Interview with guitar legend, Don Felder (Leah Jenner’s dad)
Interview conducted on June 18, 2019
by Mary Andrews
Legendary guitarist, Don Felder, has worn many hats during his 40 plus years in the music business and has worn those hats very well. Felder is an amazing songwriter, singer, arranger, and record producer in addition to his legendary guitar playing. The former guitarist for The Eagles is well known for his trademark guitar chords and catchy riffs. However, this is an oversimplification of Felder’s talent.
Felder has released three solo albums during his career. His solo albums have been met with critical praise from Rolling Stone to Premier Guitar, and Musicradar.com. His songs are heartfelt, direct, and many are highly spiritual. Felder is back in the spotlight with a new solo album, American Rock ‘N’ Roll, released April 5, 2019. Unrated Magazine was able to catch Felder from his busy schedule for an in-depth telephone interview. Felder was very willing to reveal stories of how he got started in music as well as stories of making the new album with his musical friends. Here’s is what we learned in this question and answer interview.
Mary Andrews: Let’s talk about some of your history first. You are from Gainesville, Florida. Gainesville doesn’t seem like a music Mecca, but you went to high school with some great musicians at the time. What was that like?
Don Felder: Yes, there were actually four of us in the same Gainesville High School in the early to mid-60s. Tom Petty was a student there and he was also one of my guitar students. Stephen Stills was also there. He and I had a band together when we were 14 or 15 years old. Stephen left and moved to California, a guy showed up from California by the name of Bernie Leadon and replaced Stephen Stills in my band (called The Continentals). Later, Leaden moved back to California and played in a bunch of different bands. He wound up being a founding member of the band The Eagles. A lot of us, Petty, myself, Stills, Leadon including the Allman Brothers who lived over with their mom in the summer in Daytona Beach were in ‘Battles with the Bands’ together.
We became friends with the Allman Brothers. We would stay at their mom’s house after shows. Duane Allman taught me how to play slide. Lynyrd Skynyrd was in Jacksonville, less than an hour away. They were coming in and out of Gainesville and played the fraternities that were out of the University of Florida on the weekends. We all kind of knew each other and we were all vying to be the best band in the area and get all the gigs. It was a friendly, loving competition between us all. People would say, ‘Is there something in the water?’ Or “What we were all smoking at the time?”
When you were growing up was there anyone in your family playing music?
Nobody played anything. My father used to come home from work as a mechanic covered with grease and stuff, take off his coveralls at the back door. He’d come in and shower. He would sit down in his big comfy recliner chair and he would put on Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, or one of the big bands. He loved music. He would relax and listen to that. I realized he was given joy and comfort from music. He also helped me get my first electric guitar and helped me with my music by teaching me to solder metal. I kept breaking my cords. He finally got tired of fixing it himself. He taught me how to solder so I could fix my own guitar cords. He was very supportive. He enjoyed the fact that I played music.
Who was your major influence as far as getting started on the guitar when you were young?
Elvis Presley, B.B. King, and Chet Adkins. It was the Blues, Rock ‘n’ Roll or anything I could borrow or get a record. My dad had bought a tape recorder and a turntable. He would borrow records, record them on tape and I could listen to them over, over, and over again without scratching the records. I learned to teach myself by ear until I could play along with all these people. I could play solos with B.B. King or play behind with Elvis Presley or learn Chet Adkins’ technique in the same way. I guess I was one of the first bootleggers. I should be paying those guys royalties for using their records without actually buying them. (Laughing) We were very poor at the time. There was no music school. There was no store or nobody else you could afford to pay for music lessons. There was nobody teaching. The only way you could learn was to figure it out yourself. You steal from the best and modify it. You have to learn from people by listening to them in order to learn and then you go “Oh I see how they do that.”
When I starved on the streets of New York City, for about two years and playing in a jazz-fusion rock band, I learned how to improvise on the spot. I learned to just make up stuff on the spot. That was really the opening door for me to be able to do a lot of session work. I would walk into a studio and someone would say, ‘We need a 12 bar or 16 bar solo here.’ I would sit down, plug in, tune in and spit out solo after solo, after solo, after solo until I did something that they really liked. It was the same for writing, to be able to write in your own unique style, your own unique way to be able to do something that just comes out of you, instead of sounding like someone else. After a year or so of paying my dues in New York, learning how to improvise and learning how to be creative myself, instead of being in a cover band or playing stuff exactly the same every night, it really gave you the tools and talents to make a living in the business.
