Episode 34 - Don Felder

0:00 This man wrote Hotel California. Also, hey, who did you go to high school with? Because he went to high school with Tom Petty. Steven Stills, you know, the Allman brother guys, you know, just just a few of his classmates. We're going to get to hang with Don at the Musicians Hall of Fame here in Nashville.

0:17 Very grateful for them facilitating this and more to come I dare say. Also, the fact that like you guys, we are just such big fans of guitar and you're gonna feel like you're in the room with us. And this, this one was really special. You know, after we were done filming, he was like, hey, man, I'm coming back before there's this big induction ceremony. In case you don't know about the Musicians Hall of Fame, it is going to be a huge event that I'm involved in. That's where all this sort of stemmed from. But he was like, hey, man, I'll come back, you know, the day before or two if you want to jam, play some more. And I was like, yeah, so could be more Felder in the future for us.

0:55 But this one, he's just full of stories. His smile was infecting me. I was about four inches from him. My face hurt after. Yeah, man, it was just such a joy. And again, shout out to musicians Hall of Fame. Check out the link if you're ever in Nashville. I'll leave a link to go visit them. But Don Felder's instruments are on display, the guitar that we're going to play in this episode.

1:17 So I guess without further ado, Jared, here it is. Don Felder. I was about to say, you guys are like guys. Are hijacking the show. He goes, what happened was and I'm over here. The weirdest thing was when I wrote Hotel California, I wrote it in E minor, which is a nice big, open, full chord and easy to play in. Right.

1:42 We get in the studio and then Henley goes out to sing on it, and all of a sudden he sounds like Barry Gibb going oh, the dark doesn't always so high. That's the wrong key. So I went E minor. I went down to D minor. No, that's still too high. Yeah. C minor. No, that's still too high. How about A minor? That'd be great.

2:00 No, that's too low. And we wound up playing it, recording it in B minor, which is probably the only guitar chord there's not fun to play in that key. I was going to say B minor, not the friendliest of. Guitar keys. That's right. Well, especially when you're wrangling this neck. The 12th string. That's right.

2:16 That's why the capo was on the 7th fret. Wow, did the capo come into play immediately with that or was it on 12th string that you wrote? It I wrote the original part, I, I was just sitting in on a couch in a rented beach house in California and my kids were playing out the sand on Broadbeach. I just had this 12 string and I was messing around and that progression just kind of came out. And so I used to have a reel to reel T at four track in my daughter one year old daughter's bedroom. And if I didn't go in and record some of it, it'd just be gone the next day.

2:51 So I'd record these little ideas, little snippets and progressions. So I went in and recorded two or three times through just the progression. And then later when it came time to write ideas for what was going to become the Hotel California record, Bernie Laden had told me don't write lyrics, don't write melodies, just write music beds in a song structure like introduction, first verse, second verse, chorus, recapitulation, third verse, fourth verse, chorus, solo out or something like that.

3:24 So I went back in and wrote the bass part with the guitar parts of the harmonious handing lines and overdubbed 3 tracks and mix them down to 1. And then I put overdubbed 2 more and mix that down to 1. I just found from the original demo of it the other day and I was listening to and good. That sounds pretty cool actually it me just.

3:41 Play it every day. Was it a quick one like with all the melodies and putting those guitar parts down? Pretty much. It was pretty much exactly what you hear on the record, except for the solos on the end. I had recorded some things. Joe had just joined the band, and before Joe joined the band, he and I had been playing against each other in a bunch of different shows.

4:01 We opened for Elton John at Dodger Stadium with Joe Walsh and friends and we did ATV show late night one night where I sat in and jammed with them all the stuff. I said I want to have a track that we can do that on an Eagles record. So I wrote that whole music band so that we could do that and sure enough it worked out.

4:19 When we got to the ending, Joe and I set up two guitars in the control room, 2 amps out there that were both bike and we're just jamming against each other, trading off and Henley comes walking in and says what are you doing? I said well we're making up the ending solos. He says no, no, no, no, you got to make it just like the demo.

