The Story of How "Hotel California" by the Eagles was Written & Recorded - Don Felder

hi this is Joe chambers welcome to musicians Hall of Fame backstage from the vault series this is a series of interviews we did starting back in 2004 two years before the musicians Hall of Fame open to the public we hope you enjoy it and if you do please remember to hit like subscribe and the notification bill so you don't miss any of our new shows hope you enjoy today's video with former guitars from the Eagles Don Felder when I was in the band Flo in New York we were a jazz fusion rock band and if you listened to jazz players they never play the same solo twice they just throw themselves out there and they improvise and they have the dexterity and the talent to be able to just play whatever they're thinking which I admired immensely it's what attracted me to go to New York was I wanted to be able to develop that skill and so being able to improvise to me was really a really great talent to develop when you when you sit down to write something instead of trying to conceptualize exactly what it should be and fit some form or mold or preconceived idea I'll just turn on a tape machine or my iPhone or something and just start playing and just let that improvising idea come out and I'll go wait that that was pretty good and I'll go back and play that three or four times and recorded a bunch and file it away if I got my iPhone out I could play you some ideas they just recently recorded the same way for Hotel California I was just sitting on a sofa in the living room in a rented house and playing this guitar and out came that progression and I played it three or four times as well I have to save this or it's going to go away so I ran back into my little one year old daughter's bedroom which during the time she was awake was my recording studio for demos but I just turned on the machine and recorded some of the just the 12-string part over and over and over and then I turned it off went away well we started putting together the Hotel California record I went back and started listening to a bunch those little pieces and ideas and I said well that's kind of interesting let me finish this so I got a old drum machine and programmed it to think a cha-cha beat or something and then I replayed the acoustic and played the bass part and most of the guitar parts that you hear on the record I'd kind of overdubbed on this tape recorder and put it on a cassette with maybe 15 or 16 other ideas one of them which became victim of love in that same batch of just writing ideas and gave it to Don Henley and Glenn Frey and said if there's anything on this tape you hear or listen finish writing it you know and so Henley called me up and said I really like that song that sounds kind of like a Mexican reggae and I went oh I think I know which one that is and so we started working on it he started working on the lyrics with with Glenn and I started trying to conceptualize how Joe and I who had just joined the band could do that guitar dueling thing on the end of the song because Joe and I had been doing that together live during Joe washe shows that I was just out jamming with Joe because I loved to play with him before he joined the band I wanted to be able to do that on an Eagles record so I sat down and started trying to figure out as a matter of fact of the original demo that I still have has a great deal of what I just made up on that demo that sounds very much like the very ending of the solos on Hotel California so it's just that taught the way of writing it just kind of comes out of you and usually my first two or three shots it's something that spontaneity and enthusiasm and creative energy are usually the best when when you go over and over and over and try to perfect it it sort of squishes it into like less excitement and more things that are really perfect to me aren't exciting you know I like the energy I wanted to try to capture some of that on the Eagles record so a lot of my writing was aimed in that direction of adding that to the band and that's how I wrote so it's how I write today at that opening rift on Hotel California Solo was the same rift identically that I had made up on that demo tape in my daughter's back bedroom well he finally got to the point where were we gonna do those live guitar overdubs between Joe and I in the studio I always thought Joe and I would set up a couple of Jules he and I would sit there we'd plug into a couple of amps roll the tape and we'd do what we've been doing against each other on Joe Walsh shows to just capture that kind of you know pushing each other to play something better than what you just played but and that's what we started off doing that Don Henley came in the control room and said no no no stop what are you doing and I went or playing the guitar parts for these says no no no that's not right you have to play it like the demo I said I don't even know what that was to tell you the truth that was a year and a half ago so I had to call my home have my housekeeper go through my cassettes find the original cassette put it in a blaster play it and hold the phone up to the blaster and we recorded it in the studio on Miami and I had to sit down and learn something I just made up off the top of my head for that demo and it was just like I said usually my first or second shot you know it just letting something come out is the best and Dom was right to be able to make me go back and do that I guess he had heard it over and over and over so many times he expected that opening lick and that first solos and stuff to be that way on the record yeah but before I leave I will play you that original demo got it on my laptop so you can hear that opening oh well we recorded it three times the first time we were recorded it we recorded it to slow it was either too fast or too slow and so we went back in and re-recorded the basic track not all the vocals and overdubs and everything basic track and then Don went out to sing the lyrics on it that he and Glenn had been writing and it was in the wrong key he was singing really high like a Barry Gibb falsetto and I went no no that's not right we we have to change keys so we went out and figured out what key it should be in which was gosh like two and a half steps below where it was originally and because I wrote it an E minor which was a good guitar key to play and right and so he wound up moving it down to B minor which is not a fun friendly guitar key you know anyway that's where Dawn's vocal really set best hiss range so that's where we re-recorded the whole thing for the third time and finally redid all the guitar parts and everything else to finish it when it was done I remember sitting in the record plant in LA and we had this big play back party because the record company had been banging on the door we need this album we want to put this album out you know and so we had a playback party and had a two-track of you know kind of like the sequence of the album and when Hinton 8 when the Hotel California cut came by Don turned around or what yep that's gonna be our single and I went dawn that's just that's the wrong song you know AM radio you wanted to have something three minutes two three minutes and 30 seconds the introduction before the singer started couldn't be more than 30 seconds so the DJ didn't have to sit and talk for a long time and you know it had to be either a rock tempo or a drippy ballad or something to get on the on the radio you know it had a specific format I said I just think that's the wrong format for a single he says nope that's gonna be our single outlet okay but I told you that I've never been so happy to have been so wrong about my opinion today because he was right again I have to say [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum

Views: 1,067,583

Keywords: Don Felder, Eagles, Hotel California, Nashville, Musicians Hall of Fame, Country Music Hall of Fame, Joe Chambers, Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, Vince Gill, Jazz, Improvize, Victim of Love, Guitar

Id: qDeoCZw_LE0

Length: 8min 8sec (488 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 15 2020