Ex-Eagles guitarist Don Felder can’t wait to play for Hong Kong’s ‘beautiful women’
‘I’ve been told that the city is beautiful, the women are too,’ says Felder – lined up to play at Hong Kong Rugby Club charity ball – who regrets Glenn Frey’s death denied the band a reunion he’d long sought
When former Eagles member Don Felder received the news that group co-founder Glenn Frey had passed away early this year, he thought it was someone else who had died. Felder was returning from a charity concert he had performed at in Mexico alongside Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl when his girlfriend learned via a series of text messages that “Glen” had passed away.
“I thought she meant Glen Campbell, because we have someone in our touring group who works with him,” the 68-year-old guitarist says by phone from his home in California. “And she said ‘No. Glenn Frey.’ I was absolutely shocked, broadsided.”
Frey’s death in January abruptly slammed the door on any hopes long-time fans had for a final reunion of the Eagles. After being recruited by Frey and drummer Don Henley in 1974 to add more of a rock edge to the group’s harmony-filled country sound, Felder was a member of The Eagles until 2001, when he was abruptly dismissed. A series of bitter financially related lawsuits followed, many details of which were revealed in Felder’s best selling 2006 book Heaven and Hell: My Life In The Eagles (1974-2001).
“I’d reached out to both of them many times over the past 15 years in numerous ways just to clear the air, but I never got any response,” he says. “The only responses I would get would be from lawyers. I regret that Glenn and I were never able to sit down, have lunch, have a laugh and dispel that anger. They just didn’t care to do that. I expect that even with Don, it will be that way going forward.”