4:38 I said I don't know what that was. That was a year ago. I haven't heard that. I just made that up on the spot as an idea, you know, He said no, no, no. So we had to call my housekeeper. We are in Criteria Studios in Miami. We had to call my housekeeper back in Malibu, have her go over to my studio and find this cassette that had a little Red Star on it, bring it over, put it in a blaster, play it and hold up a phone so we could record it in Miami and I could sit and learn what I had just made-up on this. But that's insane.

5:10 He had been listening to that for a year over and over and over. He said no, you got to make it just like that. So we got to the point and then Joe was writing his own stuff and then he said we need to do something like diddly, diddly, diddly, diddly. And I went, well, what is diddly, diddly, diddly.

5:25 He said, well, this diddly diddly. And he played the low. So we had to go through bar by bar because there's a, there's a chord change on every bar in the end of that song and figure out what the diddly and the harmony was. And then we would record 1 bar at a time. Wow. And then we would punch in and record the next bar, punch in and record the next bar. Then when we finally got to where we had to learn that to play it live, it's like, oh, oh, we got to learn this whole solo. What have we created now?

5:53 So anyway, it was a lot of fun. Joe. I love Joe. We love playing together. Yeah. He's just fantastic, a lot of fun energy there. It's so interesting how the songwriting process can manifest from song to song, from artist to artist. Did you find that that was a regular thing? The way you described writing Hotel California for all your songs, it would be like the the bed as you described it first and then the melodies would come in or. I was told not to write melodies, not to write lyrics. I wound up with a couple of songs on every album. Like Hotel at it became Hotel California. Originally it was called Mexican Reggae, which is the working title on it, right?

6:34 And because it sounded like a reggae song in Mexican. And then I wound up with Victim of Love, which had no working title. I think it was called Iron Long or something. I would write sometimes up to 15 or 16 different song ideas for albums and submit among cassettes. And if Don or Glenn heard something they like, then they would start writing lyrics to it, which was great. I just found a box of cassettes and CDs and adats that I have of demo ideas that I had made over the last 50 years. So I took this box back to my studio and transferred those cassettes and stuff 'cause you really only get one or two plays before it starts sloughing off all the oxide. And we recorded them in Pro Tools and I said I remember that.

7:22 That was a great track. I'm going to finish that. And my last album is called The Vault and it's songs from the last 50 years that were just music beds. And I went back in and wrote lyrics on top of there's a slide part on there called. It was one of the first things I wrote in 1974 when I first joined the Eagles, and it was me playing slide because I thought they wanted me to play more slide on the record. And originally when I submitted it to Don, he said, I like this, let's write a song called Slide On. And I went, no, maybe, no, I don't think that's a good idea. Talk about slide on.

8:02 That just sounds a little. So I went back and found that slide part in that track and I finished it called Move On. So it's about a relationship that falls apart and you just got to move on. And so that last album, The Vault, is full of ideas that I had written for the Eagles that never really was finished. When you joined the band, was there a feeling of obviously you have this lineage of your career before the Eagles, when you got there and you're like, all right, I'm going to play a lot more slide.

8:27 I'm going to Was there certain roles that you were a little nervous for or things that you were like, all right, I got to really fill these shoes or learn this, you know, catalog. Right after I joined the band, we were in the middle of making one of these nights. Bernie Laden did not like the direction musically that the band was going in.

8:48 We were going away from country and bluegrass and pedal steels and mandolin and acoustics to more R&B and rock'n'roll. That was my job. That's why I was brought in to put some edge to the records, right? So when Bernie quit, I had had to adopt and learn how to play pedal steel, mandolin, 5 string banjo would cover all the parts that he was playing live. So I got a pedal steel, sat down and figured out how to play pedal steel, how to play 5 string banjo. Bernie is brilliant at all those things and I could kind of take my way through it, I guess is the best way to put it. I never really was enamored with that particular style of music. I've been playing rock and roll since they started, you know? So for me, it was a transition

9:37 time for the band. And after Bernie left, when Joe came in, it was like, oh boy, now we can really do something. Yeah, I can. I can handle like guitar pedals on the ground, stepping on those. But when it comes to pedal steel, like you got to move your legs and I'm like. It's like, you know, where you rub your tummy and patch your head?

