So Don Felder Wasn't Invited to the Grammys

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The Eagles were my favorite band in the 70's, so Glenn Frey's death in January hit me rather hard. Something else about the band is hitting me hard now, and not in a favorable way. That is the actions of former guitarist Don Felder. Felder joined the band in 1974 as a "late addition," as the liner notes to their third album, On the Border, said. He was asked to join the band to give them a harder sound after the first two Eagles album (Eagles and Desperado) lumped them into the "country-rock" scene with other acts like Poco, Gram Parsons, and Linda Ronstadt. As a guitarist Felder (who was nicknamed "Fingers" for his playing [also to distinguish him from the other Don -- Henley -- in the band]) was top notch. In a radio interview in 1976 Glenn Frey laughingly referred to his guitar solo on the song "One of These Nights" as "Felder playing saxophone on guitar." He co-wrote and played the classic guitar duel (with Joe Walsh) on "Hotel California." When the Eagles broke up in 1980 (following a very nasty verbal exchange between Frey and Felder onstage) and went their separate ways, the individual Eagles had varying degrees of solo success. Henley, of course, had the biggest solo career, winning Grammy awards for "The Boys of Summer" and "The End of the Innocence." Frey also had a substantial solo career thanks to film songs such as "The Heat is On" and "Part of Me, Part of You," as well as his song "Smuggler's Blues," which was turned into a storyline for an episode of Miami Vice (which Frey appeared in). Walsh, who was already a successful solo act when he joined the Eagles (thanks to things like "Rocky Mountain Way" and "Funk 49"), didn't miss a beat and continued releasing solo albums. Timothy Schmit, who had been in Poco, had less success but still hit the charts with "Boys Night Out." Randy Meisner, who left after Hotel California, had a very successful album with One More Song and the hits "Deep Inside My Heart" and "Hearts on Fire." Bernie Leadon returned to his country/bluegrass roots (he had been a member of the Flying Burrito Brothers prior to joining the Eagles) with the novelty act Run C&W. That left Felder. He had a song on the soundtrack to the film Heavy Metal and released an album, Airborne, but nothing became of either. Following the failure of the solo album he more or less dropped out of the music scene until the Eagles reunited in 1994. Things came to a head in 2001. About the only thing that is agreed upon is that Don Felder was fired from the Eagles. As Henley sang in one of his solo songs, "There's three sides to every story...there's yours, and there's mine, and the cold hard truth." Felder sued Henley and Frey over the dismissal. He also wrote a book, Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles. The lawsuit was settled, where Felder accepted money to drop his claim to being an Eagle. Along the way, he made bitter enemies of Don Henley and Glenn Frey. (I would say it reached the point where they wouldn't urinate on him if he were on fire, but I don't think they would have intentionally been in the same time zone as Felder to know if he were on fire!) Last year it was announced that the Eagles were going to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award. Don Felder -- mind you, NOT a fan, but Felder himself -- started a petition to get the Kennedy Center to include him in the ceremonies. The ceremony honoring the Eagles was postponed when Frey's intestinal issues forced him to have surgery, the complications of which eventually took his life in January. As part of their annual television show, the Grammys pay tribute to significant artists who had passed away in the previous 12 months. This year was no exception, and as part of that tribute the surviving Eagles -- all except Randy Meisner, who has been suffering some serious health issues of his own over the past few years -- joined Jackson Browne to sing the song that started the Eagles' career, "Take It Easy." Browne, who co-wrote the song, sang lead. The day after the Grammy awards Felder opened his big mouth again. On his Twitter account Felder wrote, "I would have been honored to have joined The Eagles last night for the Glenn Frey Tribute at the Grammys but sadly I was not invited." Well, duh. You sue your bandmates. You call them some rather unsavory things in interviews and in your books. You accept money over membership. And then you wonder why you weren't invited? The Grammys appearance was not about the Eagles. It was about Glenn Frey, paying tribute to a man who had died. Most significantly, it was not about Don Felder, either. In my opinion, Don Felder really needs to grow up. He's acting like an attention hound who's using Frey's death as a way of getting more attention for himself. Eagles fans deserve better.