Don Felder — the ex-Eagle whose melodic fingerprints remain etched into the band’s most commercially transcendent era — is technically on good terms with his former bandmates. But according to Felder himself, the odds of a shock reunion during their high-profile Las Vegas Sphere residency range somewhere between “slim” and “absolutely not.”
Speaking on Trunk Nation, Felder gave the sort of answer that requires no careful interpretation. “I'll tell you this, I'm not holding my breath,” he said, when asked by host Eddie Trunk whether an onstage cameo had been floated. There was no bad blood in his voice, just the weary candor of a man who’s done the maths.
To his credit, Felder remains open. “Absolutely,” he said, when asked if he’d say yes to an invitation. The catch? It would have to come from Don Henley — which, if you’re familiar with the past two decades of Eagles history, sounds less like a logistical hurdle and more like a laugh line.
Felder’s association with the band began in 1974 and ended in 2001, bookended by a hiatus that lasted longer than some musical careers. His departure was acrimonious. Legal battles ensued. It all got messy. But time — and, it turns out, the act of writing a memoir — heals most wounds.
“I really kind of buried all the hatchets in 2000,” Felder explained. “One of the things about writing my book... it was a very cathartic process and was very liberating, it set me free to realize I don't want to carry that stuff with me for the rest of my life. I don't want to have grudges and anger and hatred and all that stuff. I want to be free of that.”
This is not a man bitterly peering through the glass. He’s gone through the emotional admin and come out the other side with something resembling peace. That said, it’s not clear the rest of the band share the sentiment. Asked whether they’ve returned the good energy, Felder simply shrugged it off.
“I have no conversations with them about any of that,” he said, with an implied full stop on the subject. “I'm going on living my life and being as happy as I can be doing what I do and I really enjoy it.”
There’s a calm defiance in how he describes his current life — working, writing, touring through the summer alongside Styx and Kevin Cronin. His new retrospective album The Vault – 50 Years of Music drops May 23. It is, by his account, the product of a man with “all my chops,” still creatively engaged, and very much past the point of looking back with anger.
You can almost hear him shrug when he says, “So I decided I'm just going to be happy.” A statement so quietly resolute, it functions as both a mission and a mic drop.
