How did you get such a dead-on version of the opening guitar figure?
"The key to the realism was the mp3 audio I cut/spliced into my tracks."
It is the MP3 audio from the Don Felder YouTube lesson.
I downloaded the YouTube audio. It is an isolated track of just the lead guitar work. Once saved as a stem, it is no different than if I'd played the part live, use a realtrack or hire a musician to do it.
Since in every aspect, it is a live performance track, I created a tempo map of the track using the Audio Chord Wizard and generated the Real Tracks to that tempo map. Once I synced the Don Felder audio track to Real Band, then the process to create a realistic performance started on a per track basis.