Don Felder Talks About Woodstock, Songwriting, Rush and New Solo Album – American Rock ‘N’ Roll

In a new interview with musiclifemagazine.net, Don Felder talks about Alex Lifeson's guest appearance on his new solo album, American Rock 'N' Roll, and how it came about through his friendship with Neil Peart:

“I actually met [Rush drummer] Neil Peart before I met Alex. Neil’s little girl and my little boy actually went to the same preschool together, so we became friends and went to dinner and he would come to birthday parties at my house and school events and just hang out. About two and a half years ago he came to a birthday party and I asked him to get up and play. I had my road band with me and Stephen Stills also came and did a set with me; it was just a fun jam at my house. But Neil said, ‘I’ve quit playing.’ I said, ‘what?’ He said, ‘I quit playing. It’s just too hard physically for me to do what I have to do to maintain the level of my performance at my age. I can’t do that, and I can’t go onstage and play at less than what I think is the best I can do.’ I had the ultimate amount of respect for that, but it just broke my heart to hear him telling me that he was done playing music,” said Felder.

“About a year or so later I was playing in this golf event for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and Alex was there and we ended up playing together. Afterwards, he jammed with me on some stuff and we played a soundcheck together and I think we played Pride and Joy as a matter of fact, where we traded off guitars. Backstage I took this goofy picture of the two of us playing my white double-neck with each of us playing one of the necks. He’s such a nice guy and I realized as I was making this record that since Alex is not working regularly – he is probably just playing a lot of golf – he probably would be very interested in jumping on this record if I reached out to him.

“And indeed, he was very excited. He was up in Canada and I sent him some stuff for him to play to and he got back to me asking what I wanted him to do. He went in and in a very tasteful way played acoustic guitar on the bridge of Charmed and did some great guitar solos on the end and sent it back and we did a little digital editing where I overdubbed on top of it so it sounds like we’re actually trading off lines at the very end of it. The very last line that he played was very cool, so I figured out the harmony for it and played harmony on top. It was a fun couple of days for him and a fun couple of days for me. I wish we could have been in the same room. And I loved the way he plays, I love his work, he is just a super sweet guy. I haven’t met a Canadian that I don’t like, basically.”

- Thanks to Rushfanforever for the headsup!