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

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    Unbeknownst to me, Susan had been hunting for me all over Daytona Beach with Judy, hoping to patch things up. The two of them finally walked into this diner and saw us sitting there. All they could see of Duane and Gregg was the back of their heads, each with beautiful, long, silky hair. Assuming the worst, Susan ran out, crying.
     
    Judy, furious, marched up to confront us. “Hey,” she yelled at Bernie, “what the hell do you think you’re doing with these two girls?”
     
    Gregg and Duane looked up at her in surprise. As soon as she saw their beards and moustaches, she realized their mistake. Man, we laughed till we cried.
     
    Just when things seemed to be going so well with the band, my personal life, and my musical ambitions, Bernie dropped a bombshell. He’d been dissatisfied for a while, wishing for greater success, and still wasn’t getting along with his family. Like my parents, they were often nagging him about what he was planning to do with his life, and wanted him to pursue an academic career. Bernie was upset that they weren’t more supportive.
     
    “There’s nothing here, musically, man,” he’d complain. “New York or California’s where it’s at, and I’m never gonna live in New York. I hate it. One of these days I’m gonna blow, and just go back to California and make some real music.”
     
    He’d been saying it for so long, I’d almost come to ignore it. Then, one day, he announced that he was leaving.
     
    “Come with me, Don,” he urged, his eyes bright. “California has great weather, great women, and everything’s really happening there. It’s where my roots are. We could start up a band together and get something good going.”
     
    I shook my head. “Gainesville might have little to offer, but it’s all I’ve ever known,” I told him. Truth was, I was scared to leave. I’d hated New York too. By contrast, California seemed faraway, alien, and frightening, like moving to the other side of the world. All the magazine articles and television program I’d seen implied it was a sin state, where people “turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.” Drug abuse was rife, and not just pot. LSD and other hallucinogens were all the rage, and anything went, sexually. I was still a naïve young teenager with a rather old-fashioned set of moral values, despite what my father thought. I knew the West Coast wasn’t for me. Not yet, anyway.
     
    Coming from poverty had also made me inherently cautious. I needed certainty, a surefire scheme to make money and pay the rent. It felt so scary to head off somewhere unknown with no offers of work and no solid opportunities identified. Bernie didn’t really know anyone in Los Angeles and had few music contacts there anymore. In my worst nightmares, I imagined him falling in with drug dealers and pimps and never playing banjo again. However, he was determined to make a go of it, and there was nothing I could say to make him change his mind.
     
    The day he left, I went over to his parents’ house and helped him load up his car.
     
    “I wish you were coming with me, buddy,” he said, giving me a hug.
     
    “I know,” I said, feeling unnervingly close to tears.
     
    He flashed me that huge grin of his and patted me warmly on the back. “I’ll call you just as soon as I’m settled. If things work out, then maybe you could come out and join me?”
     
    “Sure,” I lied. “As soon as you’re settled.”
     
    He climbed into the driver’s seat of his Ford Falcon and turned the key in the ignition. The engine fired up into life with a big blue cloud of smoke from the exhaust. The car was loaded to the roof with instruments and clothes and equipment. Only the front passenger seat was empty. Bernie was leaving. He was driving to California to follow his musical dream. As I waved him off and watched his car disappear down the dusty trail west, it took all my nerve not to chase after him and jump into that empty