(Credits: Far Out / Don Henley)
Thu 4 December 2025 21:37, UK
For all of the sunshine that they brought to the world, you weren’t going to find a more dysfunctional band than Eagles circa 1978.
Bands might get famous based on the luck of the draw, but that doesn’t manage to be one of the most enduring bands of their generation by accident. That comes from having the right people at the top of the group, and Don Henley felt that the band were almost torn apart from within when they started to have discussions about their business affairs.
Granted, it’s not hard to see why the band were having problems all the way up until the end of The Long Run tour. Sure, the blow-up between Don Felder and Glenn Frey at a charity gig is the stuff of legend and has worked its way into the minds of every single fan, but that was only the result of what had been boiling over for years. Felder had wanted to sing and have a greater role in the group, but after being told ‘no’ one too many times, he wasn’t going to take shit from his friends anymore.
So when they finally decided to get back together in the 1990s, it was with at least a little bit of caution. No one had thought this kind of reunion would have been possible, but for those brief sets on the Hell Freezes Over special, the band did at least look like ‘The Five Musketeers’ as they tore through their new material and injected some new life into all of those classic hits. But when the time came to start going on the road again, old habits seemed to die hard.
If we want to go back to the main problem, though, it actually starts with Frey and Henley. The band had started putting all of their money into their own company, but when reviewing everything, it was clear that not everyone was getting the biggest cut, and when Felder learned that Frey and Henley were going to be making a lot more money than he was, he wasn’t going to roll over.
But, really, is that unfair? I mean, Felder is well within his right to come for any royalties that may not have been credited to him, but even if he came up with those classic chord progressions that kick off ‘Hotel California’, it’s not like he was going to be credited for coming up with those brilliant lyrics and melodies that the songwriting duo brought to the song.
Even though Henley liked the idea of having a band behind him again, he knew that whatever happened going forward wasn’t going to have Felder in the picture, saying, “At some point, Mr Felder decided that Glenn and I shouldn’t be the ones running the band. [He] was agitated about financial matters, and rather than talking to me, he would try the divide-and-conquer ploy. It was killing the creativity. Glenn decided that we had to make a change, and I agreed. Let’s be honest: a band can’t be a democracy.”
While that’s a tough pill to swallow, it was a lot easier for the rest of the band to get onboard with that than Felder. Joe Walsh already had his stellar solo career to attend to and Timothy B Schmit remained one of the most easygoing band members any band could have asked for, so to have Felder acting out of line might have been the one fly on the ointment that had grown too big to ignore.
Eagles may have continued on without him, but it’s not like Frey and Henley weren’t justified, either. They both had kept the band’s name alive throughout the decades when they weren’t active, but even if they deserved a greater cut, it was bound to hurt seeing that musical partnership severe over one too many contracts.
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