Don Felder.
credit: Michael Helms
When former Eagles guitarist Don Felder was in the process of moving to Beverly Hills after living in Malibu, California, for nearly 30 years, he put away his recording equipment and tapes of unreleased music (going back as far as 1974) into a storage locker in 2000. It was only a few years ago that Felder returned to the locker and rediscovered the contents that he had almost forgotten about.
“I started looking around, and there were these 24-track tapes of all the albums that I had worked on in storage there,” he says. “There were tapes of all the demos that I made when I had a 16-track machine. And Eagles things that we recorded live when they were working at my studio — we would rehearse out there and I put it on a tape and record so we could hear great ideas if something kind of ran by.”
Felder grabbed some cassettes, brought them to his home studio and transferred them to digital. The rediscovery of those demos inspired Felder to rerecord them that now appear on his latest solo album The Vault: Fifty Years of Music, which comes out Friday.
“I had all these ideas that I had completely forgotten about over the decade,” he says. “I found a couple from the ’70s, a couple from the ’80s, some in the ’90s. And then finally, I think I had six [tracks]
pretty much from my storage locker that I was going to redo. And then I wanted to write a couple of new things.”
One of the earliest songs from The Vault is “Move On,” which dates back to 1974 when Felder first hooked up with the Eagles; he would later co-write some of the band’s most notable songs including “Victim of Love,” “Those Shoes” and the iconic “Hotel California.”
“After I joined the band, I made the very first demo for my submission,” he says. “But I didn’t have any instruments. I took a cardboard box, put a microphone on it, and played a drum beat. And then I played a little rhythm guitar and a bass part. Then I started playing slide on it.
“When I submitted it to [Don] Henley, he said, ‘I like that slide part. Let’s write a song called “Slide On.” I went, (laughs) ‘It sounds a little corny to me.’ Anyway, I had been in a relationship with somebody for five years. It was done. It was time to move on. And I went, ‘That’s what that song should be about. But instead of “Slide On,” let’s write “Move On.”’ So that’s the track from 1974 that’s on the album – that idea.”
Another demo revisited for the new collection is the reflective “Hollywood Victim,” whose origins go back to the Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over tour in 1994. “I thought it would be a really nice, kind of cool, laid-back look at L.A. and the ugly underbelly of Hollywood in that song,” Felder explains. “But we just literally had no time to record a fifth song. We barely got four songs done and the live shoot and the mixing and rehearsals and out on the road. So it fell to the wayside. Anyway, I kept thinking about that. And when I heard the demo that I had written, I went, ‘I’m going to finish that. I like that track.’ It was refreshing to look at some of my old ideas and go, ‘Not bad. Let’s take this and try to do something with it.’”
Like his 2019 album, American Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Vault contains a bevy of A-list guest musicians such as guitarist Steve Lukather, keyboardist David Paich and singer Joseph Williams of Toto; bassists Nathan East and Matt Bissonette; keyboardist Greg Phillinganes; and drummers Todd Sucherman (Styx), Gregg Bissonette and Jim Keltner. “All of those musicians are friends,” Felder says. “So we have a great time making records and hanging out together…It’s fun to work with great people that it’s easy to work with and you have fun with. That’s what it’s all about. “
In addition to the unearthed material, The Vault unveils newer material such as the anthemic “Free at Last” and “Digital World,” a reggae-influenced commentary about society’s obsession with smartphones and other electronic devices. Another new song written for the new album is the uptempo “I Like the Things You Do,” inspired by Felder’s romantic partner Jaden.
“We go to the gym quite often and we run right next to each other,” he says.”She runs faster than I. I’m running at the same tempo as that song, not knowing it. And I start hearing, ‘I like the things you do,’ that chorus running over in my head.
“I picked up my phone,” he continues. “I’m running on the treadmill. I start singing it into my phone so I don’t forget it. And the guy next to me looks over like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ But if I didn’t record a little bit of it, it would just be gone. I came back later and I said, ‘That’s a good idea. I’m going to start that.’ So I put together a little drum loop, played bass on it, and put together the progression, and started working on the track.”
Predominantly consisting of guitar-fueled rockers, The Vault closes with “Blue Skies,” a poignant acoustic number featuring a string quartet. It’s a tribute to Felder’s former Eagles bandmate Glenn Frey, who died in 2016.
“I had been tinkering around with an instrumental acoustic guitar piece,” he says. “And I’ve been working on the idea that I could sit down, put a mic on it, and play something that was a really pretty acoustic guitar… I went, ‘What if I took one of these acoustic ideas I’ve got and I put a string quartet?’
“They [the string musicians] came in, played on it. And it was a really beautiful little idea. While we’re there, all the girls in that quartet, I had them saying, ‘I’ll forever be wishing you blue skies.’ And if you listen to it, it’s really, really, very low in the very last couple of progressions there. I thought it was a lovely way to give Glenn a big hug and a kiss goodbye, ‘And I wish you nothing but blue skies.’”
The most well-known song on the album is an updated version of the rocker “Heavy Metal (Take a Ride),” which originally appeared on the soundtrack of the 1981 animated cult movie of the same name. It’s regarded as Felder’s most well-known track as a solo artist.
“It was all analog,” he says of the original recording. “And the mastering techniques were limited. So I kept hearing it and going, ‘I’d sure like to take that song and make a fresh 96K Pro Tools with high-end mastering, great microphones, and redo it so it sounds like 2025.’ There’s no way you can go back and get an old mixtape and make it sound right. It is what it is. So I thought, ‘I’ll freshen that thing up, give it a facelift.’ And it was fun to do it.”
Following the release of The Vault, Felder will be sharing the bill this summer with Styx and former REO Speedwagon singer Kevin Cronin for the Brotherhood of Rock tour starting May 28. Those three acts have previously shared the same stage in what has become almost an annual tradition.
“We’ve toured together a whole lot,” says Felder. “The best part of that whole thing is that we all know each other so well. All the crew members and the front of house guys — it’s a big family. And there are no divas. There’s no hissy fits. There’s no ego. We’re just having a great time on stage and off stage, playing music with a lot of people that you like. So why not do that if you can instead of having to deal with other parts of the music business that aren’t quite so enjoyable?”
Felder says he plans to continue to “rock ‘til I drop,” but jokingly adds: “Hopefully, it won’t be during “Tequila Sunrise.” Maybe during “Hotel California” or “Life in the Fast Lane” or something that’s more of a rocking song — but as long as I can get up and do it, and people are loving it. And by the end of my set, everybody’s standing up. They got their iPhones out. They’re filming me playing “Hotel” and dancing and rocking. How do you get a better, exciting life than doing that?”