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Don Felder - Airborne

Don Felder is a hell of a guitar player, and a passable singer when he stayed in his lane. By 1983 Mr. Henley and Mr. Frey were getting some traction with their solo careers, and Joe Walsh was doing his thing and seemed to be chugging along to his own little drummer (although things weren't as chipper as they appeared but that's another story, and one I frankly am not qualified to tell), so it seemed like it was Don's turn to try out a solo album. A couple years earlier Don Felder had provided the killer title track to the Heavy Metal soundtrack, and a year after that contributed "Never Surrender" to Fast Times at Ridgemont High and it was a decent song - I was eager to hear more from him.

In 1983 he released Airborne and I ate it up. I thought this was an awesome record. The album opens with "Bad Girls" which always felt a bit like a reworked "Life in the Fast Lane" but I didn't care - it's a song I still really like. Vocally, Don sounded really good, and wisely had a lot of backing vocals from the likes of Timothy B. Schmit, and Kenny Loggins to offset his limitations. 

Musically some of the songs felt like they could have been on The Long Run. This isn't a shot at Don at all, I really liked that album, and his contributions were great. Don even pulled out his talk box on a couple of tracks and throughout the album his guitar work was top shelf. He was also trying to craft a contemporary album, and his use of synclavier on a few of the songs I thought was really cool - and is also one of the things that dates the record.

I will admit that at the time I had hoped Joe Walsh would appear somewhere on the album and the two of them would tear it up, but that wasn't to be. However, Joe Vitale and George "Chocolate" Perry who were both on Joe Walsh's You Bought It, You Name It were on the album laying down bass and drums so that was cool.

There were some highlights on the album, particularly "Bad Girls" and the album's closer "Still Alive" a song I still think is a lost gem from the '80s. It was on a lot of my mix tapes for many years. I'm not sure what it is about this song but it just hits me in the feels. He included "Never Surrender" but didn't include "Heavy Metal" which would have been cool. It's not like there wasn't room as Airborne only had eight songs.

Most reviews are scathingly unkind to this one, and I suppose the whole style over substance argument has some merit, but honestly given where I was in 1983, and what pushed my musical buttons Don Felder somehow managed to hit more than he missed and even now when I listen to this I hear what I want to hear, and what I want to hear is Don Felder step front and centre and be the front man he always wanted to be.

To that end, Don is one hell of a guitar player.

I still love the album. Time. Place. Nostalgia.

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