Don Felder gained significant fame with the success of the Eagles’ “Hotel California” album. Having co-written the title track, he naturally aimed for a strong follow-up.
However, it took time for Eagles fans to hear his lead candidate, which began to take shape during the recording sessions for what became 1979’s “The Long Run.” The delay was not due to a lack of ideas from the guitarist. “I wrote this really heavy track that Joe [Walsh] and I could play ascending chromatic scales and harmonies and trade off solos,” Felder said in a new interview with the UCR Podcast.
“We got in the studio and cut a track of it. It was probably the heaviest thing that the Eagles had ever attempted to play,” he continued. “It was for ‘The Long Run,’ and we got down to the very end of the amount of time we had set aside to finish this record. There were no lyrics, no vocals, no guitar solos, just the basic track. We had to leave and go on tour for [the album]. We were jamming to try to get this stuff finished, mixed and done. We just didn’t have time to finish it.”
Despite the time constraints, “The Long Run” was successful upon its release in fall 1979, featuring three successful singles, including “Heartache Tonight,” co-written by Bob Seger and Glenn Frey, which reached No. 1 and won a Grammy Award. The album marked the end of an era for the California group, who disbanded after the tour.
Although Felder’s proposed song was sidelined at the time, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. “[A few years] later, I got a call from a movie director who wanted me to write a song for an animated movie. So I went over and watched this movie, ‘Heavy Metal,"” Felder recalled. “I thought, ‘I’ve got a pretty strong, heavy track that I wrote and recorded for the Eagles.’ At the time, the working title was ‘You’re Really High, Aren’t You?’ Most of the time, probably. [Felder chuckles] Anyway, it never got made into anything. So when I got back to my house after watching that movie, I decided to revisit that idea and turn it into another track. I essentially rewrote it with the same intent. If you listen to ‘Heavy Metal,’ you can imagine Joe and I playing those harmonies and the trading of solos, which would have been perfect.”
