Ousted Eagles lead guitarist Don Felder is back with a series of road dates and his second solo album, Road To Forever, due out on October 9th. Felder, who was fired from the band over a decade ago, says that he's once again regained his spiritual footing, telling BrowardPalmBeach.com, "I was raised in the deep South. My mother was extremely religious, a Southern Baptist, and I think I still have the scars and calluses from being dragged into church and Sunday school for years. But once I was in the Eagles, I was drugged -- not dragged -- into all sorts of promiscuity and drugs and everything that was not part of my upbringing. I realized how that had influenced my life and turned me away from all the morals and ethics that I had been raised with."

He went on to explain: "Part of the confusion when I left the band was wondering how did I ever get there? I wanted to go back into my childhood and understand the process that had taken place, from being raised dirt poor to becoming a multimillionaire, from the values of the church that my mother had tried so hard to pound into me, to living a life of sin and promiscuity and drugs and alcohol. So I really went back and looked back at those different areas of my life. I didn't find it difficult -- I found it very cathartic."

Felder recalled how he wrote the timeless introduction to the Eagles' 1976 chart topper, "Hotel California": "I was sitting on the beach in the house I'd rented in Malibu; I had this acoustic guitar -- it was this beautiful July day, my kids were playing in the sand and the beautiful California sun was glistening on the water. I was just tinkering away on this guitar and out came that introduction to the song, and I played it three or four times over and over. And I said, 'I have to record a little bit of this before I forget it.' So, in my back bedroom -- one of my daughter's bedrooms, I had this old reel-to-reel tape recorder and microphone. I ran back there and turned it on and sit and played a couple of times through that progression and turned it off went out and played o the beach. And we were in the process of writing songs for the Hotel California album and I'd started to compile a reel of 15 or 16 other song ideas. So I went back and listened to that introduction about a week later and said, 'I think I'll finish this.'"

NEWLY ADDED: Don Felder tour dates (subject to change):
October 8 - Jackson, MS - Mississippi State Fair Mississippi Coliseum
October 13 - New York, NY - City Winery
October 16 - Los Angeles, CA - Grammy Museum
October 19 - Scottsdale, AZ - Talking Stick Resort
October 20 - Las Vegas, NV - Pearl Concert Theater
October 21 - West Hollywood, CA - Troubadour
November 18 - Annapolis, MD - Rams Head On Stage

FAST FACTS

Don Felder, who while growing up in Gainesville, Florida was a childhood friend of Tom Petty, Stephen Stills, and Eagles co-founder Bernie Leadon. He was touring as David Crosby and Graham Nash's lead guitarist when he played on the Eagles' 1974 On The Border album, and went on to join the band in time for 1975's groundbreaking One Of These Nights collection.
Felder co-wrote such Eagles classics as "Hotel California," "Victim Of Love," and "Those Shoes."
He was fired from the Eagles in 2001 following monetary disputes with Glenn Frey, Don Henley, and Eagles manager Irving Azoff. The case was settled out of court the following year.
In 2006, Felder published his memoir, Heaven And Hell: My Life In The Eagles.

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