9:54 Yeah, yeah, four times in different directions at the same time. It's knee levers and volume pedals and strings. And it's a very complicated and I respect pedal steel players because you'd rather have a like Greg Lease play it on some of my stuff. I went in and played pedal of steel. I went this is nice, but I need to get somebody that can really.

10:13 Get the real deal. He came in and just blew my little pedal of steel part away, so it's a special beast that can do that, you know? It's probably one of the most complicated instruments, but when it comes to guitars, this is maybe the most complicated guitar. Well, I have to first of all thank Chet Atkins.

10:33 When I saw him when I was 14 years old, who had a Gretch guitar that had two outputs and he had split the pickups where the bottom three strings went out of 1 pickup and one output into one amp. The top three strings that he used to play melodies on went out of another output and another amp. And I saw him play live and it was the first time I'd seen a stereo guitar part and I was 14 years old and I was just blown away with with it.

11:03 So my dad and I waited at the bottom of the staircase after his show, and he came out and opened his guitar case and packed up his own guitar. He didn't have like a road crew or anything and started to walk out and come down the stairs. And I said, Mr. Atkins, how did you do that? And he explained to me about dividing the pickups between the three low strings and the three high strings.

11:25 So when I got on the stage, I'd played a bunch of different guitar parts on the record Hotel California, like the 12 string acoustic introduction and all through the verses and everything. And then the Les Paul parts with the descending harmony lines and the solo. I had to have two different guitar sounds to play that live.

11:44 So we were at rehearsals for what was going to become the Hotel California tour. And I thought, how am I going to do this? And first I thought I'd get a big acoustic 12 string guitar and put a pickup in it, have it on a really heavy mic stand and I could walk up with a Les Paul hanging behind my back. I could reach around and play this 12 string acoustic for the introduction and then step back and pull that Les Paul up and play those guitar parts and flip it back. And you know, back in those days, in the 70s, we used to have a lot of chemical propulsion, I guess is the best way to put it on stage.

12:20 That's a very diplomatic I was about to. Say. Phrase If I ever walked up and bumped that guitar and it just went in the middle of the show, that that's just the end, that won't work and I had to either give up the propulsion or find another solution. So we find another. Solution So I sent a guitar tech out to a music store to try to find a double neck because I thought well maybe I can wire this a certain way.

12:43 He came back with this white thing. I opened the case up and it was white. I said why didn't you get a black one or a red 1? He said that's all they had. I said hello. OK so I figured out how to wire it so that the two outputs would be like 2 separate guitars that are glued together and you can switch between them with just the next selection switch which is on the front of that right? Pickguard.

13:03 Yeah. You were telling us about these? Yeah, it's got 2 outputs. It's like 2 different guitars glued together and you select it by the next selection switch right there. That's right. That's right. And then we pull it up. Yeah. And then we're. That's right. And there's nothing on this. So that's it. But then here's the crazy is if you go there and you have. We're both going.

13:29 That's too weird man. I always thought I would think that this big switch would have been for your necks, but it actually makes a lot more sense that it's down there. It's out of your way then. Here's your your toggle. You can almost flip it without stopping to play. Yeah, right. It's a great spot.

13:46 But it worked out that it it worked and served its function. But I've been lugging that thing around now for I don't know how many decades. I believe you're still standing. I think my back problems are a result of that thing. It's heavy. It's not an easy, light guitar, you know. What were your favorite guitars to pick on back in the day? What were you?

14:03 What would you look for in a guitar like if you found a Les Paul? Or, well, there was a dealer down in Texas named Tony Dukes. Oh, I've heard of his. Legend. Every time we went through Texas, he would show up with either a station wagon or a pickup truck or an SUV full of Les Paul's Stratocasters.

