How the Eagles’ Don Felder Conned His Way Into Becoming a Guitar Player as a Kid

The Eagles’ former lead guitarist, Don Felder, seemed to build his entire career as a guitar player on the notion of going left when everyone else was going right. Even his introduction to the West Coast rock band came after the band had already established a name for itself in the late 1960s. And indeed, Felder’s previous work as a musician was no less non-traditional.

Videos by American Songwriter

That includes the somewhat lousy deal he managed to broker to get his first guitar.

Don Felder Had To Get Creative When He Was a Kid

When he was only ten years old, future Eagles guitarist Don Felder’s world changed forever after he watched Elvis Presley perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. He desperately wanted to get a guitar of his own after seeing the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll strum and shake on live television. “Trouble was,” Felder wrote in his memoir. “I didn’t have the money to buy one. Utterly despondent, I suddenly realized I might have something valuable to trade—cherry bombs.” The cherry bombs Felder wrote about, spherical fireworks roughly the size and shape of the fruit, were illegal in his home state of Florida.

When another kid from Felder’s neighborhood (who just so happened to have a beat-up six-string in his closet) asked the future Eagles guitarist for a cherry bomb, Felder got the bright idea to make a deal. “‘Sure,’ I said, with youthful cunning. ‘But it’ll cost you that old guitar on the top of your closet,’” Felder wrote. His neighbor agreed, and the pair traded goods. Felder’s new guitar was full of holes and only had half of its six strings. He scrounged up enough money for new strings and wore the guitar out on his front porch.

The cons and tricks didn’t necessarily stop there. Once he was in his early teens, Felder began playing in bands with other future musical icons, like Stephen Stills. “We played junior high schools, the usual stuff,” Felder recalled in a 1980 interview with Axe Magazine. “We were pretty successful, considering that we were all teenagers lying about our ages.” 

The Guitar Player Joined The Eagles In The Mid-1970s

Don Felder didn’t put the guitar down after acquiring his first acoustic through a cherry bomb swap. He continued to play into his late teens, eventually landing bigger gigs opening for established acts in his native Florida and beyond. Despite the calls from his colleagues to join them on the West Coast, Felder opted to stay east of the Mississippi, viewing New York City as the place to be. That’s where he was when he ran into his long-time friend and former bandmate, Bernie Leadon, and Leadon’s new band, the Eagles.

Glenn Frey was immediately taken with Felder’s playing and invited him to the West Coast to work as a session player. Felder finally made the move in 1972, and two years later, he was tracking slide guitar for the Eagles’ “Good Day in Hell” and guitar on “Already Gone.” The next day after the session, the Eagles invited Felder to join their band as an official member. “I felt as though I’d joined a band that was breaking up,” he told Axe. “Bernie [Leadon] was going to quit. Randy [Meisner] was quitting. Everybody was really p***ed off. Those were hostile times.”

Hostility aside, the Eagles’ transition from country rock to straightforward rock ‘n’ roll would prove to be incredibly successful. Felder, along with the band’s other lead guitarist, Joe Walsh, helped solidify the band’s new sound in their first album post-lineup change, Hotel California. The album ushered the band into a new realm of 1970s rock, once again proving that if Felder is involved, it’s likely to push back against the status quo.

Photo by Ian McIlgorm/Shutterstock