Top 40 Quotes & Sayings by Don Felder

Your nerve coatings are only so thick. When they get worn really thin and frayed, that's when people say things, do things, misbehave.

I try to balance work and family. As long as I'm able physically and mentally to do it, I will.

When the band first formed, everybody had been sidemen. So they said, 'In this band there are no sidemen,' and when I joined the band, it was still the same. There were some power struggles emerging, because Henley and Frey had sung all the hits at that point.

I think Don Henley is a brilliant contemporary rock writer. He would have been a fabulous poet if he weren't a musician. He was a literary major, and not only that - he's gifted with a brilliant voice. To me, Don could sing the New York City Yellow Pages and I'd buy it. I just love the sound of his voice.

There were about 400 heads of state from countries all over the world. I walked out and played 'Hotel California,' and everybody in the place gave me a standing ovation, and half of those countries don't even speak English.

If I put 3,000 miles a year on my car, that's a lot. If I buy them, it just doesn't make sense, so I lease them, and my company writes the whole car expense off.

My story, is how a kid that's born into really destitute poverty on a little dirt road in Florida winds up in one of the largest bands in history.

Tom Petty was one of my guitar students; I knew Duane, and Stephen and I had a band. When he left, Bernie Leadon moved to Gainesville. His father was a nuclear physicist who was sent to the University of Florida to start their nuclear research facility, so he and I became friends.

Glenn was the one who invited me to join the Eagles in 1974, and it turned out to be a gift of a lifetime to have spent so many years working side by side with him. He was funny, strong, and generous. At times, it felt like we were brothers, and at other times, like brothers, we disagreed.

Don't forget, Stephen Stills and I had a band in Gainesville called the Continentals when we were 15. And, of course, you had Lynyrd Skynyrd in Jacksonville.

Being in a band with three guitar players, one thing you need to do is learn to make each guitar voice sound separate and identifiable.

I never challenged control of the band. Basically, all I did was start asking questions. There's an old adage in Hollywood amongst managers: 'Pay your acts enough money that they don't ask questions.' And I started asking questions.

One of the songs we recorded for 'The Long Run' was called 'You're Really High, Aren't You?' Which never really made it onto a record, but later on, it became 'Heavy Metal.' I took that track that wasn't used, and when I was invited to write a song for that movie, I took that track and recorded that song for that movie.

Being on the road has about 2 1/2 hours a day that are really great, and that's when you're onstage. The other 21 1/2 hours are very boring... It becomes like a void, and we chose to fill it with all the wrong things.

Early on, one of my favorites was Ray Charles. I remember hearing 'I Can't Stop Loving You' in the early '60s and thinking, 'What an unbelievably soulful voice.' In those days, the Deep South was extremely segregated.

For every album we worked on, I brought in reels of tape of somewhere between fourteen and eighteen songs - some of them completed, with lyrics and melodies, some of them basic tracks. Things came out of those products. Like, for 'Hotel California', I think I had a reel with sixteen songs on it.

I try to write five or six songs each year and not just in one genre.

I've always been drawn back to the South, whether it's Southern California or in Florida, where I grew up, and I wanted to write a song about that.

Glenn's passing was so unexpected and has left me with a very heavy heart filled with sorrow. He was so young and still full of amazing genius. He was an extremely talented songwriter, arranger, leader, singer, guitarist - you name it - and Glenn could do it and create 'Magic' on the spot.

When you got on the private plane, you had your own private lounge where you could close the door. So there wasn't a lot of friendly conversation; we were in incubators by ourselves. That just bred a void - avoid each other, and avoid the issues.

I would say 'Bye Bye Love' is one of my favorite influential songs to this day, and ironically, they were so in sync with their harmonies that they sounded like one person. That approach to hearing and formulating harmonies stuck in my head, so when I joined the Eagles, my ear was trained to be able to hear a vocal that way.

I've known those guys for decades and done some charity fundraisers with them in L.A. The response was so great from the Boston/Doobies/Felder package.

Once I got into driving those little Mercedes convertibles, I just absolutely loved it. They feel really - great crash safety ratings, mechanically they're unbelievably sound, and I've been driving them ever since.

I used to drive up and down Pacific Coast Highway in this black Porsche, and I had seen a couple of accidents on the highway involving Porsches. I realized if you're in any kind of head on accident in one of those cars, they're going to get you out of it with a can opener, one of those Jaws of Life.

I graduated from high school at 165 pounds, so twice a year, I get back to that number - I never let it get to 172-73. Then I go back to doubling the cardio. This week, I'm on a complete liquid diet, a juice fast. It keeps me lean and hungry.

As a kid, I had my head under the hood of a car, either an old Ford or a Chevrolet, just learning about it so if anything happened, I could repair it.

There was no call from anybody in the band to discuss any of the things that had been a problem or what I had done wrong.

That last record I did, I think I played every guitar on the entire record. I want to do something more fun and exciting.

The new material includes a Latin-flavoured song, some electric rock songs, and a ballad. Something strikes me, and I follow that. I'm as excited now as I was when I was 15.

Every once in a while, it seems like the cosmos part, and something great plops into your lap.

I was constantly in the studio at my home writing ideas that would later become 'Hotel California' or 'Victim of Love.'

If I had a pull on 'One of These Nights,' on the first high note on 'One of These Nights,' that was just a tiny hair flat or something, I could just feel Henley's eyes scouring into the back of my head. No mistakes were allowed, and it really kept the quality at a high level.

When I first left the Eagles, I said, 'That's it. I'm going to play golf.' After 10 days, it was like... there has to be more to life! I can still swing a golf club, and don't forget, Les Paul played until he literally passed away.

Shortly after I moved to Los Angeles, I was looking for work, and I happened to be invited to Ray's studio and sat in and played on a couple of his demos. I didn't charge him a dime for it. I was on cloud nine to be working in the same room as Ray Charles, one of my huge idols.

Within a twelve or fourteen month period, I went through a divorce from my wife of 29 years, which is devastating emotionally and earthshaking as far as your whole world being turned upside-down. And within that same twelve month period, I left the Eagles.

When we were writing songs for the Eagles, Don Henley would be involved in some new love relationship, and he was always excited about them. But we were all waiting for the day that they would break up.

I especially enjoyed some of the old hairstyles, with my hair down to my shoulders and a beard. And Henley's nickname used to be 'Furry Basketball' because he had that fro. It was fun to just look at what was going on in that era and how we presented ourselves on stage.

Take a ride on heavy metal, it's the only way that you can travel down that road.

You've got this piece of wood and some wires, pickups and some strings. How somebody uses that configuration to make something memorable, that's what's interesting to me.

...every once in a while it seems like the cosmos part and something great plops into your lap, that's how it was with "Hotel California".. a leased beach house in Malibu ... all the doors wide open on a spectacular July day probably in 1975 ... soaking wet ... thinking the world is a wonderful place to be... with an acoustic 12 string ... those chords just oozed out.