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

heaven.
     
    Jerry didn’t like me playing in such places, and when he found out, he threatened to tell our folks. “It ain’t right,” he’d tell me. “You’re underage and shouldn’t even be in those dives. Besides, it’s embarrassing having my kid brother on the stage.” But I didn’t care. I was happy playing music and having fun. Ever since I’d stepped on the stage of the State Theater, this was what I’d wanted.
     
     
     
     
    I still loved black music, after my early contact with the church soul singers and my love affair with late-night radio stations, but during the late fifties and early sixties, there weren’t any concert halls for black artists. Racism was rife in the Deep South, and that’s just how it was. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t understand it. My father worked with “coloreds” and got on well with them. One of Dad’s friends, known to all as “Pig,” had a sugarcane farm outside town. We’d sometimes go there on weekends and work alongside his men cutting the cane. Pig’s mule would pull the grindstone, and the coloreds would cook up some of the sugarcane to make syrup for our pancakes. Dad lent money to one man in particular, who was a regular visitor at our home. I was always mystified as to why, when he came to call, he had to use the back door instead of the front.
     
    There was a part of Gainesville that everybody called Colored Town. Whites didn’t go there, but I did. I’d sneak out as a young teenager and run down to the bars to jam with the musicians. My parents would have had a fit if ever they knew. My father was still taking his belt to me, and I dread to think what he’d have done if he’d ever found out I wasn’t sleeping over at a friend’s house, after all, but hanging out with the coloreds.
     
    One of the musicians I played with down there, a drummer called John, told me that B.B. King was coming to town as part of what was known as the “Chitlin Circuit” for black performers. He’d be playing in an illegal bar in a barn out on somebody’s farm. Back then, promoters would find a building in the middle of cow pastures and simply move the haystacks out of the way for the gig. They’d set up tables and chairs made out of crates and put down a few kegs, sell beer, and charge five dollars admission. Five bucks to see B.B. King. It was a small fortune.
     
    I was completely starstruck about B.B., whom I’d heard on WLAC a hundred times, and I badgered John to take me with him. “Please can I go, please, please, please?” He eventually agreed, much to my delight, and so, one night I sneaked out of my house, ran to his Jeep, and drove off with him to the barn.
     
    The place was steaming. I was the only white person for miles. I couldn’t afford to go in, so I stood outside, peering through the window. B.B. absolutely blew me away. Men were hollering and women were crying, just listening to him play. I watched him, wide-eyed, and knew that I wanted to be like him more than anything else in the world—standing at the front of the stage, eyes pressed shut, making women weep with my guitar.
     
    When he was done, he set down his guitar in a horse stall and took a seat on a hay bale, along with everyone else, to drink some of the illegal booze. My heart pounding, I burst in through the door and rushed across the crowded barn to where he was sitting.
     
    “Mr. King,” I said breathlessly, “I just wanna shake your hand.”
     
    His face lit up like a candle, and he flashed me a mouth filled with dazzlingly white teeth. “Well, OK, boy,” he replied, his eyes bright, “here it is.” He extended his huge hand and I took it in mine. His fingers were the size of sausages, and his breath smelled faintly of whiskey. Unable to say another word, dumbstruck as his gaze cut straight through me, I backed away and walked home that night in a daze. I don’t think I washed for a week.
     
    For the next few months, I saved every penny until, finally, I could