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Mon 29 September 2025 16:00, UK
While praise is routinely lavished on their famed co-frontmen, fans would tell you that lead guitarist Don Felder’s entry into the Eagles spelt the beginning of their classic era.
Founded and centred by the singing and songwriting duo of Don Henley and Glenn Frey, the Eagles’ sunshine harmonies and country tinges were afforded the soft-rock heft that Felder brought to the band.
Joining at the tail-end of their tenure, as collated on the record-selling Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), his slide guitar on ‘Good Day in Hell’ impressed so much that Felder was officially invited to join the band. Before long, he was co-writing the defining ‘Hotel California’ and helping its namesake record stand as the sixth biggest-selling album of all time.
The Eagles would call it quits in 1980, Henley and Frey both enjoying successful solo careers across the decade, and Felder would similarly keep himself with his own albums as well as scoring for TV. Reunions eventually materialised, various live specials for MTV, and their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction would surround the Hell Freezes Over live album. Yet, as the Eagles seemed to enjoy a new vista of success into the 21st century, Felder found himself fired in 2001.
Financial clashes, contract disputes, and a flurry of lawsuits soured whatever feelings were had between the Eageles and their former lead guitarist. Dragged over several years, tensions only flared when Felder dropped 2007’s tell-all Heaven and Hell: My Life in The Eagles (1974–2001) book, itself subject to a countersuit alleging breach of contract. Despite the pervading legal turmoil both parties were embroiled in, Felder spoke glowingly of Henley and Grey’s songcraft, bestowing particular praise for Henley’s perceived lyrical gift that their litigious battles never stood in the way of.
“I think Don Henley is a brilliant contemporary rock writer,” Felder told Westword in 2008. “He would have been a fabulous poet if he weren’t a musician. He was a literary major, and not only that – he’s gifted with a brilliant voice. To me, Don could sing the New York City Yellow Pages, and I’d buy it. I just love the sound of his voice. And just because some people are blessed with some elements of genius, and they’ve been given some fabulous gifts, it doesn’t mean they don’t have warts.”
As befalls many great bands, the prior magic shared between musicians became strangled by the business and money men. Through the cynical depths of the endless settlements and case complaints, somewhere, Felder remembered exactly why he joined the band in the first place, as well as remaining magnanimous enough to recognise the creative alchemy that forged such a seismic chapter of his life and career.
Felder would drop further solo albums, including this year’s The Vault 1975-2025 Fifty Years Of Music, and, following Felder’s departure, a reformed Eagles cut 2007’s Long Road Out of Eden, scoring a UK and US album number one, and likely the last Eagles record in light of Frey’s death in 2016.
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