An Interview with Don Felder

His lead guitar will forever grace some of rock’s most perennial classics but Don Felder’s proverbial life in the fast lane came to a screeching halt in 2001 with his contentious exit from the Eagles and, later, the end of his near-30-year marriage. “There’s no therapist you can turn to that can repair that damage,” Felder says of these misfortunes, which admittedly left him shell-shocked and searching for solace. “You have to take a hard look at it yourself — who you were, what happened to you, how you reacted, the feelings that go along with it. And how do you resolve all of that before you go forward and continue to carry all of that baggage with you?”

Such introspection ultimately led Felder to pen his autobiography, 2008’s Heaven and Hell, and his first solo album in nearly three decades, Road to Forever, which was released last month on Rocket Science Records. Featuring such musical comrades as Crosby, Stills, and Nash as well as Styx’s Tommy Shaw, the album not only reflects Felder’s inner journey but also the peace of mind he's gained from the experience. “You have to find a way to take that and turn it into something positive or else you’ll spend the rest of your days unhappy,” he insists. “And I refuse to let myself go through life that way. That’s the feeling I tried to get across with this music and these songs.”

In writing these songs were there any moments when you surprised yourself with what you revealed?

Well, I think the whole process was a surprise to me. All of the images that I had adopted over the years — being a husband, a family man, a rock star in a band — all that was just stripped away from me. I had to go through a process of understanding how that happened. Going through such a debilitating period of my life, it was just a very tough blow to me. I had to find a way to understand that, emotionally resolve it, release those feelings, and go forward in life. And music is what I’ve turned to primarily to express myself in the past. So my salvation was to hang all those emotions and all those feelings in those songs.

Despite all the turbulence and tension that informed this album, it reflects an unmistakable sense of serenity.

It’s interesting you say that. A lot of the songs that are on that record came out of the experience of me writing my book. When I was writing my book I really had to take a hard look back at every part of my life that had led up to that, including the wonderful times and the tragic times. I’ve had a studio in my home. And as I would write the text for the book and have these feelings and emotions about things that had happened, I’d stop writing the text and I’d go in the studio with that emotion hanging very close to my heart and consciousness and I’d try to write music or lyrics about that feeling. And so to me it was kind of a dual, cathartic process that I went through in writing my life’s experiences and then writing these songs in hopes that people who have similar experiences — the loss of love, loss of family, tragedy strikes them — find some way to deal with those feelings, come through the other side, and be positive and optimistic about it.

As much as you're known for playing rock guitar, ballads like “I Believe in You” and “Life’s Lullaby” are very touching songs.

In the past, when I was writing material I was primarily writing for the Eagles. It was very much like writing for a sitcom: You had a cast of characters. You know each one’s personality. You know how they’re gonna play. If you write something too technical for [Don] Henley, he just can’t play it. If you write something too complex for Glenn [Frey], he can’t play it. So you had to write, really, within the context of that band, in the keys that the band sings in. It was somewhat constrained by the structure of that band.

When I left the band in 2001 and started writing for this record, the handcuffs were off. I could really write anything I wanted to write. As a matter of fact, I ended up writing 26 song ideas, 16 of which I finished in the studio. Then I pared it down to what I thought were the best 12. I wanted to have a wide variety of styles and song material other than just being the rock ‘n’ roll electric-guitar player. There’s plenty of that on there, but at the same time I wanted to show some depth in other areas.

If you kept playing just the same rock-riff kind of thing you’d end up a caricature of yourself.

Exactly, and that’s no fun at all. The challenge is to reinvent yourself. And I was not only able to reinvent myself musically after I left the Eagles, but also as an author by writing my life story; and then especially being able to reinvent myself in areas that I had not really been known for, on this CD.… I wanted to be able to push myself in areas musically that I wasn’t really that comfortable with. And it was a challenge to explore those areas. “Life’s Lullaby,” it’s very soft-spoken, tender, piano-based with acoustic guitar and strings — not something I had done a lot of in the past. So if I wanted to be able to do it I had to push myself. To me that’s the challenge of being an artist, to take on new genres and new areas writing and performing and seeing how you can do at it.

Does the guitar still challenge you?

