord-friendly A, 'sounds' in C.

5. The Beatles - Here Comes the Sun | Capo 7

George Harrison was fond of sticking a capo on the seventh fret of his guitar and playing songs in the 'D' formation that sound like they're in A. He did it on the Beatles' If I Needed Someone and followed it up a few years later with 1969's Here Comes the Sun, one of his greatest compositions.

Below is a Here Comes the Sun lesson by Jimmy Brown.

6. Fleetwood Mac - The Chain| Capo 2

This classic Fleetwood Mac song is played in drop-D tuning - the studio version, that is - with a capo on the second fret.

The song, which emphasizes a 'swampy stomp' groove, incorporates an octave bass line on the guitar and some greasy finger picking.

7. Tom Petty - Free Fallin' | Capo info below

Free Fallin', the most popular track from Petty's first 'solo' album, 1989's Full Moon Fever, was played like so:

• Capo 1 main, low guitar part and second, higher guitar part (played as if the song were in E; sounds in F.)
• Capo 3 third guitar part (played as if the song were in D; sounds in F.)

In this song in particular, we hear the capo truly 'sweeten up' the beefy chords.

8. James Taylor - Fire and Rain | Capo 3

This beautiful song by James Taylor is played as if it were in the key of A. It 'sounds' in C. It features open-chord embellishments and sliding chord shapes.

9. Bob Dylan - Don't Think Twice, It's All Right | Capo 4

When we spoke to Ed Sheeran, we asked him to name a few acoustic guitar songs every guitarist should know how to play. He named this one, a bouncy track from Bob Dylan's 1963 album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. At least John Mayer knows how to play it - and we've included his live video below.

Note that there aren't many (or any) videos on YouTube that show Dylan playing this song the way he played it in '63. There is, however, an interesting clip of Dylan performing the song with Eric Clapton. By the way, Blowin' in the Wind is another fine capo tune by Dylan (capo 7).

Almost forgot: For Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, it's capo 4; play a C chord; 'sounds' in E! There are some fun changes in this tune.

10. The Guess Who - No Sugar Tonight | Capo 4

This classic Guess Who tune - which is performed with a capo as a straight chord melody - is played as if it were in D. It 'sounds' in F#.

Note: We're talking about the original version. In the video below, you'll notice the capo doesn't play a huge role in the song in modern times.

11. The Beatles - Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) | Capo 2

This late-1965 Beatles song is played as if it were in the key of D, but it 'sounds' in E, with a capo on the second fret. Right-hand-wise, it's a 'strum-picky' chord melody - not quite picking, not quite strumming.

Because there are no videos of the Beatles performing this song live (because it never happened), we've provided a basic (non-Guitar World) lesson video that shows everything clearly, including the capo on the second fret, the chords and embellishments.

12. Harry Chapin - Cat's in the Cradle | Capo 8

This 1974 Harry Chapin tune is played as if it were in the key of A but 'sounds' in F. It's another example of a 'chord melody' piece.

13. Jethro Tull - Thick As a Brick | Capo 3

This classic Jethro Tull tune is played as if it were in D, but it 'sounds' in F. It is packed with rolling arpeggios that make non-stop - and awesome - use of the capo.

14. Fleetwood Mac - Landslide | Capo 3

We don't like to repeat bands in our lists (OK, we've already done it with the Beatles and Jethro Tull), but it's difficult to leave out this Fleetwood Mac tune.

The song, which highlights a form of Travis picking, is played as if it were in the key of C. It 'sounds' in Eb.

15. Clarence White - I Am a Pilgrim / Soldier's Joy | Capo 2

Here's a curveball for you - a selection from the world of bluegrass. Here's Clarence White (on the left, with the beard) performing a medley of I Am a Pilgrim and Soldier's Joy with his brother, Roland, on mandolin and Bob Baxter on second guitar (later joined by Byron Berline on fiddle and Alan Munde on banjo for Soldier's Joy).

The clip is rare in that it shows White's fingering and fretwork up close. Second, there's White unusual sense of timing in the first tune (I Am a Pilgrim); it's as if he's throwing in chord substitutions like a jazzer, while Roland plays it straight on mandolin.

It can be a little disconcerting and confusing (but I love it). But pay close attention to the second tune (starts at 3:47), which is a traditional fiddle tune adapted to guitar. It is almost always played with a capo on the second fret, in D, although played with a C chord.

