Ever wondered what Don Felder said to Joe Walsh to crack him up during the iconic twin guitar solos on the original 1970s-era video for “Hotel California”? Us, too.
You can see Walsh bursting out laughing at the 5:51 point of the original promotional clip.
Of course, this dates back to a time before videos were played on television, but Felder still remembers the shoot — and the joke he told Walsh — vividly.
“We’re actually filming this so we can send it over to Japan, and Europe, so people can see what this is about — which was the way you promoted stuff before you could go on MTV,” Felder says in the Howard Stern video below. “Back in those days, we used to do a lot of drugs. People would walk around with reminiscences glistening on the tip of their nose. If you had that on your face, people would say: ‘Hey, you’re showing.’ So, in the middle of filming this, I just lean over to Joe in the middle of the song and said: ‘You’re showing.'”
“Hotel California,” of course, would become a signature moment for both co-writer Felder and for the Eagles, though by 2001 he was out of the band. The video, however, lives on — as a testament to the song’s crunchy power, and to his friendship with Walsh.
Oh, and about the coke booger? “He didn’t really,” Felder adds. “It was just a joke.”
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