It does. And I’ll tell you what challenges me the most is to take that same instrument and create a whole new voice or a whole new feeling out of it. That same instrument — if I had a guitar and I was sitting in a room with six other guitarists, and we just passed this instrument from hands to hands to hands to hands — would have a completely different voice. It would have a different feeling, a different tone. It would be that person’s touch, emotionally and physically, coming out of that instrument. That’s why so many people say it’s not in the guitar; it’s in the hands, the person who’s playing it. It’s not in the pen that’s writing the poetry; it’s in the soul of the person who’s revealing himself to you.

The natural inclination with any skill or talent is that you improve over time and with experience — and of course you’re a seasoned musician — yet you're revered more in the public eye for the music you made in your twenties and thirties with the Eagles. It's an odd paradox.

I feel extremely fortunate to have been part of some of the creations of some of those songs that had such worldwide success. I just did a show for the United Nations back in August, and it was about 300 heads of states from all over the world at this show. And when I started playing “Hotel California” they all knew the song. Less than half of them spoke English. They knew the song. They stood up. They gave me a standing ovation for that song. I don’t know how many people have ever had the opportunity to have written, performed, and recorded something that’s had such a global impact but it’s very few and far between. It’s quite an honor to have been part of something like that in my career, although that’s only one of my many children. All of the songs I’ve written and recorded, I love them equally. Some of them, obviously, have been more successful than others, but…to me that is not the real bearing of the value of the music and the writing of songs that any artist does. Of course it’s nice to have hits but at the same time that’s not why you do it.

You do it because you love it. Most people refer to music as, “I play music.” To me, playing anything is like a child at play; it has a youthful enthusiasm and excitement and laughter. It’s a very uplifting process to play music. I do it mainly because I love that feeling that goes along with playing music, writing music, recording music, performing it live.

Because you’ve had these opportunities to reflect in writing your book and in making this album, do you ever listen to something you recorded years ago and marvel at the craftsmanship or even the inspiration you had back then — considering you helped create such indelible, memorable music?

I think we all are given gifts. And I’ve been given an abundance of gifts, musically. The talent that I have, it could have very well been handed to another soul at birth instead of myself. The circumstance under which I grew up, with my father encouraging me in music and playing music in the house all the time and helping buy my first guitar, it was unique in the ‘50s; this is when all this happened for me. There weren’t a lot of guitar players.… When I saw Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show and all those girls screaming at him, I went, “That’s what I want to do! I want to do that!” [Laughs] But it really wasn’t just for the fame and the accolades and the attention. It was really because I became obsessed with music.

Not having the money to have teachers teach me, I had to learn to teach myself through just listening. There’s a thing called ear training where somebody can walk into a room now and play something on guitar maybe twice or three times and I can pick up the guitar and play it. What I hear I can play.... I’ve been given these great gifts that I’ve developed over the years myself, which I continue to develop. And I try to use those not only for my own satisfaction by writing these songs and doing records, but I do a lot of benefits for everything from St. Jude Children’s Hospital to Autism Speaks — for people, in general, that need help. If I can use that talent in another way to help someone else, I’m more than happy to do it. 

That also underscores how profound music is to people.

Yeah. The Canadians have this great organization called Canadian Music Therapy Trust. It’s an organization that’s been put together and funded nationally across Canada, and they use music as a therapy. People go into hospices where they’re dying of cancer and play music. They go in children’s cancer wards and they get them to play drums. And the joy and the happiness that comes out of music really is more uplifting and therapeutic than just about all the drugs doctors can give them.

For example, I went into Calgary last year with the Canadian Music Therapy Trust — I’ve done a series of fundraisers for them and benefits as well — to this thing called the Canadian Brain Injury Trust. It’s a big hospital where people have had serious brain injuries, whether it’s falling off a motorcycle or slipping on ice and hitting their head on a curb; one of the guys was a Canadian soldier that had had shrapnel in his brain. Most of these people can’t speak. They’re in wheelchairs. They’re very close to a state of vegetation.

When I went into this room there were probably 20 wheelchairs in a semicircle around where I was sitting. And in the back of the room there were probably a hundred relatives of those patients — husbands, wives, children, grandfathers — that were there to watch this. When I started playing some of the songs that these people knew before they’d had brain injuries — “Take It Easy,” “Hotel California,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “Peaceful Easy Feeling” — they started trying to sing. These people who couldn’t speak, they were touched in a way through music that was very therapeutic and uplifting. Music is just an amazing gift. To have that, to be able to use it in certain ways like that, is just as joyous as having a hit record to me.

Road to Forever is available now at retail and online music outlets. For more information, please visit the artist’s official website.