BackStory Events and Guitar World invite you to join us for the live stream of our exclusive interview with former lead guitarist and songwriter of The Eagles, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, and New York Times bestselling author, Don Felder. The interview will take place at 7:00 p.m. EST this Monday, March 8, live from The Cutting Room in New York City.

We’ll sit down to chat about his new LP, American Rock ‘N’ Roll, plus classic stories from decades in the studio and on the road. Felder will be interviewed by author and journalist Brad Tolinski. The event is part of the BackStory Events online series and will be live streamed by Guitar World magazine.

To find out more, visit donfelder.com or backstoryevents.com.

The video will appear below once we go live.

Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder will release a new solo album, American Rock ‘n’ Roll, April 5th via BMG. The record features a slew of guests, including Slash, Bob Weir, Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, Chad Smith and Mick Fleetwood.

In advance of the album’s release, Felder has shared the title track, which features guest guitar work from Slash, as well as drums from both Chad Smith and Mick Fleetwood. You can check it out above.

Regarding the track, which references artists from Jimi Hendrix and Santana to Van Halen and Guns N’ Roses, Felder told Rolling Stone: “Slash lives really close to me. He came over, brought his guitar, plugged into one of my amps and we traded off on some solos. He actually plays on the part of the song that mentions Guns N’ Roses by name.”

Discussing the impetus behind the album, Felder continued: “I wanted to bring in as many people as possible to share the experience with me. I knew it should be bright, cheery and fun or it wouldn’t be worth doing. It should be a labor of love, not a labor of work.”

American Rock 'n' Roll is available for pre-order here.

The Eagles have announced the release of Legacy, a comprehensive 12-CD/DVD/Blu-ray set spanning the band’s entire career.

Legacy will be released on November 2 in two versions. The first boasts 12 CDs and includes the band’s seven studio albums and three live albums, as well as a compilation of singles and b-sides and two concert videos, Hell Freezes Over (DVD) and Farewell Tour: Live From Melbourne (Blu-ray). A vinyl version of Legacy features all the music from the CDs on 15 LPs, but without the two concert videos. Both sets are housed in deluxe slipcases and accompanied by a 54-page hardbound book filled with rare and unseen photos, memorabilia and artwork.

Grammy-winning mastering engineer Bob Ludwig remastered Hell Freezes Over and Millennium Concert especially for Legacy. Both albums—along with several tracks from the singles and b-sides compilation—are being released on vinyl for the first time ever as part of this collection, save for a small European vinyl pressing of Hell Freezes Over around its original release in 1994. In addition, the double-album Eagles Live is making its long-awaited return to vinyl in this set after being out of print for decades.

Legacy CD/DVD/Blu-ray Listing:

Eagles (1972)

Desperado (1973)

On the Border (1974)

One of These Nights (1975)

Hotel California (1976)

The Long Run (1979)

Eagles Live - Double LP (1980)

Hell Freezes Over - Double LP (1994)

Millennium Concert - Double LP (2000)

Long Road Out of Eden - Double LP (2007)

Single and B-Sides (2018)

1.    "Take It Easy" (Single Version)

2.    "Get You in the Mood" (Non-LP B Side)

3.    "Outlaw Man" (Single Version)

4.    "Best of My Love" (Single Version)

5.    "One of These Nights" (Single Edit)

6.    "Lyin' Eyes" (Single Edit)

7.    "Take It to the Limit" (Single Edit)

8.    "Please Come Home For Christmas"

9.    "Funky New Year"

10.  "Hole in the World"

DVD: Hell Freezes Over (1994)

Blu-ray: Farewell Tour: Live From Melbourne (2005)

Legacy LP Listing:

Eagles (1972)

Desperado (1973)

On the Border (1974)

One of These Nights (1975)

Hotel California (1976)

The Long Run (1979)

Eagles Live - Double LP (1980)

Hell Freezes Over - Double LP (1994)

Millennium Concert - Double LP (2000)

Long Road Out of Eden - Double LP (2007)

Single and B-Sides (2018)

In this clip from Ernie Ball, Don Felder tests out the company’s new Expression Series pedals; the Ambient Delay and Expression Overdrive.

The Expression Overdrive delivers everything from a hint of natural tube-amp-like overdrive and rhythm crunch to searing lead tones. It features settings for drive, boost and tone, with a foot-sweepable overdrive control, making it effortless to go from clean to all-out growl and everything in between.