You mentioned that you taught Tom Petty guitar. What was it like to teach Petty?
We were all in garage bands and the battle of the bands. We finally had a music store that opened up in Gainesville. They hired me to demonstrate guitars to people who were coming in to buy guitars. They also wanted me to teach guitar lessons once they bought the guitars. Tom came in when he was about 14 and I must have been about 16 and he was playing bass at the time with this band called ‘The Epics.’ He really did not want to front the band singing and playing bass. He wanted to play guitar and he wanted to be able to write. So, I taught him a little bit of piano at his house. He took guitar lessons from me as well. I went over and worked with their band a little bit at rehearsals and went to a couple of their shows. They had two guitar players that played aimlessly with wild strumming. It was pretty cluttered. So, I had one guy play rhythm and the other guy play lead lines in between when Tom wasn’t singing. I just kind of cleaned it up and helped them a little bit with their arrangements. Tom, from the first time you saw him on stage, had a tense conviction, a convincing attitude. When he walked out on stage, he had so much self-confidence, no intimidation, and no fear in his eyes. He sold you on what he was doing. He wasn’t the greatest singer and he wasn’t the greatest guitar player. Yet his self-confidence just poured out of his guitar, poured out of his voice. He always had that strength of self-conviction.
Let’s talk about your latest album, American Rock ‘N’ Roll. How long has it taken you to put this new album together?
Well the last album that I finished in 2012 was entitled The Road to Forever. It should have been entitled ‘The Road to Taking Forever.’ (Laughing.) I played every guitar part on that record. I played electric guitar, slide guitar, acoustic guitar, nylon string guitar. I played zither and dulcimer, pedal steel guitar on all tracks except one track. I invited my friend Steve Lukather from Toto to play on the one song “Road to Forever” with me. So, this time, I decided I really wanted to not feel the necessity to do everything myself. What I really wanted to do was to be able to sit down in a room with somebody like Joe Satriani or Slash or Frampton or Sambora. Some of these great rock ‘n’ roll players and play with them. Make stuff up on the spot. Doing solos, trading solos, and harmony stuff together. That’s what we did. To me, that was really fun and exciting. Throw yourself into the pond and figure out if you could swim with these other guys. Each one of these guys has their own unique style, ability, and way to play. It was a really fun exciting challenge to throw myself in there and step up toe to toe with Satriani and Slash and Frampton and Sambora and Lifeson (from Rush) and play.
I didn’t start it out this way. The first song I wrote was “American Rock ‘N’ Roll.” I wanted it to be a musical rockumentary. I started the song back at Woodstock. I went to the original Woodstock. I was one of the 400,00 people there that was soaked in mud and enjoying three days of the most incredible musical experience that has ever happened on this earth. It left such an indelible impression on me. I carried those thoughts and memories and influences with me throughout my whole career. I wanted to write a song about that. So, the song starts in 1969 at Woodstock. I wrote about Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana, all those people who were there, Crosby, Stills and Nash, all the voices and guitar playing, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead. As you go through the verses of this song, each verse describes each decade of people that rose as a result of the influences of the musicians from Woodstock. They were heavily influenced all the way up to the end of the song. The song talks about the grunge guys, about Axl Rose, Slash and all the people over the decades.
