10 Bands That Fell Out Over One Song
2. Victim of Love - Eagles
Once the Eagles got to making Hotel California, there was no time for filler. If the band had made a song that they thought was just passable, it wasn’t going to make it onto the final version of the record. Every song had to measure up to the album’s potential, and that meant Don Felder having to give up the reins on Victim of Love.
While Felder had written the track for the song, Don Henley and JD Souther helped finish the lyrics off. The song had the potential to be great, but Felder’s insistence on singing it didn’t sit well with the rest of the band. The rest of the band relented and let Felder sing it in the studio, only to ask their manager to take Felder out to dinner while the rest of the band stayed behind to put Henley’s vocal on the song.
Even though this was the better move for the studio version, Felder felt the rift between the rest of the band start with this song, thinking that Henley was taking the song away from him and him having less of a say in what the Eagles were supposed to be. Then again, even if Don Felder delivered a kickass version on his own, there was no way anyone was going to argue that a Don Henley vocal should be wiped out.