Chords for Don Felder Heaven & Hell, my life in the Eagles HowardTVFelder03

foot sticking out of the bathroom and we were promptly kind of whisked away.
Could you believe you went from being this poor kid to all of a sudden [Gb] hanging out with
Keith Richards and these bands and you're in a [E] huge band yourself.
You must have pinched yourself.
I mean, it must have been unbelievable.
Well, they [B] weren't huge when you joined them.
No, they weren't.
We were just a bunch of, you know, kids in ripped jeans and t-shirts.
Our gigs, we'd drive rent-a-cars ourselves around and we had Fly Coach in the back and
we played like university campuses and really until one of these nights and especially when
Hotel California kicked in is where we really jumped up to stadiums.
And you wrote the song Hotel California.
Yeah, I wrote a large part of it, yeah.
You wrote the music for it?
I wrote all the music for it, yeah.
You walked in one day and you said to the Eagles, hey, I wrote this song, Hotel California.
I don't even know if you had a name for it.
I got this music.
What was the riff that was [Eb] going through your head?
Just the, [G] well, I just remember that one day I was kind of sitting on this [F] couch in this
rental house that I [G] had on the beach in Malibu.
[F] My youngest son was playing out in the sand.
Kind of the California summer sun was glistening on the water.
I had on a pair of cut-off shorts and just got out of the water and I was sitting there
just playing acoustic guitar and kind of out came that introduction.
[Abm] I played it and played it and played it about four times and I [E] went, I've got to go record
this before I forget it.
When you're having that, do you go to yourself, I think this is a huge moment, [E] but you don't know.
No, it just sounded like a kind of a nice progression.
I went back and recorded it on a tape recorder and actually I was working on the songs for
Hotel California and I had like 15 or 16 other songs.
So I threw that idea down and went back out and jumped in the water.
[Gb] And then about four or five days later I [Gm] came back and started [E] listening to that reel of
song ideas and I went, I'm going to finish that one.
That sounds like a good one.
And I had an old Roland Rhythm Ace, which was this funky drum machine that piano players
used to play in these bars and it had a cha-cha [Gb] beat and a [E] samba and all that stuff.
And you hit the drum beat.
I found the closest one to it and then laid down a bunch of guitars on it and played a
bass part on it and pretty much wrote almost identical what's on the record, [Db] the 76 record
with the exception of a few guitar solos on the end.
So why do guys who have a gem like you, you're writing probably the biggest song the Eagles
ever had, why the hell do they get [G] rid of you and throw you out of the band?
Now, okay.
Because, right, it sounds like you were all getting along and enjoying each other at the beginning.
Well, that was the heavenly part.
You know, the book of heaven [D] and hell in the book.
When's it go bad?
Because when the success hits, do Frey and Henley, I know they, Fry, whatever the fuck
is his [Fm] name, Fry becomes a control freak, right?
[Em] Well, you know, what happened is when the band was first joined, even before I was in
the band, when it was first formed, [Ab] everybody had [G] been side men behind Linda [F] Ronstadt or
behind this person.
And when they got together, they said, we're going to be equal partners.
We're all going to write songs.
Everybody's going to sing two songs on the record.
It's communal.
Yeah, it's a band.
It's not one guy or two guys and a bunch of backup musicians.
And it was still going on when I joined the band.
And that way we formed this company called Eagles Limited, which was a five-way partnership
that everybody owned a fifth of the band, of the name, the merchandising, the tickets,
everything.
Everybody's driving in the rental cars.
Everybody's in the studio.
Everybody's [C] working.
Everybody gets a fair share. Everything's equal. Yeah, right.
Right.
And then as time went by and the main [F] songs that became hits were sung by Henley and [Eb] Frye,
they seemed to feel somewhat more entitled to a larger share of the proceeds and ownership
and control than other people in the band.
And I know from the book that [B] you began to look into this, [Db] you would say to the [Bb] business
manager, wait a second.
[Gb] [E] I'm driving around in a [Eb] shitbox.
These guys have limousines taking them [D] everywhere.
Is that what they did?
They [G] started doing that kind of thing?
Well, yeah.
And guess what?
When they're riding around in a limousine, guess whose share is being eaten up?
Being eaten up.
That's right.
[Cm] Yeah.
That's right.
So, you know.
Well, [Eb] you know, there's an old adage in Hollywood amongst managers and in the music business
that says pay your acts enough money that they don't ask questions.
Right.
[C] Right.
And the trouble really started around the end of the 90s when I started asking questions.
I was CFO at this company.
Right.
And I was only one third owner with Henley and Frye.
Bernie had left and surrendered his shares back to the corporation.
That was smart.
Randy had left and surrendered his shares back to the corporation.
What did they hold, a gun to their head?
No, they wanted to quit.
They just wanted out.
They wanted, this is awful.
I want the hell out of here.
It was awful because those guys had become demons in your opinion? Yeah.
And controlling and made work.
Playing music should be like a child at play.
It should be fun