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Listen Up, It's Buddy Guy

“It’s kind of scary,” says Buddy Guy, his voice quivering with ominous unease. “Blues music is like an endangered species almost.

“The few of us that’s still left,” he adds, “they don’t play our music for some reason much anymore, hardly any.”

Guy, 75, knows of which he speaks. In a narrative steeped with down-home candor reflective of his Louisiana roots, his new autobiography, When I Left Home: My Story, co-written with David Ritz, underscores how amongst the most mythic figures of the Chicago blues he forged his artistry to become one himself—and ultimately one of the last of a dying breed.

He paid his dues as a sideman and session guitarist at various labels, most notably signing in 1959 to Chess Records, home to many of the musicians whose raw and potent sound had provided him a formative influence.

“When I was coming up,” Guy says, “I heard it, and that’s what drew me to play it.”

For nearly a decade he contributed to sides by the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Junior Wells, the latter with whom he’d forge a longstanding musical partnership.

Guy earned his legend, however, as a wild man on the live stage—or on top of bars, tables, chairs, even out on the sidewalk—of whatever nightclub or juke joint that would have him. A whirlwind of skill and flamboyance on the axe, he exhilarated audiences and, in time, an equally passionate retinue of guitarists—Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, and Keith Richards, to name but a few—took notice.

“Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton said they didn’t even know a Strat could be played blues on until they saw me,” Guy notes in a rare but justified moment of immodesty.

While his showmanship proved as influential as it was awe-inspiring, it had always rubbed label president Leonard Chess the wrong way—consequently Guy never really eclipsed his supporting-role status as a recording artist at Chess—but the emergent popularity of blues rockers from Cream to the Jimi Hendrix Experience in the latter half of the ‘60s turned him around.

“Chess sent Willie Dixon to my house,” Guy remembers of being summoned to what turned out to be his boss' about-face. “I had never been in the office.”

Upon his arrival, Guy recalls, “He bent over and said, ‘I want you to kick me.’

“I said, ‘For what?’

“He said, ‘You’ve been trying to give us this fucking shit all your life and we’ve been holding you back. This shit is hot.’”

Guy ended up leaving the label in 1968 in search of more-promising opportunities, but despite his efforts he struggled to find his musical footing for years thereafter.

“My children didn’t know who I was until they turned 21 and walked in the blues club and said, ‘Dad, I didn’t know you could play like that,’” Guy says.

It wasn’t until the late ‘80s, in fact, with such albums as Sweet Tea and Damn Right, I’ve Got The Blues that he began to reap the recognition he had so long deserved. Depending on your perspective, his music was played on the radio because it sold—or his music sold because it was played on the radio.

Regardless, Guy insists, “You never know what’s gonna be ear-catching or finger-popping until it go out there.”

There is seemingly no reward without risk for Guy, and even at this current phase of his career he relishes the chance to defy convention and exceed expectation.

He also refuses to grow complacent. “If I thought I knew enough on my guitar I’d be going out the world backwards,” he says. “You never get too old to learn.”

It’s a philosophy that keeps him hungry and encouraged—and leaves his disciples more and more amazed.

“I think he’s still evolving,” says George Thorogood, who has shared stages and traded licks with Guy over the years. “Every time I hear him he’s more supernatural than the last time I heard him.”

Guy is a six-time GRAMMY® winner, his most recent win coming in 2010 for Living Proof in the category of Best Contemporary Blues Album. He’s been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame. And he is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the honor perhaps most indicative of his significance.

All told he is a master at his craft, but he characteristically downplays such accolades and acclaim. “Stuff you read about ‘Buddy Guy’s a legend’ and all that,” he says, “man, that’s something they give you.”

The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. Or, as Guy sums it up, “I’ve got a restaurant in Chicago. I may sit here and tell you how good my gumbo is because I’m from Louisiana, but you still ain’t gonna know ‘til you taste it. That’s the way the music is.”

When I Left Home: My Story by Buddy Guy with David Ritz is published by Da Capo Press.

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Singer/Songwriter Adam Levy: The Craft of Conviction

As a teenager first learning to play the guitar, Adam Levy wasn’t bent on mastering the signature riff to “Purple Haze” or the chord sequence in “Stairway to Heaven.” Instead he practiced stuff like Paul McCartney & Wings’ “Junior’s Farm,” or “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers. “I wasn’t really interested in the things that people often turn to,” Levy recalls. “I still can’t play ‘Purple Haze’ or ‘Little Wing’ or any of that.”

