Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder soars into Tunica

Twenty-eight years after recording "Hotel California" with the Eagles, Don Felder returns to the spotlight with his live show, "A Night at the Hotel California."Paradigm Agency

When Don Felder touches down in Memphis this weekend, before heading down U.S. 61 to his gig Saturday night at Fitzgerald's Casino, the famed guitar player and songwriter hopes to take a moment to stop by Graceland and pay his respects to the man who started it all for him.

"My dad used to watch 'The Ed Sullivan Show' and I remember turning that on and watching it with him and seeing Elvis Presley and all those young cute girls screaming at him," recalls Felder of his youth growing up in Gainesville, Fla., in the 1950s. "I said, 'You know, I think I'd like to do that. That looks like something fun to do.' "

More than 50 years later it hasn't been all fun for Felder, as evidenced by the title of his 2008 memoir, "Heaven and Hell," recounting his tumultuous 27-year career with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band the Eagles. But he came through it all with his legacy intact: He is co-author of not just one of the genre's popular and acclaimed songs but also one of its most famous solos, "Hotel California." And now 28 years after his first solo record, he is preparing a return to the spotlight with his long-delayed follow-up.

"It'll have a couple of new songs in it," says Felder of his live show, titled "A Night at the Hotel California," which features not just selections from his upcoming untitled sophomore solo album, due out in the first half of 2012, but also favorite covers of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Stevie Wonder, as well as songs from his days in the Eagles. "It'll sound like me."

Shortly after seeing Elvis, Felder got his first guitar. In high school in Gainesville he was surrounded by a number of other musicians who would go on to superstardom. His first band, the Continentals, featured Stephen Stills. For a time, Felder taught guitar to a young Tom Petty, and he himself learned to play side guitar from Duane Allman.

"There were a lot of people in that single area of North Central Florida that went on to become multiplatinum artists," he says. "It reminds me of Motown. For some reason in this one little area a lot of people got inspired by each other and developed a sound together."

It was through another Gainesville connection, one-time high school bandmate Bernie Leadon, that Felder ended up moving to Los Angeles in the early '70s after brief stints in New York and Boston. Once there, he quickly landed a gig with David Crosby and Graham Nash -- then playing without their Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young cohorts Stills and Neil Young -- and found himself in the odd position of singing and playing many of the parts of his old high school friend.

Then in 1974, Leadon reached out to Felder to join the Eagles, a group he had helped form two years earlier. Initially Felder was brought in for his rock guitar skills.

"That was my mission, to take this band from country and bluegrass to rock and roll," says Felder. "That's why we went from banjo and flat-top guitar and pedal steel on to things like 'One of These Nights' and 'Already Gone.'"

But Felder also proved himself a valuable songwriting contributor as well. He co-wrote several of the band's songs, including "Victim of Love," "The Disco Strangler," and "Visions," on which he also sang.

Towering above all his compositions, however, is "Hotel California," a surrealistic Grammy winner, with lyrics by the Eagles' Don Henley and Glenn Frey, that Rolling Stone Magazine named the 49th greatest rock song of all time. Guitar Magazine ranked the climactic guitar solo, featuring the unique double guitars of Felder and Joe Walsh, as the eighth greatest.

"I was sitting on my couch one day playing guitar and out came that introduction and that progression," Felder says of the song's modest beginnings. "I put (a finished demo) on a reel with a bunch of other song ideas and gave it to Henley and Frey and Randy Meisner. Henley called me and said, 'I like the song that sounds like a Mexican reggae or bolero.' I was like, 'Oh, I know which one you mean.'"

Felder stayed with the Eagles through 1980, when they seemingly broke up. With his time his own, he played as a sideman for the Bee Gees and others but mostly concentrated on a solo career. In 1983, he recorded his only solo album to date, Airborne, and contributed songs to the soundtracks of the films "Heavy Metal" and "The Wild Life."

When the Eagles re-grouped in 1994, Felder was there as the band sold-out several tours worldwide, recorded a No. 1 live album, released a career-spanning box set, and was inducted into the Rock Hall in 1998.

Then in 2001, Felder was fired from the group. He sued band members Frey and Henley, and they countersued. These days Felder won't comment on the legal proceedings or the Eagles. But in The New York Times bestseller "Heaven and Hell" he paints a none-too-flattering portrait of his ex-bandmates, particularly Henley and Frey.

"I can't tell you how many people I've gotten calls or e-mails or Facebook comments from people who read it and said they appreciated the honesty and insight into what the band dynamics were and my view of the whole story," he says.

Don Felder

8 p.m. Saturday, Fitzgerald's Casino's Great Hall, 711 Lucky Lane, Tunica Resort. Tickets: $35 and $45, available at the gift shop and through Ticketmaster. For more information, call (800) 766-5825 or visit fitzgeraldstunica.com.

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