“The ability to control with these pedals—how much overdrive you use, and the tonality of it—is just spectacular,” Felder says. “The sound of this overdrive pedal is really superb.”

The other pedal featured, Ernie Ball’s Ambient Delay, provides 50 milliseconds to one second of delay time layered with reverb, for everything from slap-back to extended repeats. It features settings for delay time and feedback, reverb level, and a foot-sweepable effect level control to create anything from subtle textures to ambient soundscapes.

"The range of sounds for these pedals is amazing,” Felder adds. “Together, the combination really gives you the ability to increase the delay, fade in the delay pedal and the in-and-out on a section just seamlessly. It's really nice."

We had the opportunity to check out these pedals ourselves, and you can read the review right here.

Check out the video below, and for more information, visit ernieball.com.

Ernie Ball’s new Paradigm strings are the strongest, most durable the company has ever created.

To help celebrate their release, Ernie Ball asked a host of top players to try them out and put Paradigm to the test. Today, Don Felder tries out Paradigm, demonstrating the strings’ ability to stay in tune—even after some serious bending.

According to Ernie Ball, Paradigm represents the most advanced string technology ever created, and the strings are the first to come with a fully backed guarantee: If they break or rust within 90 days of purchase, Ernie Ball will replace them free of charge.

The strings feature a combination of Ernie Ball’s proprietary Everlast nanotreatment coupled with a breakthrough plasma process that further enhances the corrosion resistance like never before.

For more information, visit ernieball.com.

Here's one that's been making the rounds lately. It's the isolated guitar tracks from the Eagles' "Hotel California."

Best of all, it contains the entire song, including guitars and solos.

If you want to jump directly to Don Felder and Joe Walsh's legendary solo, head to 4:21.

Credit for the guitar majesty of “Hotel California” is often given to Walsh, who toughened up the Eagles’ laid-back California sound when he joined the band just prior to the Hotel California album’s recording.

Actually, the primary guitar heard throughout the solo belongs to Felder, who wrote the music for the track and actually conceived and played the solo’s intricate harmonies on his initial, instrumental demo.

“Every once in a while it seems like the cosmos part and something great plops into your lap,” Felder says.

“That’s how it was with ‘Hotel California.’ I had just leased this beach house in Malibu and was sitting in the living room with all the doors wide open on a spectacular July day, probably in ’75. I was soaking wet in a bathing suit, sitting on the couch, thinking the world is a wonderful place to be and tinkling around with this acoustic 12-string when those ‘Hotel California’ chords just oozed out. I had a TEAC four-track set up in a back bedroom, and I ran back there to put this idea down before I forgot it.

“I set this old rhythm ace to play a cha-cha beat, set the right tempo and played the 12-string on top of it. A few days later, I went back and listened to it and it sounded pretty unique, so I came up with a bass line. A few days after that, I added some electric guitars. Everything was mixed down to mono, ping-ponging back and forth on this little four-track. Finally, I wound up with a cassette that had virtually the entire arrangement that appeared on the record, verbatim, with the exception of a few Joe Walsh licks on the end. All the harmony guitar stuff was there, as was my solo.

“Then I gave it to Don Henley on a tape with eight or 10 ideas, and he came back and said, ‘I really love the one that sounds like a Matador…like you’re in Mexico.’ We worked it all up and went into the studio and recorded it as I wrote it—in E minor, just regular, open chords in standard tuning—and made this killer track. All the electric guitars were big and fat and the 12-string was nice and full.

"Then Henley came back and said, ‘It’s in the wrong key.’ So I said, ‘What do you need? D? F sharp?’…hoping that we could varispeed the tape. But he said no, that wouldn’t work, and we sat down and started trying to figure out the key—and it turned out to be B minor! So out comes the capo, way up on the seventh fret. We re-recorded the song in B minor and all of a sudden the guitar sounds really small and the whole track just shrinks! It was horrible, so we went back and tried it again. Luckily, we came up with a better version in B minor."

For the rest of this story, head here.

Glenn Frey's former Eagles bandmate, Don Felder, has released a statement about Frey, who died Monday at age 67.

You can read it below.

Felder was fired from the Eagles in 2001 after several disputes with Don Henley and Frey. Felder later sued the group and recounted his experiences with the Eagles in a best-selling autobiography.

