The Time Don Felder Was Wined and Dined So Don Henley Could Record an Eagles Song Behind His Back

The Eagles made it big when they released Hotel California in 1976, and virtually every song on that album has strong listening power today. The title track is by far the most memorable, but we can’t turn a blind eye to underrated Eagles hits like “Victim Of Love” and “Life In The Fast Lane”.

That latter song was a mutual effort between Don Henley, Don Frey, and Joe Walsh. “Life In The Fast Lane” was a rough exploration of the down-and-dirty life in Los Angeles. It’s ironic, in a way. The Eagles wrote a song about how much they hated that city, only for that song to become massively popular in that very city.

Glenn Frey even said that the song was about how it was “kind of disturbing to see the extremes that the bourgeois jet set will involve themselves in.”

Betrayal Over One Eagles Hit Changed the Way Don Felder Saw His Place in the Band

Other songs, like “Victim Of Love”, were a point of contention for the band members. Before their initial breakup in 1980, there was a palpable amount of tension between the band members that was not getting resolved. You can definitely hear it in Hotel California, years before the breakup took place.

When it comes to “Victim Of Love”, the song itself created some conflict between the band members. Don Felder wrote the meat of the song, and he was excited to sing the lead vocals. Unfortunately, the rest of the band wasn’t having it, claiming that his vocals weren’t up to par for the track.

The drama gets worse from there. Instead of being direct with Felder about the need to give the vocal track to Henley, Eagles’ manager Irving Azoff took Felder for a pleasant, innocent-seeming dinner. While they were eating, Henley was recording the vocals in secret. It was petty, to say the least. And when Felder found out, he was furious.

“It was a bitter pill to swallow,” Felder said of the betrayal. “I felt like Don was taking that song from me, but there was no way to argue with my vocal versus Don Henley’s vocal.”

Henley’s vocals made it to the album, and that was just the beginning of a slow end to the band.

Photo by CSU Archives/Everett/Shutterstock

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