His six-string instincts and musical curiosities have served him well over the years as a sideman and session player—Levy’s credentials include studio work with the likes of Amos Lee, Tracy Chapman, Sex Mob, and, most notably, Norah Jones, on whose first three albums he performed as a member of her Handsome Band—as well as a singer/songwriter.

Composing with and for other artists—Jones recorded his track, “In the Morning,” on her sophomore LP Feels Like Home—Levy has also produced a string of solo efforts, the most recent being The Heart Collector (Lost Wax Music). Cozy and mostly acoustic, the album evokes the character of a classic short-story anthology chock full of picturesque imagery and humble, endearing emotion. His voice soft yet dusky—think Keb Mo mixed with a bit of Lyle Lovett—Levy renders each narrative like a seasoned storyteller or, perhaps, an old friend.

“The whole point of songwriting is to tap into some universal thing,” he says, and just as an author embellishes within a plot, Levy doesn't necessarily base his songs on personal experience. “It’s not like you found my journal and you’re reading my innermost thoughts,” he explains. “They’re in there, but most of the songs come from other places. Anything that’s really confessional would go by really quickly. I wouldn’t ask you to listen to my confessions for three-and-a-half minutes… I would never write a song that says, ‘I woke up today at 7:20 and ate some leftover mac and cheese.’ That’s what I really did, but I wouldn’t put that in a song.”

Of greater importance, Levy says, is that his conviction be sincere.

Take, for instance, one of The Heart Collector's most charming songs, "Painting by Numbers," which was inspired by Edvard Munch's Self Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed. “So I started off with what was there," Levy explains. "The first line is, ‘I made up the bed the way that she likes it / Then I polished the floor ‘til it shined so bright / Then I oiled the gears in the grandfather clock / And put on my best suit of blue and green.’ In the first verse I’ve just described the entire painting.”

Levy employed a bit of poetic license to craft the song’s chorus and remaining two verses, filling out a narrative whose protagonist is neither directly informed by the portrait nor his own conscious thoughts. "And yet,” he maintains, “at the same time, that character is really sympathetic to me. I could see myself in him.”

That his songs in turn resonate with listeners is for Levy not only rewarding, but encouraging as well.

“That’s part of the challenge of being an artist if you want to have any kind of longevity,” he says, “writing songs that will have some staying power, of course, and also finding ways to keep your own self amused, entertained, bemused, whatever. Because as soon as you get bored, as soon as you tune out, I don’t think you can expect anyone else to tune in.”

(First published at Blinded By Sound.)

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Interview: Chris Welch, Author of Eric Clapton: The Ultimate Illustrated History

Even in his formative stages Eric Clapton was earning a rapturous, rabid following and inspiring generations of guitarists to come. “He was already a star,” says veteran music journalist and author Chris Welch. “Even then as a teenager, people were talking about Eric.”

Welch was one of them. A reporter at British music weekly Melody Maker and still a teenager himself at the time, he first chronicled Clapton as a founding member of the Yardbirds. “I went to a club in South London called the Bromel Club, just a hotel gig, very small little bar and not many people there,” Welch recalls of one such occasion. “The band were playing ‘Smokestack Lightning’ and all those songs the Yardbirds specialized in. They finished to mild applause. Eric looked quite fed up. So I went up to him and said, ‘Well, you look fed up. What’s the matter?’ And he said, ‘Oh, you noticed, did you?’ a bit sarcastically.”

The two hit it off and a friendship ensued, one which has witnessed Clapton’s many incarnations — from stints in the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers through supergroups Cream and Blind Faith to subsequent solo endeavors — as well as Welch’s journalistic career to date. Writing at Melody Maker and later NME, among other publications, he’s also penned biographies on such rock icons as Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, and Cream.

In his latest book, Clapton: The Ultimate Illustrated History, Welch comes full circle in a sense, surveying Clapton’s life and career while offering firsthand reflections along the way. Interspersed throughout the narrative are rare and renowned photographs along with images of vintage concert posters in kaleidoscopic brilliance and, most striking of all, the arsenal of guitars behind the music of this seminal blues-rock artist. 

In the preface of the book you write about Eric in those early days as striking you like a man on a mission, of him having a certain discipline about what he was doing. 

He always gave the impression of being more serious about what he was playing than the other guys in the band. They’d all be jumping about like school kids, really. Eric was much more focused and serious about the blues and what he wanted to do. He never felt like he quite fit in with any of the groups he was in at that point, I don’t think. He was always very restless and slightly detached from the band. 