Below is Felder's full statement, which was distributed to news outlets this afternoon.

"Glenn’s passing was so unexpected and has left me with a very heavy heart filled with sorrow.

"He was so young and still full of amazing genius. He was an extremely talented songwriter, arranger, leader, singer, guitarist, you name it and Glenn could do it and create 'MAGIC' on the spot. His visions and insights into songs and lyrics have become legendary and will echo throughout time on this earth for decades to come.

"Glenn was the one who invited me to join the Eagles in 1974 and it turned out to be a gift of a lifetime to have spent so many years working side by side with him. He was funny, strong, and generous. At times it felt like we were brothers and at other times, like brothers, we disagreed. Despite our struggles and difficult moments together we managed to create some magical songs, recordings and live show. His charisma on stage was felt and loved by millions of people all over the world.

"I have many wonderful memories of those years and the many miles I travelled with Glenn, filled with laughter, song, parties, hugs and brotherly bonds. Glenn was the James Dean of the band. He was the leader that we all looked to for direction and by far the coolest guy in the band. It saddens me a great deal that we were never able to address the issues that came between us and talk them through. Sadly now we will never get the chance.

"The planet has lost a great man and a wonderful musician. None will ever be able to take his place.

"May you rest in peace, Glenn Frey, and may God bless you and your lovely family."

— Don Felder

Former Eagles guitarist/songwriter — not to mention multi-Grammy winner — Don Felder isn't one to simply rest on his laurels.

In addition to penning his best-selling memoir in 2008, Felder’s most recent album, 2012's Road to Forever, has done incredibly well on the classic rock charts and recently was re-released as an extended-edition package with four additional songs.

Felder is out on the road now with Styx and Foreigner in what’s being billed the Soundtrack of Summer tour. The jaunt coincides with the release of a new album of the same name. It features a collection of hits from the bands, and finishes off with a brand-new interpretation of the Eagles' “Hotel California."

I recently spoke to Felder about the Soundtrack of Summer tour, his early years with the Eagles and much more. Check out the interview below.

GUITAR WORLD: How did the Soundtrack of Summer project come about?

I’ve known the Styx guys for many years. We’ve done many benefits together in the past and started doing some shows together. Tommy [Shaw] and I became good friends, and he even volunteered some of his time to writing lyrics and singing on my last CD, Road to Forever. So when the idea for doing a Styx and Foreigner tour came up and my name was mentioned, I said "Absolutely!" The catalog of these three bands is just magnificent. I’m excited to be a part of it.

What can fans expect from your set?

I do some of the Eagles songs I recorded and played live with the band for 27 years. Songs like “Hotel California," “Heartache Tonight," “Those Shoes” and a version of “Seven Bridges Road” that we used to do with the Eagles years ago. We even do a version of my song “Heavy Metal,” which was something the audience used to yell out for us to do during the Hell Freezes Over tour [laughs].

What is it about classic rock that makes it so timeless and special?

Great songs really carry an era, and back in the Sixties and Seventies, there were a lot of great songwriters. When you think about the music from that era that has survived, it's because they were great songs people really bonded with. It’s the reason people are still going out to see the shows today.

How did you hook up with the Eagles?

I joined the band in 1974 and was working with David Crosby and Graham Nash at the time. I had already known the guys in the Eagles for years; Bernie Leadon and I had actually known each other since high school. One day they called me up and asked me to come in and do a session for them. So I went over and played on the song "Good Day In Hell." I remember they called me back the next day and asked me to join the band.

What's the origin of “Hotel California”?

We were in the process of writing songs for our next record, and I had rented a beach house in Malibu. I had a little reel to reel and every time I had an idea, I would go in and record it. I remember I was sitting on the couch in Malibu playing guitar when out came that progression. So I played it a few more times and then went back and recorded it and later put some bass and a few more guitar parts on it. I put it on a reel along with about a dozen other ideas I was working on and gave it to the band. I told them that if there were any ideas on there they wanted to finish to just let me know.

Sure enough, [Don] Henley called me up a few days later and said, "Yeah, I found one that has kind of a Mexican, reggae, bolero sound." I immediately knew which one he was talking about. Two songs actually came out of those ideas. One became "Victim of Love" and the other became "Hotel California."

Is it true you once gave guitar lessons to Tom Petty?