14:21 I bought a Gibson acoustic Everly Brothers original version from him. I would buy almost everything he had. The most expensive guitar I bought from him was $1200 and it was my 59 Les Paul that I played on everything you can imagine. Not a bad deal. Yeah, but when I took it back to rehearsal sound check and I opened up the case and took it out, Glenn said.

14:45 That's nice looking tower. What'd you pay for that as a $1200? He went cheap. I got got ripped off. But I think today that's probably worth millions of dollars, you know, because of its history. So I thought that was a good investment. I've actually heard of that guy and he's got that legend. Especially I've heard stories with you and certain people. He would bring a station wagon full of old guitars. And then Joe and I, after he joined the band, we used to do what Bonamassa does now.

15:10 We'd go around looking at pawn shops and trying to find stuff in guitar. Guitar safaris. And you know, just pick up stuff along the way. And then when eBay first came out, I started buying a lot of stuff like tweed deluxes and tweed, all the different kind of amps and stuff that now are like, you know, 4 or $5000 and I was paying like 4 or 500 bucks for.

15:32 I got lockers full of that stuff. What's the one piece of gear that stands out right now that you just popped at the top? It has to be my 59 Les Paul. I played that on every Eagles record, every solo record I've made. It's just you were talking earlier about you can have two Les Pauls and they'll sound different, They'll play different.

15:52 They just have a different character about them. Same wood, same company made them, but they just have it and I just have bonded with that 59. I know it very well. What's your secret? Because you seem so spry and so like the fountain of youth, and this guy's been rocking. I'm trying to get like I'm trying.

16:08 Well. I just like being happy, you know, and I love what I do, which is a blessing. You know, if I were working in a farm or working in a garage or whatever, which I very well could still be doing in Gainesville, had I not packed up with a suitcase and a guitar and moved to New York City, I could still be living there doing something I didn't really want to do.

16:30 But, you know, I grew up absolutely dirt poor, right next door to destitute poverty. And so when you don't have anything to lose, you can go out in the world and try anything you want to do. And if you're doing what you love, it doesn't matter if you're playing at a bar or you're playing at a stadium. You just love doing what you're doing. And that's why I've always loved music. I just fell in love with it years and years and years ago. And that's why I still do it.

16:55 I don't need to make another dime for the rest of my life. But I love to make music. I love to have people stand up and go. Yeah, you know, it's just feel, it feels great that you can do that and, and bring so much pleasure and enjoyment to people with music. Well, how do you do that? I've met musicians who get beaten down by this, that and the other thing, and I imagine you've been through more strife than most, so how are you able to keep that happy? Even Keel, I don't like I said, I don't do it for the fame. I don't do it for the money.

17:26 I don't do it for any other reason than other. I love to play and that's it first and foremost. So pure man. And so, you know, when I left the Eagles, I had to figure out I had to rebuild my career, rebuild my life. I was known as part of the Eagles, but I had not established a solo career and I had been gone probably 10 or 11 months out of the year touring with the Eagles and in the studio with the Eagles.

17:50 And I had four kids at home. So I said I'm not going on the road, even though I recorded heavy metal and put it out and it was a really big success. And my manager called me and said you should go out on the road and tour with this. I went, Nope, I'm going to stay home and raise these kids. So I was doing soundtrack stuff, TV scores, movies of the week, songs for different movies and stuff and being able to have my studio, which the consoles here in the Musicians Hall of Fame so. Cool man.

18:19 Yeah, I was working on that at home and then I'd get up and go pick up my kids and I was a soccer coach. I was the commissioner of Malibu Little. That makes me love you more. That's so awesome. Being there for my kids, you know, and when they finally graduated and moved off, off to college and out of the house, I decided I'm going to move back in and start recording and touring, I guess. Seems like you like the recording studio though. I mean, from what we've heard about even the tracks for Hotel California, from demos to making your records, to have your console at the Hall of Fame, it seems like you get on really well, not only live, but in the studio. Well, I started recording, like

18:55 I said, when I moved to Boston. I was in a band called Flow in New York City and it was great. It was a jazz fusion rock band, and I respect jazz musicians beyond just about everybody in the business. They have developed the ability to sit down, whether it's Herbie Hancock or Miles Davis, and just improvise. Just let it pour out of you at a level of perfection, a level of execution.

