Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles by Wendy Holden, Don Felder Read Free Book Online

their arrangements. Sometimes I’d even travel out with them on a gig, standing in the audience to hear them play. Tommy was very good looking, with long silky hair he used to flip, which attracted the girls. While I was standing watching him perform in a Moose lodge one night, a really cute chick came up and started talking to me. She’d seen me help unload the band’s equipment and knew I was with them. To my surprise and delight, she invited me to go for a ride in her car during the break, and of course, I agreed. She drove down the road a little bit and pulled over, and we started kissing. But before anything serious happened, a car pulled up beside hers and a young man, as drunk as he could be, started yelling at us.
     
    “Oh, Lord, it’s my boyfriend!” she screamed, pushing me away from her.
     
    Ashen-faced, I watched as this linebacker pulled up in front of us, stepped out, and walked back along the asphalt road in the middle of nowhere, a murderous expression on his face. Happily for me, he was so drunk, he suddenly tripped and collapsed facedown in the road.
     
    “Quick! Start the car!” I yelled at the girl. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
     
    “We can’t just leave him there,” she whined. “He’s lying right in the middle of the road. Someone’s gonna hit him. We’ve gotta pull him to the side.”
     
    With severe doubts about my sanity, I climbed out of the car and helped her get her boyfriend to his feet. As we pulled him up, he belched foul beer breath. Reluctantly, I placed one of his arms around my shoulders and one around hers, and we started dragging him back toward his car. We were only a few feet from safety when he came to.
     
    “Get your filthy hands off me,” he said, throwing back his arms with a violent jerk, completely dislocating my left shoulder. Letting out a primal scream, I grabbed my arm and jammed it back into its socket.
     
    “Take me back to the gig,” I gasped at the girl. She took one look at her boyfriend, now slumped over the hood of his car, and another look at me, doubled up in pain, and agreed.
     
    I staggered back into the Moose lodge, halfway through the second set, holding my shoulder, which hurt real bad, and tried to make my way up to the stage to ask one of the guys to take me to a hospital. A few steps behind me was the drunken boyfriend, who’d regained consciousness and followed me back. “Hey, you little jerk!” he yelled, shoving me hard in the back. “What the hell are you doing with my girl?” I couldn’t defend myself. My shoulder was all swollen, and I was in so much pain, I could have cried. The Rucker brothers, though, were big, bad, mean, tough-ass Florida rednecks whose father owned a garage. They saw me being harassed, threw down their instruments, jumped down off the stage, grabbed this guy, and dragged him outside, where they gave him a good whupping. That was probably one of the most memorable Tom Petty gigs I can recall. Even today, if I pull my shoulder back a little too far, I get a painful reminder of that night.
     
    My schoolwork undoubtedly suffered from all the extracurricular activities I was involved in. In addition to my weekend jobs selling shoes, tuning guitars, and trying to teach tearful little kids how to play “King Creole,” I also started doing solo gigs, just me, my Fender, and my little amp, playing in town and at venues farther afield, which I rode to on a Greyhound bus.
     
    “Don Felder, Guitarist,” I billed myself, taking lowly paid jobs at women’s social clubs and kids’ parties, playing anything from movie themes to Elvis. I also played drums at a bar called Gatorland, which was right across the street from the University of Florida, and lead guitar in a band at Dubs Steer Room, a smoke-filled steakhouse that served meat and beer. You could shoot pool, dance the “Gator,” or just watch the wet T-shirt contest every Friday and Saturday night. Man, I thought I’d died and gone to