There was a store in Gainesville, Florida, called Lipham Music where I used to teach guitar. Tom is a few years younger than me; I remember one day he came in wanting to take guitar lessons. At the time, he was playing bass in a band called the Rucker Brothers Band, but he didn't think playing bass was a cool way to front the band so he wanted to play guitar. There were actually a lot of people from Gainesville who went on to have great careers. Steven Stills and I had a band together when we were 14. Bernie Leadon and I were in bands together and went on to the Eagles. Duane Allman taught me how to play slide guitar. A lot of people from that area went on to become well-known.

How did the recording of The Long Run contribute to the first breakup of the Eagles?

We had been on and off the road and in and out of the studio for years before that album. We had never really gotten any real time to recharge and recoup, and were at the point of exhaustion. Not to mention the fact that we had just gotten off of Hotel California with this monstrous hit and now had the added pressure of having to match it or do even better. It was a difficult time. There were a lot of breakdowns, anger outbursts and other things that were going on.

At that point, I thought it was the end of our career as the Eagles. That's why the album cover is black and looks like a funeral. The photographs inside are all darkly lit. It just came off feeling like, “This is the end...it's been a very long run.”

If you had to pick one moment from you career that’s most memorable, what would it be?

I remember it being a few days before our New Year’s Eve Millennium show [which also happened to be the last show Felder would perform with the Eagles]. We had a press conference, and the RIAA presented us with an award for the largest-selling album of the 20th century [The Eagles, Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975]. It hit me in the forehead like a Louisville Slugger. Nobody had ever really kept track of how many records we had sold or where we were in comparison to anybody else. It was just overwhelming. Especially when you think about all of the other people who've made records: the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson.

A lot of people have hallways in their homes that are lined with gold and platinum records from all of their life’s work, but not me. I only have one.

Photo: Michael Helms

James Wood is a writer, musician and self-proclaimed metalhead who maintains his own website, GoJimmyGo.net. His articles and interviews are written on a variety of topics with passion and humor. You can follow him on Twitter @JimEWood.

Legendary groups Foreigner and Styx will release The Soundtrack of Summer on May 6 to coincide with their tour of the same name.

The tour also features very special guest Don Felder, former guitarist of The Eagles.

The album, which features 16 classics by both bands, will be available exclusively at Walmart.

The Soundtrack of Summer package includes Foreigner hits “Cold As Ice,” “Juke Box Hero” and “I Want To Know What Love Is,” and Styx hits “The Grand Illusion,” “Blue Collar Man” and “Renegade.”

The collection finishes with the spectacular highlight, a brand new interpretation of one of classic rock’s most successful songs ever, “Hotel California.”

Original songwriter Don Felder teamed up with Styx and Foreigner for this very special collaboration, as well as a stunning new version of Foreigner’s massive hit, “I Want To Know What Love Is,” which will only be available as a limited edition vinyl disc and on iTunes.

Fans can check out an exclusive stream of “Hotel California” here.

Foreigner, Don Felder and Styx

Here’s the complete track listing of The Soundtrack of Summer:

• 1. Feels Like The First Time
• 2. Cold As Ice
• 3. Hot Blooded
• 4. Double Vision
• 5. Urgent
• 6. Waiting For A Girl Like You
• 7. I Want To Know What Love Is
• 8. Juke Box Hero
• 9. The Grand Illusion
• 10. Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)
• 11. Lorelei
• 12. Crystal Ball
• 13. Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)
• 14. Miss America
• 15. Renegade
• 16. Too Much Time On My Hands
• 17. Hotel California

Check out “The Soundtrack of Summer” tour at any of the following stops (with more to be added in the coming weeks). Don Felder hits the stage at 7:00pm at every stop. Foreigner and Styx will alternate closing slots as listed.

