Most bands would give their eye teeth to write a song like the Eagles' Hotel California. Many have tried. Many have failed. But in scaling his own musical Everest, Don Felder found himself with a problem. How was he going to perform it live?
Hotel California was tracked in 1976. By this stage in rock’s evolution, there had been some notable compositions that paired the regular electric guitar with the 12-string within the same track.
The Jimmy Page/Stairway To Heaven solution seemed like the most obvious option, the Led Zeppelin guitarist opting for Gibson’s EDS-1275 doubleneck for live performances, and it would become an iconic image, a calling card, and in 2024, a signature guitar, too.
Felder could have availed himself of an EDS-1275 but as he tells the Gibson Gazette, he explored all other options first.
“I played so many guitar tracks on that song, I think 13-14 guitar parts total. So when it came time to play it live, we were stuck with the question of how I play the 12-string and the six-string throughout the song,” says Felder. “At first we thought maybe I put a 12-string acoustic on a stand and have a six-string Les Paul behind my back. I could reach over and play the 12-string, and then when the six-string was needed, I could step away and pull it up from behind my back…”
But picture that scenario, a little like how you see those nylon-string guitars mounted on a stand for an intro; it’s a workable solution, until it isn’t. “I just knew the first time I was a little off balance, the guitar on the stand would fall face down, and then what do you do? Stop the song?” says Felder.
There was no option. Go with the EDS-1275. Felder sent his tech out on a mission. Find him a doubleneck. He returned with the white one, and Felder has had it ever since. He knew how it would be setup to play. The 12-string neck would be capo’d at the 7th fret [though more recently you might see him capo it at the 5th as in the image at the top of the page].
There was another problem. There was some processing on those guitars in the studio. The six-string – a 1959 Les Paul Standard – was going straight into his guitar amp, a narrow-panel ‘50s Fender Tweed Deluxe, with an Echoplex in the mix. But there was a rotating speaker on the 12-string. To recreate all this on stage, the doubleneck needed a mod, and Felder had just the thing in mind.
“Since the 12-string needed to come out of a Leslie, and the six-string out of a regular amp, the idea of two outputs came from when I saw Chet Atkins play,” explains Felder. “He had split a pickup allowing him to play two songs at once. So I took that concept, and instead of splitting the pickup, I put in a second output jack, and split the output switch between the necks.
“So the Gibson doubleneck I play is not an off-the-shelf model. I have to have them modified, where the switch is switching between the outputs of the two necks. Thankfully the idea worked out pretty well!”
![Eagles - Hotel California (Live 1977) (Official Video) [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/09839DpTctU/maxresdefault.jpg)
The song worked out, too, even if it was an unusual choice of a single. As Felder admitted to MusicRadar in 2012, he tried to talk Don Henley out of it. The radio stations would not play it.
“I went, ‘Don, that’s going to be a big mistake.’ And I’ll tell you why, because in the ‘70s, everything had to be three, three and a half minutes long. The intro had to be under 30 seconds, so the disc jockeys didn’t talk too long before the singing started. It either had to be a rock ’n’ roll danceable song or a drippy ballad,” said Felder.
Hotel California was none of these things.
“Hotel California is six minutes, the intro is a minute long, it stops in the middle with no drums, and you've got a two-minute guitar solo at the end,” continued Felder. “It’s the absolute wrong format for a single. So I said, ‘Don, I don't think we can do that.’ But he said, ‘Nope. That's going to be our single!’ I've never been so delighted to have been wrong in my whole life.”
Felder and co tracked Hotel California and realised they had a problem. They recorded the music in E minor, as per Felder’s demo. Perfect for the guitar but not Henley’s voice.
“Don went out to start singing on it, and he sounded like Barry Gibb in this high voice,” said Felder. “I went, ‘Wait, wait! That just doesn't work.’”
![Eagles - One of These Nights (Live 1977) (Official Video) [4K] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Tszq-LVyuN8/maxresdefault.jpg)
Felder recalled some trial and error before they settled on doing it all over again in B minor – hence the 7th fret guitar capo on the 12-string neck.
“I went out into the studio with a guitar, sat down with him and said, ‘Okay, let’s drop it down to D minor,’ but that was still too high. C minor – still too high,” said Felder “‘How about A minor?’ That was too low. So we wound up having to play it in the key of B minor, which is not a particularly guitar-friendly key, but it was perfect for his voice. And then we went back in and recorded the whole thing in B minor.
“After that, Joe [Walsh] and I filled in the guitar parts, the choruses and the solos on the end. It was a screw-up that we never figured out what key would be best for Don to sing it in, but we never heard him do it until we got in the studio.”
Felder was speaking to the Gibson Gazette to promote his new fundraising collaboration with Gibson Gives, which has launched a Rock & Roll Retreat Sweepstakes to support St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The grand prize includes a one-on-one lesson from Felder himself (he reminds us in this interview that he once taught Tom Petty), transport and accommodation in Nashville, a tour of the Gibson Garage and Vault, entry to a Don Felder Gibson Showcase and an Epiphone EDS-1275 doubleneck to take home. Find out more at Don Felder and the Gibson Gazette.
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