Eagles: The story behind the song that broke up the band
The composition of one of the songs included in Hotel California marked a before and after in the relations between the members of the group.
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Just like in a family, in a band there are all kinds of moments: happy, sad, happy, tense, etc. That was what The Eagles had to live through in their heyday. After the commercial success that "One of These Nights" meant, the Californian group set out to record a new LP, which they called Hotel California, an album that would turn out to be the most important in their history, as well as one of the best-selling albums. of all time.
While recording the record, Don Felder, one of the lead guitarists for The Eagles, said he wanted to record a song he claimed to have written and which he called "Victim of Love", according to Don Henley, he presented his colleagues with just a collection of riffs. which Glenn Frey and JD Souther later turned into a theme.
After several failed attempts to record the track and reaching a satisfactory result for the group, the band told Felder that it would be better if he didn't sing the song, but they couldn't convince him. That's why they allowed him to make his own version of the track, but the story didn't end there.
As the sessions drew to a close, the band gave manager Irving Azoff a job: take Felder out to dinner while they re-recorded the entire track. But when Don found out he was being cut from the track, he felt betrayed, saying, "It was like they were taking that song away from me. They had promised me a track on the next record.”
Although Henley denies, even to this day, Felder's words, the event caused a rift in the Eagles that, as time went on and the tour progressed, created a growing tension between Don and his bandmates over getting all the songwriting royalties. Later, on July 31, 1980, in Long Beach, California, tempers boiled over in what has been described as the "Long Night at Wrong Beach", as the animosity between Felder and Frey boiled over before it began the show, when the former said, "You're welcome, I guess" to the wife of Senator Alan Cranston as the politician thanked the band backstage for performing to benefit his re-election.
The duo spent the entire show talking about the beating each planned to give the other once the recital was over. "Just three more songs 'til I beat the crap out of you, man," Don said near the end of the concert, while during "Best of My Love," Glenn assured, "I'm going to kick your ass when we get offstage." However, when the lights went out that night, Felder took his guitar, smashed it, and left, never to be heard from again.
Finally, once bassist Timothy B. Schmidt called Frey to discuss upcoming rehearsals, he confirmed the worst: the band was history. 😭😭😭
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