What initially drew you to his playing? What distinguished him, even in the beginning, from the other guitarists in Britain at that time? 

Most people were still playing in the old-fashioned way, like the Shadows and groups like the Ventures in America; that kind of echoing rock ‘n’ roll guitar style, rather nervous and jerky, staccato playing. Not really steeped in the blues at all. It was only Eric, really, and a few others—there was a guy called Alexis Korner, who played [blues] guitar as well—but none of them really matched Eric’s ability. Because not only was he a just a very good guitar player; he suddenly managed to absorb the sound and real spirit of the blues. He’d been listening to records, of course—Freddie King and B.B. King—and that’s really how he learned, but miraculously he absorbed that style and sound and made it his own. 

Ray Charles said once, “I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.” Eric seems to have shared the same ethic. 

Exactly, yes, that’s true. He always found the whole pop scene very amusing. I think when Cream became successful they certainly did enjoy that fleeting, couple of years of pop fame. I mean, you couldn’t not enjoy it; it was such a good time for everybody. They wanted Cream to be a success and to be recognized, obviously, but they still wanted to do it playing their music, not compromising with the music. 

The Band’s Music From Big Pink was ultimately a catalyst for Eric to break up Cream. 

It was a big turnaround, because Cream had been locked into a corner where people expected them to be playing “Steppin’ Out” and “Toad” and lots of guitar solos at high speeds all the time every night. Eric understandably got a bit sick of being cast in that role as the superhero guitar player. He could do it, but night after night it wore a bit thin. As you say, when first he heard Music From Big Pink, he could see a different way of approaching the guitar and music, slowing down a bit, playing with a bit more relaxed feel. I remember he actually played me the album while I was interviewing him. He had a flat in Chelsea. And that’s when he was telling me Cream were going to break up and this was the kind of music he wanted to play… [but] he said, “You can’t tell anybody yet. This is top secret.” So I had to wait for a few weeks before it was officially announced. But that was a pivotal moment, you’re right. 

Eric and Jack Bruce and the other musicians of that lot seemed not so much celebrity or fame-seeking but rather like tradesmen pursuing their craft. 

They always wanted to learn more and study their instruments…. They were a very competitive sort of people. They all came from that revivalist thing in Britain where people wanted to pick up on the best of American music and find the source and play it to the best of their ability. Rather than just being in pop music, which is totally commercialized and aimed at the charts and instant popularity and fame, these were people who were sincere about their musical ambitions. And that really was why the public would recognize that eventually and why they became so hugely successful. There was truth in what they were playing. 

They ended up being more successful than the ones seeking commercial fame. 

That’s the irony of it, isn’t it? The public at large recognized that what they were hearing was the real thing. It was sincere, important music that they were playing—well, at the start it was—whereas people could see through all the sort of instant-pop nonsense. [Laughs] They weren’t seeking success, necessarily, but somehow it was thrust upon them. 

You’ve known Eric for so long, where do you draw the line between journalism and friendship? If you catch him in a performance and he’s just not really into it, do you write that? 

Very difficult, yes. I have done it in the past. He went through a patch when he wasn’t really trying terribly hard, during the drinking period…. I remember writing a piece about him at this gig in London, which was rather critical actually. But he accepted it. There were no sort-of bitter complaints. I remember seeing him with Elton John at Wembley Stadium; that wasn’t a particularly good gig either. 

There’s a quote from Eric in your book in which he says, “I really don’t rank myself very highly in any of the fields I work in.” Do you think he acknowledges his skill? 

He once described himself to me as a musical laborer. Eric’s always been a pretty modest guy, really. It is very difficult, isn’t it, if you’re being praised to the hills and then you get knocked back by criticism? It leaves you in a confused state. But generally speaking, I would say that he’s well aware of his technical abilities as a guitar player. You don’t get that good by not working at it; and he must be satisfied with his own playing. I think what Eric has learned to do over the years, if you listen to his playing, is how to construct a solo and, [also], editing his own work. Not like those guitar players who go on forever and ever and never stop improvising endlessly, trying to baffle everybody. He’s an artist in that sense. What we’re talking about is an artist who knows how to make the best use of his talents. 

Chris Welch

Clapton: The Ultimate Illustrated History by Chris Welch is published by Voyageur Press, an imprint of MBI Publishing Company, 2011.

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