19:21 That's like way up there, right? So I wanted to be able to do that. So when I was living in New York for a year and a half, I learned to improvise. So when I walked into a studio, I got called for session. I could go in What? What do you want? You want an acoustic solo, You want an electric guitar audio.

19:38 And I could just make up stuff. As a matter of fact, when we did Hell Freezes Over and I had to work up that arrangement of the nylon string version of Hotel California, we were on the sound stage at Warner Brothers shooting this and at sound check, at the end of sound check, we just finished the Hotel California track. And Henley says this song needs a special introduction. I went, well, what are you going to say? He said, you're going to say, I'm not going to say anything, just make up something.

20:10 So I go, OK, you guys play this chord and I'll diddle and then play that chord and I'll diddle and then I'll make up this introduction. So we recorded 2. Performances that night and I just made-up different introductions each time and the one that actually wound up on the record we thought was a little bit better than the other one just happened to show up. But the ability to to improvise freely like that on the spot really is I think is one of the reasons that I was called in to play slide on Good Day in Hell.

20:41 I've never heard the record came in. They want to slide. I got a slide. I walked in with my amp and my little pedals and plugged in and played slide and we did 3 or 4 and I left and went home. I got a call the next day from Glenn inviting me to join the band. I'm making $1500 a week playing with Crosby Nash now in the Seventies. 1500 bucks a week is like $15,000 a day right? And my wife was pregnant with their first kid. So I went to Graham Nash and I said what do I do Graham? He said you go join that band.

21:13 You don't want to be a side man for the rest of your life. You go join that band. I said OK, So I took his advice, smart advice, and the rest is history. And I was a full member, inducted and wrote and submitted songs for one of these nights. But the bass part for one of these nights I wrote, oh, wow. We were in the studio in Criteria in Miami, and Randy Meisner was snowed in in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. So I used to play bass on all my demos. So Bernie was there, Glenn was there playing piano, and Don was playing Trouble.

21:48 I'll play bass. So I just made-up that bass part with the introduction and stuff that we recorded it. So when Randy came in, I had to sit down and show him the bass part to that song. I'm not a bass player. As a matter of fact, it's like playing telephone cable. They're like big and nasty and they just eat you alive.

22:07 But I just happened to write that bass part. Like I wrote the bass part for Hotel California too. And so to me, it has a great deal of impact rhythmically, and that's the bottom of the track. I feel like you being from Florida and the area you grew up in, there's so many great musicians that came from that area.

22:24 You know, it was funny because Gainesville High School, we all went to the same high school. Me, Steven Stills, Bernie Laden and Tom Petty. Petty was a freshman, Steven was a senior and Bernie and I were juniors. We all knew each other. That's a cool school. We were all vying for the little fraternity party gigs on the weekend, right? And during the summer we had all go to Daytona Beach and try to get gigs over there.

22:48 I played with Rufus Thomas on the pier one summer and, you know, just trying to stay working. The Allman Brothers were over there. We became friends with The Allman Brothers and just that whole little magic triangle between Jacksonville and Daytona and Gainesville had so many platinum selling artists that went on to just be unbelieving, successful.

23:12 I don't know if it was something that was in the water that we were drinking or something and what we were smoking at the time today and the truth. I think the latter probably, but it just was a, it was a very competitive, not harshly competitive. It wasn't. I just have the distinct in honor of having lost 3 battles of the bands to The Allman Brothers.

23:33 They by far with the absolute best band in Southern Florida. Now there was a music store there called Lippum's Music that I worked in selling guitars and teaching guitar and stuff. And if it weren't for Buster Lippum, a lot of those bands would have never been able to make music. Oh wow, he would give you a guitar.

