Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder recently spoke to the St. Louis radio station KSHE 95 and revealed whether he had any hostile feelings toward his ex-bandmates Don Henley and the late Glenn Frey.
The musician explained:
“I have no animosity towards any of those guys, especially Glenn. He’s gone, and I regret that I didn’t have the opportunity to sit down with him and just have a good human relationship.”
Recalling the heyday of the Eagles, he continued by revealing a wake-up call that might’ve helped the band members preserve their friendship:
“We were like a family when we first got together, and the bigger it got and the more famous and the more money and the more drugs we were all taking, the harder it got. There was a point when I first joined the band; Bernie Leadon, who was in my high school band in Gainesville, Florida, called the Maundy Quintet, said we just needed to take a break.
‘Everybody should just take two or three weeks and relax and go to Hawaii and be fresh and get strong and get off drugs and then come back and regroup and go at it again.'”
However, Henley and Frey didn’t follow this suggestion, leading to further problems within the band:
“That was the smartest thing anybody could have said, and nobody listened to it. Don Henley and Glenn Frey just wanted to keep going, keep writing, keep recording, keep touring, and keep pushing.
I gotta say there’s some wisdom in that, but the result of doing that non-stop, 11 and a half months out of the year, is that you just get worn down at every nerve; the ending you have in your whole body is frayed, and so the slightest little thing can be irritating that you’d normally know otherwise not pay any attention to.”
Felder believes taking Leadon’s advice would be better for the band at the time:
“So that when that started happening during the long run, that’s when all the real personality conflicts and troubles started happening. So I think we should have Bernie’s advice back into one of these hotels and taking breaks.”
After leaving the Eagles following a tumultuous period, Don Felder has continued his career as a solo artist and collaborated with various musicians, including Sammy Hagar, Slash, Mick Fleetwood, and Alex Lifeson. He also toured with many bands, such as Styx, Foreigner, and REO Speedwagon.
You can listen to the rest of his interview below.