I had Mick Fleetwood start off that song because Mick’s playing and the way he sounds and feels like the early seventies. You hear him play and it has that character. He sets the tone and about halfway through the record I got Chad Smith, the drummer from the Chili Peppers,’ to come in and play the drums on the second half of the record and it sounds like a 500,000-pound gorilla on steroids. When Chad comes in, his intensity and his power so represents the 80s and 90s and 2000s. A band, like the Chili Peppers or the Foo Fighters, have all of that aggressive kind of drumming. You kind of get a musical migration through the decades. In the next to the last verse, I mention Rose and Slash. So, I thought I would get Slash to just come in and play a couple of tunes that were a really identifiable mix on that verse. So, he comes in with his guitar and plugs into one of my amps. He says, “Where do you want me to play?” I said, “Where do you want to play?” He said, “Well start at the top and I’ll play through the whole thing.” So, he did and I let him do that two or three times and about an hour later he packed up and left. I sat down and edited it and took some of the best licks and put them in the right places. At the same time, I had to make room for myself to play with him. We created an editing thing, but what happened was not only does the song musically go through the decades and shifts gears, but it cites people in each verse in each decade up to the current time. Like I said it is a musical rockumentary and a salute to those people in my opinion that started in the initial rock explosion in 1969 at Woodstock and all those people who were affected as a result of it.
So, how long did it take to get all these people together and make this album?
You know, I’m on the road so much lately playing my shows, doing charity work, and touring. If I’m home in my studio between three and seven days a month, that is a lot. As a matter of fact, there is an engineer sitting in my studio right now, so when I get done with this interview, that’s where I’m going. I leave again on Friday morning. I’ll have like four days here writing and recording. It takes a long time to write, record and arrange all these other artist schedules, working around them whether they come to me or I go to them. If I have time off, I fly to like Nashville and go to Frampton’s studio or I fly to Sausalito and go to Hagar’s room or I go to Joe Satriani’s and play guitar on “Rock You.” Sammy Hagar and I sang a duet literally all in about six hours. And then I flew back to LA that afternoon. It takes a lot of time. If I were to not tour, for six to nine months, I could finish the entire album, write record and produce, but then I’m off the road for that length of time. I love playing live. I love making records and writing as well, but there is something about walking out on stage and playing in front of a live audience. The excitement of that is really incredible to me. I love doing both but selfishly I feed my endorphins by playing live. Anyway, it takes a while. It probably took about two years working on the record in and out of the studio to be able to finish it.
Did you write all of the songs on the album?
I wrote everything except I co-wrote one song with David Paich from Toto. He had the beginning of this idea and I wrote some of the music and some of the melody and lyrics for it. I re-recorded it. It’s called “Hearts on Fire.” David played this kind of greasy, really cool kind of piano part that it is all based on. I overdubbed guitars and redid the drums on it and recreated the whole track. It was a lot of fun to have one co-writer on the record for that one song. I wrote everything else.
You write lyrics, melody, and everything on the record?
Sing it and play it. I’m sort of a one-man band. I’m a jack-of-all-trades and maybe a master of one or two.
On the song, “Sun” the harmonies are beautiful. Did you do all the harmonies or did you have other people assist you with that?
I actually wrote the beginning of that song in 1974, right after I joined the Eagles and my first son had just been born. Probably the most beautiful time in an adult’s life is seeing the birth of their first born child and holding the child. So, when I wrote the song, it was about the first glimpse of seeing my son. I had invented this unique tuning much like Joni Mitchell changes tuning on her guitar. She’s able to play unique sounds and chord progressions. I invented this tuning and I had played this song “First Glimpse of my Son” for Don Henley and Glen Frey as we were writing songs for One of These Nights. Their reaction was ‘that’s really pretty, but we’re really looking for rock and roll and R&B. ‘So that song just laid dormant for 40 something years.
I loved the song musically and I thought maybe it’s the narrow scope of the lyrics. First of all, you cut off half of your population by speaking just of your son. What about your daughters? I have daughters too. Also, a lot of people don’t even have kids. How are people going to relate to a song about your first son if they don’t even have kids? It just seemed like the concept of the lyric was too narrow. I went back to it and took another look at how I could address the human experience. I put the first verse together based on as you are born on the planet and you realize you are alive and on the planet. You are seeing the first glimpse of the sun in this place. The second verse is talking about being able to understand why you are back here to take it all in again. The last verse talks about a warm crossing of life and being able to anticipate the warmth and beauty of the next sun is that we are going to experience as we cross. I thought the song had a broader human experience tone to it instead of writing about just your son being born. As I wrote it, it seemed to strike home with me. I was able to write it as an spiritual insight. Not many people pick up on that. They hear harmony and they see how pretty it is and the arrangement. They don’t so much pick up on the message of the lyric. It may be good or maybe not. The harmonies were me and one other guy name Timothy Drury who plays and sings in my band. He does an amazing job of singing and helping put together the harmonies. I think that was the only song he sang on.