23:54 Oh, he was the supplier. Put your name on credit as long as you went in every week and gave every week and gave him 5 bucks or 10 bucks he would deduct it from what you owed until it was paid off and then you could get an app and he would. Wow what a guy. He enabled people that we're kind of, you know, poor like me to give you the opportunity to have an instrument.

24:15 And to this day, I thank him for doing that, for Petty, for me, for Bernie, for Steven Still, for The Allman Brothers. Just everybody in North Florida would go to that store and he really sponsored everybody that came out of that area. You mentioned Chet Atkins, but who are some of the other players that you got to see live that shaped you younger?

24:35 I saw B.B. King when I was 15 and and in Gainesville I've been told that there was an area of town called Colored Town. It was really racist back in that time period and they were not allowed to have liquor licenses in Colored Town. So they would set up out in barns out on farms where they would put some hay bales and a door down and have a couple of kegs and they would have shows out there. B.B.

25:06 King, I heard, was playing at one of these barns. A friend of mine who had a Jeep we stole from his dad, We went driving. We went driving through this farm cow pasture to get to this barn out in the middle of nowhere. And he and I were the only white guys around. And we were looking in the window watching BB. He played five sets and the women were crying baby. Oh my God, he, he was moving people with emotion with what he played.

25:34 You could just see it and feel it. It was almost like a holy roller event at a, at a church or something. Wow. So finally, I think his third break, he went back and sat down on a hay Bale back in a horse stall and I walked around the outside, walked in and said, oh, Mr. King, I've been listening to you on WLAC in Nashville, TN. I love your music.

25:55 I'm fluttering around. He was so kind and so nice to me. It just left me really admiring him as a person, not only as a player, but just as a person. So I started Randy's record. Mart used to have this thing on WLAC. You could take a card or a piece of paper and you'd write the name of the song and $2.00 and you'd mail it off to Randy's Record Mart.

26:19 And about 2-3 weeks, maybe a month later, you keep opening your mailbox and there'd be a 45 in there, right? B.B. King 45, I put it on and record it, and then I would sit and slow it down so I could hear exactly what he was playing. And I learned to steal everything I could from B.B. King and Albert King and a lot of those guys that were just actually playing soulful music, you know? And today I, I think people really admire shredding more than they admire emotion.

26:51 And me, I'm exactly the opposite. I admire the emotion and the strength of melody than to just shred. To me, that's, that's just showing off. Somebody told me a long time ago, if you want somebody to remember something, set it to a simple melody. Now, if you think about kids that are a year and a half, two years old, they can learn the ABC's before they even know what an A or AB or AC is.

27:17 They can learn that little song and memorize the entire alphabet right from that simple melody. So I thought, you know, when you write songs you can make it cool with bins and stuff, but you got to make it simple enough that people can remember. It well, I often think about a lot of the people that love what you do and think about not guitar players, think about the people that love this music and they hear you play, they hear some of these songs and they it captures them.

27:44 Well one of the testaments to that about your musicianship is a lot of non musicians can sing your guitar solos. I don't think my brain works fast enough to shred. It is true. It's just I've never thought that way about what I play. As a matter of fact, I was over at Eddie Bugatti's house when I was living in New York and he had a woman there that was a harpist from Juilliard School of Music that was playing this most beautiful harp music, the classical harp music, Right. So I go up and said, can can you just play something? You know?

28:20 She says, well, I've memorized a few pieces and I closed her music book. I said, no, just you've got amazing dexterity. Just play something. She says, well, I've memorized some that I I know by heart. I said no, no, no, no. Just let it out, Let it out. Nothing there. So there's a difference in emotion and being able to express your own feelings and thoughts in music versus being technical.

28:45 And I think the people that are all technical about it lack or have a diminished ability to express emotionally what what they have in their hearts and mind. Was that your guitar learning process? How did you become such a proficient guitarist? Because it sounds like you are primarily an ear learner.

