Don Felder got a real taste of major fame, thanks to the success of Eagles’ Hotel California album. Having co-written the title track, naturally, he wanted to follow up strong.
But it would take some time for Eagles fans to hear his lead candidate, which originally began taking shape during recording sessions for what became 1979’s The Long Run. It wasn’t because the guitarist was short on ideas. “I wrote this really heavy track that Joe [Walsh] and I could play ascending chromatic scales and harmonies and trade off solos,” he tells the UCR Podcast in a new interview you can listen to below.
“We got in the studio and cut a track of it. It was probably the heaviest thing that the Eagles had ever attempted to play,” he continues. “It was for The Long Run and we got down to the very end of the amount of time we had set aside to finish this record. There were no lyrics, no vocals, no guitar solos, just the basic track. We had to leave and go on tour for [the album]. We were jamming to try to get this stuff finished, mixed and done. We just didn’t have time to finish it.”
Even though they were tight on time, The Long Run did quite well once it was released in the fall of 1979, notching three successful singles, including one that Bob Seger co-wrote with Glenn Frey, “Heartache Tonight,” which went to No. 1 and also won a Grammy Award. The LP ended up being the swan song for the California group, who went their separate ways after touring for the record wrapped up.
READ MORE: How Eagles Fought Off Punk, Disco and Fatigue on ‘The Long Run’
Felder’s proposed song might have ended up on the sidelines at the time, but it was a blessing in disguise, as it turns out. “[A few years] later I get a call from a movie director who wants me to write a song for an animated movie. So I go over and watch this movie, Heavy Metal,” he recalls. “I go, ‘I’ve got a pretty strong, heavy track that I wrote and recorded for the Eagles.’ And at the time, since we used to have these working titles, the nickname for that track was, ‘You’re Really High, Aren’t You?’ Most of the time, probably. [Felder chuckles] Anyway, it never got made into anything. So when I got back to my house after looking at that movie, I thought I should take that idea, which never got finished, and make it into another track. So I really rewrote it pretty much with the same intent. If you listen to “Heavy Metal,” you can imagine Joe and I playing those harmonies and the trading of solos would have been perfect.”
Listen to Don Felder’s New Version of ‘Heavy Metal’
Felder’s New Album Features Another Eagles Obscurity
Though Felder has been out of the Eagles mix since 2001, he continues to make new music. His latest album is an interesting project that takes stock of the 50 years (and counting) that he’s spent working in the industry. The Vault: Fifty Years of Music features songs that the guitarist created using ideas from his archives, mixed with tracks that he wrote exclusively for the record. In addition to a new version of “Heavy Metal,” fans will hear rarities like “Hollywood Victim,” which comes from another chapter. It emerged in the midst of the Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over reunion as they were going through material for a possible album.
But it went back even further than that and it was another outside contribution that knocked it out of contention. “Myself, Timothy B. Schmit, [former 38 Special vocalist] Max Carl, and a really famous English singer, Paul Carrack, we were putting together a band,” he explains. “We were making demos and Paul came in with a song. We recorded it with him singing and all of us singing the backgrounds and the solo on it. Everything was like it was when we went in to do Hell Freezes Over. That song, ‘Love Will Keep Us Alive,’ was recorded from our old demos. Except instead of Paul singing it, who I absolutely love his voice to death, Timothy wanted to sing it. So we rebuilt the entire track from the ground up. It’s interesting how some of the things from one stage of my life or another, wound up on Eagles records or [ended up ] in the vault somewhere.”
The guitarist is currently on the road celebrating the arrival of his new album and playing songs from his Eagles history as part of the Brotherhood of Rock tour with Styx and Kevin Cronin.
Listen to Don Felder on the ‘UCR Podcast’
Listen to Don Felder’s ‘Hollywood Victim’
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Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening