Eagles vs Don Felder - The Lawsuit That Wouldn't End

Glen Frey and Don Felder of the Eagles / Arthur DAmario III / Alamy Stock Photo

In July 1980, the Eagles were finishing off their tour of the album ‘The Long Run’. Tensions were already running high. They were ready for a break. One night, that tension finally boiled over. This is the story of how Eagles broke up (the first time!) and the dramatic, very long winded legal case that followed. 

It was the evening of July 31, 1980, and Eagles were due to play their final show of the tour at Long Beach Arena, California. They already had their next tour in the works, as is the nature of the music biz. However, arguably that next tour was destined to never happen, because the band were not in a good place. 

The recording and subsequent tour of this album had pushed them too far. In an interview with the LA Times in 1994, Singer Glenn Frey (fry) said ‘The Long Run’ sessions had been gruelling, and the band had often:

“Just sat around in a daze”

Victims of the inevitable burnout that comes with years of high pressure recording and touring. 

Guitarist Don Felder had also arrived at this particular gig with issues of his own. The final show was a benefit concert for the Governor of California at the time, Alan Cranston. Felder believed that they shouldn’t be getting involved with politics. In a Guitar Player interview this year, he said:

“Honestly, I had never cared or paid attention very much to politics at all…It wasn’t a political thing, Democrat or Republican. I didn’t pay any attention and didn’t see the point of benefit gigs for politicians.”

His thoughts on this became obvious when it was time to meet Alan Cranston and his wife. Story goes, while meeting Cranston’s wife Norma, his greeting of “Nice to meet you” was followed by a muttered “I guess…” as she walked away. 

Bit rude, yes, but surely not the end of the world? Frey disagreed. That snide little comment really wound him up, so much so that he confronted Felder in the dressing room and started yelling at him. Felder allegedly, in an attempt to keep the peace, ended up walking away. 

This wasn’t the first time Felder had been a source of tension in the band, by the way.

By this point, his relationship with them was already strained by years of resentment. A few years earlier in the 1976 sessions for the LP ‘Hotel California’, Felder had wanted to sing on the track ‘Victim of Love’. The other members were willing to give it a shot, but upon hearing the recording decided it wasn’t up to standards. Frey, reflecting on this decision in The History of the Eagles, said:

“Don Felder, for all of his talents as a guitar player, was not a singer.”

Hear the final version of Victim of Love, with vocals by Don Henley, here:

It seemed he wasn’t the only one who felt that way, either. Former bass player Randy Meisner had left the band in 1977, after feeling that he was undervalued by his bandmates. He too had been feeling the effects of constant touring after the success of Hotel California, and had become ill to the point of developing stomach ulcers.

It became difficult for him to deliver the vocals to the hit ‘Take it to the Limit’ and he let his bandmates know.  His complaints were not met with sympathy from Frey, who legend has it told him to quit if he was so unhappy. The vibes did not improve, with Meisner even taking separate limos to his bandmates at one point. You know times are hard when you have to take a separate limo… how on earth did they get through it?

He eventually decided it was best to take Frey’s advice, and decided to leave the band.  

So, when we look to what happened on that fateful night in 1980, we can see why there was so much anger between Frey and Felder. But back to the main story: The band took to the stage without reconciliation after their dressing room showdown. 

Part way through their performance of ‘The Best of My Love’, according to Felder in Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles, Frey approached him and said:

“F*** you. I’m gonna kick your ass when we get off this stage.”

Charming. Any hopes of a wholesome reconciliation had left the arena, and Felder thought it was best to stay away from the rest of the band during the encore breaks. It then went from ‘bad’ to ‘worse’. 

Frey’s threats continued, starting a countdown of how many songs there were left before he would presumably… beat him up. 

Felder responded with threats of his own, choosing to smash up a guitar as the concert finished. It was an expensive decision, but Felder chose to justify it:

“it was either that or we were gonna come to fisticuffs — so, ‘I’m gonna do this, okay, and leave...’”

Their relationship at this point was clearly not going to improve, so the band called it quits not long after, although that wasn’t formally announced until 1982.

Don Henley / Jeff Wheeler/ Minneapolis Star Tribune / Alamy Stock Photo

Fourteen years passed without any new music or any touring, until finally, in 1994, the drought was over. Eagles reunited and set off on a brand new tour, brazenly titled ‘Hell Freezes Over’ after a comment Henley had made when they first broke up over whether or not they would ever get back together. 

It was a huge success - tickets were selling for record prices, and it seemed like Eagles were well and truly back. 

However, it wasn’t long before the cracks began to show again. Felder claimed he was not being paid as much as Frey and Henley, perhaps playing on his earlier insecurities about his place in the band. 

Frey was furious about this. He thought they had put their differences aside and were past all the in-fighting, but here was another issue and yet again Felder was at the centre of it. 

For better or for worse, Felder didn’t let it drop. He claimed he had been coerced into agreeing to less pay, and wanted that changed. 

Frey and Henley had finally had enough (... again). In February 2001, they took the decision to fire Felder from the band. Felder responded with a lawsuit, citing breach of contract and wrongful termination. He argued that not only had Frey and Henley insisted on taking a larger percentage of the band's profits, but they had also coerced him into signing an agreement which would see the two making three times the profit Felder would for their 2000 boxset ‘Selected Works: 1972-1999’. The boxset ended up selling approximately 267,000 copies and earned over $16 million dollars, a big financial loss for Felder if his allegations were true.

It then got even more messy. Frey and Henley countersued Felder, claiming he had breached his contract by writing a ‘tell all book’ and attempting to sell the rights to it. It wasn’t until May 2007 that the cases were both settled outside of court, for an undisclosed amount (although believed to be millions!). 

Funnily enough, Felder’s tell-all book Heaven and Hell: My Life in The Eagles (1974–2001) came out later that year. 

There were several subsequent lawsuits made by Felder, and he never stopped having a say on all things Eagles. For example, when Eagles did their ‘History of the Eagles’ documentary in 2013, Felder criticised it for being ‘incomplete.’ He said in an interview with Ultimate Class Rock in 2013:

“Overall I thought it was OK, but I didn’t think it was really an accurate documentary. I thought a lot was omitted from the documentary. There were a lot of things that weren’t discussed, a lot of issues that aren’t brought to the forefront…. Most of it was about Don and Glenn. But they controlled it, owned it, and paid for it, so they could do what they wanted”

Not bitter at all, eh?

The feud came to an abrupt end in 2016 when Frey passed away, aged 67. He and Felder never did get a chance to bury the hatchet, and it is something that Felder seems to have regrets about. Felder reflected in the aftermath of Frey’s death in an Associated Press interview in 2016:

“I had always hoped somewhere along the line, he and I would have dinner together, talking about old times and letting it go with a handshake and a hug.”

The whole Eagles vs. Don Felder story is really a mix of incredible talent, big egos, and never-ending legal battles. Felder’s struggles with the band shows how complicated personal issues can get, even in a legendary rock group like Eagles. The lawsuits eventually got settled and the headlines died down, but the personal tensions lingered, sadly.