29:04 Music theory in there anywhere? You know, it was funny. I didn't even know how to read music when I moved to New York. And I sort of taught myself enough to where if I went into a studio and somebody put a chart out, not just the cord blocks, but like, if I had the breakdown lines, I'd go to the bathroom with that. And I've got every good boy does fine, OK, That's that. And I'd try to figure it out, right? And so finally, when I decided to leave New York, the guy that had produced my first record with that band, Flo, was a guy named Creed Taylor.

29:36 He was the largest producer of jazz music for Blue Note and Verb. He produced. Everybody that was historic had signed my band the first week I was in New York. It's like, hey, this is happening, right? So finally I decided that was going to leave that band and move to Boston. So I went and had a conversation with him and he says, well, I know the people at Berkeley School of Music, let me call them for you. And I know some studios there.

30:02 I'll call them and let them know you're in town and maybe you can get some work. Oh, thank you so much. That's fantastic. So I go to Berkeley and they offered me a job teaching. I could barely read music, and I said I really don't want to teach. I wanted to learn how to make records. So I spent my time turning down Berkeley School of Music and going into learning how to make records in a recording studio.

30:26 A pursuit of curiosity How How do you wind up on the radio? How does B.B. King wind up? And it's ironic that our record producer Bill Simsic, produced some of BB King's biggest hits. All of these things just coming together. Like all the puzzle pieces are coming together and you're like, oh, the mystery is being revealed. That's right, yeah.

30:47 I'd like to talk a little bit more about this guitar because it's on display here. We're at the Musicians Hall of Fame. Yeah, Well, I didn't realize, honestly, what the impact of that instrument was until I was playing the Beacon Theater in New York City and I was opening for Steve Miller at the end of the show.

31:04 I play Hotel California. I close my show with it. So my guitar tech comes walking out carrying that guitar, and the crowd goes, yeah. Yeah, they were primed. Up They know what's coming when they see that there happened to be the curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art sitting in the audience. The first thing I did when I moved to New York City was I went to the Met and spent the entire day. There was no culture.

31:28 There was no paintings. There was no nothing in Gainesville. I had only seen these things in a book and the pictures of the paintings of the sculpture. So I wanted to go see it. So I went there. Here is the curator sees that and realizes there's a connection between the instrument and the audience for the song. Not just the artist, but with the instrument. That's the tool.

31:52 And so he decides he's going to put on an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art calls, Play it loud. And it was the greatest, most famous guitarist in the history of rock'n'roll. They had Elvis Presley's first a guitar, they had Jimmy Hendrix guitar for Woodstock, they had my white double neck out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and all these amazing guitars. And they asked me if I would come open that exhibit. I think it was 19 or 2019, April 2019. So I said sure, I'll be honored.

32:29 So I go there and I do a bunch of press for it and stuff to promote it. And then they say, would you mind playing a little bit the next day, you know, a little bit of hotel. And I went, OK, I'll do that. They said, well, we've got about 200 people from the press and video cameras and newspaper and people taking photographs and all that stuff. I said that's not a problem, I can do that. I can talk to the press all day long, you know. So I go walk out on this little stage and it's about a six by 10s size stages.

33:00 Just me microphone and a little app sing the last verse and then I do the solo and sitting right in front of me is one of my favorite all time guitar players. Jimmy Page and I will the. Other double necked. Lord, if I make a mistake, I will never live this town. I will ride in the middle of the night the rest of my life.

33:23 So I walk off and I don't care about the press. I don't with Jimmy Page just sitting right there. We're hearing every note I play. And thank God I was able to pull it off without a glitch, without a bad bend, without a bad note. Incredible. I think about that a lot, that that guitar has such a connection with the public based on that one song. And so people see it and they they know what's. Going And you know, maybe it was a blessing in disguise that you got that white one.

33:52 It has been a great see. That thing when you pop. Out on stage with it. That's it. Should we hear a couple sounds? Yeah, put me in his face. Jimmy Page is right over there. tone control for that. No tone. So that's it, right? Just volume. We took the tone output where the Jack would be for tone and made it into a Jack.

