Contact Stigmaweb's video: 1134 The Inspiration for Hotel California

Want you watch this show with any frequency it all you know how much I love music and seeing guitars -- show the shot Brian, with the guitars on the stage. I told you for something special today, there are only a handful of people who can say they are part of the band that had the best selling album in the 20th century and we have one of them here -- roll it! Guitar virtuoso Don Felder so skilled on the threads they nicknamed him "Fingers". His style caught the ear of a little band from LA called "The Eagles". He joined in 1974 right before they became the biggest band in America. But life in the Eagles was anything but peaceful and easy. Amid the multi platinum hits, years of bickering with Glen Frye and Don Henley. In 2001, 25 years after he joined the Eagles, Felder was fired. Today Don spoke on his sole career with the release of his album "Road to Forever". Come on now -- Don Felder! Nice welcome. Have a sit! So you know we had a few people on the show get standing in ovation but one of the things about the Eagles, really it is the greatest selling album of the 20th century -- everybody is impacted by the Eagles. So does that ever ... do you get used to that where it becomes known as always a little special? "It's always special you know! I started out in a very hard poverty conditions in a small town in Gainesville, started playing guitar when I was 10. I really had no idea where it was going to lead me. To have something happens that magnitude, to be part of it has always a thrill for me." Was Elvis the inspiration? It was. I saw Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was 10 years old and I saw all these women screaming, "I think I want to do that! That was like a lot of fun" You can go on with that guitar if you can play like you play. So talk to me about Eagles, I watched the history of the Eagles on Showtime, mesmerized by it. It obviously I don't know it was a 360 degree portrait for what happened, it focused a lot on certain guys but where is the inspiration come from when you guys where together? Because the song, nobody's ever written that kind of music before. "Well I think everybody brought ideas, music to all the songs. Henley and Fry were great lyricists, wrote some of the great lyrics I think including Hotel California, lyrics for that, that I remember part of that. But everybody would bring ideas, music to the song, write solo for the song, write base part of the song, everybody kind of brought something to the table. We usually started with one guy on piano, our acoustic guitar playing, the idea for the song and then started taking on the qualities of the band. Everybody playing and arranging it. It became the Eagles song. So just talk about the Hotel California, the most iconic song maybe of all time -- Stairway to Heaven , Hotel California. There's only a couple of songs that are known all over the world. And Glen Fry says in dark, Don Felden used to sing, Hendley and I were on the instrumental tapes. Don and I listening to one of his cassettes and this song of Hotel California came up and both of us said, "kind of interesting" and even talking to your fiancée Catherine who is here, I felt it was very disrespectful as a member of the band to say, "Yeah! We took it and we created something!" from him. And I said this backstage, do you mind sharing this story you told me?