Wed 5/14 Wichita, KS Intrust Bank Arena - STYX
Fri 5/16 Oklahoma City, OK Zoo Amphitheatre - FOREIGNER
Sat 5/17 Grand Prairie, TX Verizon Theatre - FOREIGNER
Sun 5/18 Houston, TX Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion - STYX
Tue 5/20 Clearwater, FL Ruth Eckerd Hall - FOREIGNER
Thu 5/22 Estero, FL Germain Arena - STYX
Fri 5/23 St. Augustine, FL St. Augustine Amphitheatre - STYX
Sat 5/24 Atlanta, GA Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre - STYX
Sun 5/25 Orange Beach, AL The Wharf - FOREIGNER
Thu 5/29 Tuscaloosa, AL Tuscaloosa Amphitheatre - STYX
Fri 5/30 Simpsonville, SC Charter Amphitheatre - FOREIGNER
Sat 5/31 Charlotte, NC PNC Music Pavilion - FOREIGNER
Sun 6/1 Virginia Beach, VA Farm Bureau Amphitheatre - STYX
Thu 6/5 Cincinnati, OH Horseshoe Casino - STYX
Fri 6/6 Chicago, IL FirstMerit Bank Pavilion - STYX
Sat 6/7 Maryland Hts., MO Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre - STYX
Sun 6/8 Kansas City, MO Starlight Theatre - STYX
Thu 6/19 Boston, MA Blue Hills Bank Pavilion - FOREIGNER
Fri 6/20 Bristow, VA Jiffy Lube Live - FOREIGNER
Sat 6/21 Big Flats, NY Summer Stage - FOREIGNER
Mon 6/23 Verona, NY Turning Stone Casino - STYX
Thu 6/26 Newark, NJ Prudential Center - STYX
Sat 6/28 Wantagh, NY Nikon Jones Beach Theater - FOREIGNER
Sun 6/29 Mashantucket, CT Foxwoods Resort Casino - STYX
Thu 7/3 Camden, NJ Susquehanna Bank Center - FOREIGNER
Fri 7/4 Scranton, PA Toyota Pavilion - FOREIGNER
Sat 7/5 Bangor, ME Darlings Waterfront - STYX
Sun 7/6 Gilford, NH Bank of NH Pavilion - STYX
Wed 7/9 Canandaigua, NY Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center - FOREIGNER
Thu 7/10 Detroit, MI Freedom Hill Amphitheater - FOREIGNER
Thu 7/17 Minneapolis, MN Target Center - FOREIGNER
Fri 7/18 Walker, MN Moondance Jam - STYX
Sat 7/19 Sloan, IA Winnavegas Casino - STYX
Tue 7/22 Denver, CO Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre - FOREIGNER
Wed 7/23 Salt Lake City, UT USANA Amphitheatre - STYX
Fri 7/25 Las Vegas, NV Orleans Arena - STYX
Sat 7/26 Los Angeles, CA Greek Theatre - FOREIGNER
Sun 7/27 Santa Barbara, CA Santa Barbara Bowl - FOREIGNER
Fri 8/1 Redmond, WA Marymoor Park Concerts - (STYX & FOREIGNER ONLY)
Sat 8/2 Goldendale, WA Maryhill Winery - (STYX & FOREIGNER ONLY)
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Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder recently released his first solo album in nearly three decades, Road to Forever.

A few weeks back, Felder stopped by Guitar World HQ to film some video lessons showing off some licks from his new album, as well as walk us through the intro and solo to "Hotel California" (Watch that lesson here).

In the video below, Felder teaches you how to play the song "Girls in Black" from Road to Forever.

Look for more from Felder in an upcoming edition of Dear Guitar Hero in Guitar World magazine.

Guitarist Don Felder, formerly of The Eagles, will release a new solo album, Road to Forever, on October 9.

Road to Forever is Felder's second solo album and his first since 1983.

The album features 12 guitar-driven tracks in the classic LA-rock style of The Eagles. The songs focus on life, love's gains and losses and redemption.

After his separation from The Eagles and a divorce from his 29-year marriage, Felder was inspired to "write out the stories of my life as songs. After I collected myself, I found I needed to go out and play music again. That's how I began recording the album. In the process, I found out who I really am - I had to find out what happened when I almost lost it all."

You can check out one new track, "Fall From Grace of Love," right here.

Road to Forever, which was produced by Felder and Robin DiMaggio (Paul Simon, Steve Vai), features several guest performers, including Crosby, Stills & Nash, Tommy Shaw, Randy Jackson and others.

Track listing for Road to Forever

• 01. Fall From the Grace of Love
• 02. Girls in Black
• 03. Wash Away
• 04. I Believe in You
• 05. You Don't Have Me
• 06. Money
• 07. Someday
• 08. Heal Me
• 09. Over You
• 10. Road to Forever
• 11. Life's Lullaby
• 12. Give My Life

For more information on Road to Forever visit donfelder.com