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

Gainesville and played a gig at the university, I jumped at the chance to go see them. Distinctive and well respected, the group from Manchester, England, had enjoyed a string of chart hits with songs like “Searchin’,” “Just One Look,” and “I’m Alive.” I pushed my way to the front of the crowd and watched Allan Clarke and Graham Nash singing their latest hit, “Bus Stop,” and I was mightily impressed. They looked so different. I took mental notes on their clothes and how they wore their hair. And there was something about Graham Nash’s voice that really appealed to me. He not only played well; he looked like he was having fun. When he smiled down at me in the front row, while singing, I couldn’t help but smile back.
     
    While Bernie struggled to straighten his hair, I favored the classic pageboy cut, long but curled under at the sides. Still white-blond, I looked more like Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones. As a band, we fully embraced the “flower power” era with its big, blousy sleeves and flared pants. We had some publicity photographs taken of the Maundy Quintet in which we look risible now, especially Boomer Hough, the drummer, with his perfect hair and English-gent double-breasted jacket, his arms folded across his chest. Lord knows what people made of us.
     
    We cut two singles and began a regular circuit tour of Daytona, Tallahassee, Atlanta, New York, Miami, and Lauderdale, often with Susan and Judy in tow, acting as our personal groupies. Susan ferried me everywhere in her MG TD, which her father had bought her. It was a stick shift, and once she got it into fourth gear, she’d put her left foot up on the walnut dash and cruise us around Florida, tired of using the clutch.
     
    That spring, her parents returned to Boston, leaving Susan and her brother Bill behind. Bill was staying on in Gainesville for a few years as a student, and his presence gave Susan and me a few months’ respite, until the end of the summer. The family had sold their house, so Susan moved out to Judy Lee’s house at Micanopy, about ten miles south of Gainesville. To get there, I had to cross part of Paynes Prairie, a vast area of marsh, wet prairie, and open water, which is now a state reserve and national park. Back in the sixties it was just another unmarked bog.
     
    There was a road called Savannah Boulevard running right through the middle of the bog, with deep culverts on either side. The smart reptiles—the frogs, lizards, snakes, and alligators—climbed up onto the asphalt each night to soak up the warmth from the heat of the day. Every time I visited Susan, on Barry’s motorcycle, I’d have to ride for about three miles with my feet up on the handlebars, in case I ran over a snake and it hit the wheel and rode up my leg. It felt like a medieval test—“Make it through this, young knight, and you can win the fair damsel.”
     
    That summer, we opened for a band called the Cyrkle, who had a number-two hit by Paul Simon called “Red Rubber Ball.” They even gained a coveted spot on the Beatles’ final U.S. tour. Their manager liked us and took us to New York to play a few club gigs, but a couple of the guys grew homesick and nothing more came of it, so Bernie and I went back to Daytona Beach, gigging around. Susan and Judy joined us when they could. One night, I had a big fight with Susan over something stupid and she stormed off. I think she wanted me to pay more attention to her and I was far too busy having fun and getting high. When we finished our gig, Bernie and I went over and watched The Allman Joys as usual, and afterward we smoked some pot.
     
    “Hey, I’m starving, man,” I told Duane and Gregg, with a sudden pang of the munchies. “Let’s go get something to eat.” We found a diner that was open at 4 A.M., and the four of us sat in a booth by the window, drinking coffee, eating doughnuts, smoking cigarettes, and feeling pretty mellow with the sun coming up on the