34:28 By the way, this guitar has been sitting in the case. It still plays great. Like I was scared of it because I was like, yeah, it's awesome. And then we switch. Well, let's do this. Nope. This is for that pickup, right? Yeah, the neck pickup on there. See, I'm already getting confused. Now we're in this neck. There we go.

34:49 There it is. So now we are. OK, you're hired. You got the gig going. To see this. Oh, here we go. How? How am I? How am I cable? Your cable. I'll take it for you. You're good. So I wanted to ask you, yeah, in particular some of these these licks here. Typically bends are usually only one step. It's like a flat 7th up to the root, you know? But I like to bend either a minor third or in some instances 2 whole steps.

35:39 Like the there's a line in heavy metal where I take the G string and I bend it from G all the way up to B. Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That's right. Yeah. So I just worked out between having to conceive pedal steel bends in advance, I thought, well, maybe I could do that. And rock'n'roll idiom.

36:01 Yeah. Or guitar. No, that's awesome. I also like to bend with my second finger up a 3rd to the 7th. So you'd start like if you're playing an A, you'd start right here on the B string and you bend up to here. Well, that's that's in that solo as well. Because that's right, So much. Fun. It's it sounds so much different when you incorporate those bands.

36:51 And it makes so much sense now that you mentioned the pedal steel because like your guitar playing is liquid. It's very, it's very fluid and it's super fluid and there's no, sometimes there's no attack almost. It's just kind of blooming from one phrase to the next. Yeah, well, when I hear you play a guitar solo, I don't think about the guitar. I think about the melody and I think about this, the overall sound.

37:11 Instead of like, oh, check out this technique. It's more like, no, it's just this voice. So you're talking about the wittly wittlys? Deedle, Deedle, Deedle, Yeah. So when you're coming up with those, I noticed in the live performances, you're playing it on this, the B&G string set. Yeah, I learned it.

37:31 It's a pull off, right? That's a problem Which. Again. If you don't strike the second note, it's just a pull off to the second note. That's right. OK, that's all. That's all we can play for copyright. Purposes and also. In front of you. You I'm doing I'm you know, if I don't do. This. A lot of people play it as a triad. No, that's wrong.

37:55 But also you can just hear that the pull off like there's such an attitude with the pull off compared to that zipper poop. So one last question. When you were recording that stuff in the studio or on, I don't know if you're playing that live, as far as amplifiers, were you just relying on pure power from these amps or were you actually clicking pedals or what? No, I had A and I still have a 57 tweed Deluxe. You just crank that on 10, plug straight into it. No pedals, no echoes, no nothing. Les Paul 59 and it just screams.

38:29 You put a sure 57 on it, you run it through an 1176 compressor and I learned all this about how to get a guitar sound work in the studio, right, 1176 compressor and it just holds the sustain for you, right? So you can sit there and hold a note and put vibrato on it and it just kind of love. It it was a Leslie on the 12 string primarily.

38:52 When we recorded it, it was an acoustic guitar, 12 string that I taped a pickup in the O hole. They put a mic on it, and so in the middle of the mix there was this acoustic guitar, but it was run through a Leslie that was going like this. So you hear the acoustic mic and the Leslie going from that pickup, right? And it just gives it kind of very ethereal, unique sound. So when you play it live and you do it on a double neck so it's a solid body, you have to have that Leslie go in and stereo to make it sound authentic.

39:29 Man, this has been an absolute pleasure. You're a legend, you're a Guitar Hero, and I think I can speak for everyone that's going to see this. Well, this was amazing. Yeah, what a true privilege. Thank you for letting us handle this historic instrument and spending your time with us. And. It's always fun talking about myself.

39:49 I've lived a life that's been blessed from day one, you know, grow up and destitute poverty and wind up at the top of the charts. It's like, you know, it's just gift after gift. So enjoy that guys. Hey, thank you so much.