Don Felder has joined forces with Styx (@STYXtheband) singer/guitarist Tommy Shaw for the second single, “Wash Away” from Felder’s second solo album (and first since 1983), Road To Forever, released October 9, 2012 on Rocket Science Ventures. The song, which hit radio airwaves today, was co-written by Felder and Shaw, and features Shaw’s signature vocal sound.
The history of rock ‘n’ roll will come to life like never before in Raiding the Rock Vault. The spectacular show is set for Thursday, November 29 at the Mayan Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles, leading up to a nationwide tour in 2013.
From the Eagles’ Hotel California, “Life In The Fast Lane” couldn’t be any more different from the album’s title track, which was also a hit single for the Eagles. The song idea came to singer Glenn Frey when he was driving on the highway with a drug dealer who refused to drive more slowly. Living up to its title, “Life In The Fast Lane” is perfect driving music. The song kicks of proper with a driving blues-rock guitar riff that is soon joined by bouncing bass and drums. This guitar riff, written by lead guitarist Joe Walsh, can be heard throughout the song, but it constantly changes, never getting old.
Referred to as both a painfully slow ballad and one of the band’s best songs, “Desperado” has become a bit of an enigma for a band that has always walked the line between soft rock and hard rock. Written by Glenn Frey and Don Henley, the song was never released as a single when it first came out on the album of the same name, though it has since been released on several compilations of the band’s greatest hits. “Desperado” has become a favorite Eagles track when bands are searching for a tune to cover, and has been rerecorded by many famous acts that range from Clint Black to Johnny Cash to the Gimme Gimmes.
Certainly, one of the favorite opening riffs of guitar players around the world is that of the country-rock track “Hotel California,” and a guitar feast at the end of the track, performed as a stringed duet by Don Felder and Joe Walsh is a nice surprise. The song continues to be an enormous favorite of Eagles fans and is listed on Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” at #49. The lyrics conjure up the decadence of the hotel with its “sweet summer sweat” and the girl whose mind is “Tiffany twisted, she got the Mercedes Benz.”
Gibson featured both the six and twelve string Don Felder signature guitars at this year’s NAMM show. Both guitars have a great story behind them, told below by the good folks at Gibson, and are modeled after one of the greatest albums of all time. Oh yeah, and they look great too, not a bad combination.