You have a big-time rocker in the middle of the album called “Rock You.” Can you tell me about that song?
Looking at old photographs at Wembley Stadium, I had glimpses of me on stage with the Eagles in 1975. We were playing a show with Elton John. There were a 100 and something thousand people in this stadium and I wanted to write a song that was a stadium anthem where you could go out and play this stadium song and get everybody to sing along with it. I wrote this track and I thought wouldn’t it be great to have this duet. I wondered who could I get that has this great, strong rock voice? I thought of Sammy Hagar. Sammy and I have been friends since the 80s. We both wrote songs for the Heavy Metal soundtrack album for the movie entitled “Heavy Metal. ” We did a charity together and we were on this TV show together. I thought Sammy is perfect to do this duet on this song. I flew up to his studio in Sausalito. An hour later after telling jokes and having a good time, he had done his vocal part of the duo. We got Joe Satriani to come in and an hour after that, he and I had done all the guitar solos, the harmony parts and we sorted out everything we had to do. Just as we were finishing, Bob Weir (of the Grateful Dead) has a studio of his own a couple of blocks away from Sammy. So, when there is nothing going on at Bob’s studio, he comes wandering down the hallway at Sammy’s. He usually comes to get a free cup of coffee and hear some bad jokes. I said, ‘Bob you’ve got to come in and sing on this track.’ We set up that vocal mic that Sammy and I had been singing on. We had Bob sing “Rock You” about six times in the chorus. So, we had Sammy and I singing lead, Joe Satriani playing incredible guitar parts, and Bob Weir singing the chorus on one track, all in one morning before lunch. It was a fun day and things just fell together.
How did Orianthi get involved on the album?
She plays on a song called “Limelight.” I’ve known Orianthi since she was 18 or 19 when she first moved to the United States from Australia. I met her when she was at the first NAMM show that she played. Later she ended up playing in Alice Cooper’s band. I do a lot of charity events with Alice. Every time, I play with Alice, I play “Hotel California” and a couple of other songs with his band. I would get Orianthi to play the harmony parts and trade off the solos and we would do a song like “Pride and Joy” that we could both play the blues. She is a great player and probably the best female guitar player alive today. She was going to be the guitar player for Michael Jackson’s “This is It Tour.” If you watch that film, you see her all over the place. That was right before he passed.
But I had called up Richie Sambora to get him to play on the “Limelight” track. He said come on out. I live about 45 minutes from him and I went to his place. We are sitting there playing toe-to-toe and we are trading off licks. I turn around and look and I see Orianthi walking down the staircase. I had totally forgotten that she and Richie were a couple at that time. It was two years ago. She had just gotten out of bed. It was about 1100 in the morning. She was wearing a pair of cut off shorts and a tee shirt, a baseball hat and flip-flops. I said, ‘Oh my God, Orianthi. go get a guitar. You have to play on this track with us.” She went and got a guitar and plugged in and she absolutely killed it. That’s probably my favorite solo on this record. She did an amazing job and I can’t say enough about her and how fabulous she is. She’s a great guitar player and she can sing too. She’s working on a new record herself right now.
Do you have children that are musicians?
Yes, my older son, Jesse is a great guitarist. He doesn’t perform publicly. He has a great deal of talent but he doesn’t feel necessary that he has to go out to perform live. My youngest daughter, Leah, was married to the Jenner family, Brandon Jenner. She has an incredible talent for singing. She actually sings on one of the songs on this record in the background with me. She is a great writer and a great talent. She’s a new record she is working on right now. She’s probably the most well-known Felder/Jenner of the Family. As a matter of fact, she was on that Kardashian show. People would say, “Hey. Aren’t you Leah Jenner’s dad?” I’d say yeah. They would NOT ask, ‘Hey, aren’t you Don Felder from the Eagles?’ Instead, I became Leah Jenner’s dad. (Laughing) I think that’s a good thing
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