The Eagles’ Joe Walsh names the best song of his career
Picking a favourite song from an entire career is difficult for any artist, especially when they are as esteemed as Joe Walsh. Typically, it’s not the track that made them the most money that artists gravitate towards; instead, it’s a sentimental attachment that places it in pole position. For Walsh, his favourite is one that reshaped his life and made everything that followed a possibility.
Although he has been a vital part of the Eagles for 50 years, Walsh wasn’t plucked out of obscurity to join the group. He’d been putting in the hard yards as a musician for a decade before teaming up with Don Henley and Glenn Frey as the replacement for founding member Bernie Laudon. While at first, it seemed like an unconventional choice to join the fold, those fears were quickly quelled when his first album with the band Hotel California arrived in 1976.
As a songwriter, he only contributed to two songs on the record, including the hugely successful ‘Life in the Fast Lane’. Nevertheless, while he wasn’t the main man in the band, Walsh asserted himself as an important presence, and his role only continued to grow as the years passed. However, while he holds the material he created with his Eagles bandmates in high regard, on a personal level, it’ll never have equal meaning to Walsh as the song that truly launched him as an artist.
Before joining the Eagles in 1975, Walsh had already had an extended taste of the music industry. His first taste of moderate success was with the James Gang, which acted as an apprenticeship for Walsh and was an invaluable chapter of his career. During his time with the group, they supported The Who on a European tour, which grew his reputation immensely as a guitarist and let him watch the best in the business nightly.
Despite their success, in 1971, Walsh decided it was time for a new adventure. He left the James Gang and started as a solo artist with the help of his backing band, Barnstorm. Although his first album wasn’t a major chart success, it all changed thanks to the single ‘Rocky Mountain Way’, which appeared on Walsh’s second album.
The track was a major hit for Walsh, altering the trajectory of his career and making more people stand up to take notice of his talent. Following the failure of his first album, Walsh was in an awkward position. Naturally, he began to question whether he’d made the right decision to gamble on himself and quit the James Gang. Then, he wrote ‘Rocky Mountain Way’, and everything fell into place. To this day, Walsh still believes it to be the best song he’s ever produced.
On the songwriting process for the song, he told Howard Stern during an interview in 2012: “I was in Colorado, I had left the James Gang and was worried that I might have made a mistake because we were doing fine.” Walsh also explained his exit from the group and revealed he became “saturated with playing really loud and being a kick-ass guitar guy”, which made him want to start something new.
He continued: “I’m living in Colorado, and I’m mowing the lawn. I look up, and there’s the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, and there’s snow on them in the summer. And it knocked me back because it was just beautiful. And I thought, ‘Well, I have committed. I’m already in Colorado, and it’s too late to regret the James Gang. The Rocky Mountain way is better than the way I had because the music was better.’ I got the words. Bam!”
After the lyrics arrived, Walsh quickly raced into his home and forgot about mowing the lawn. Unfortunately for Walsh’s bank balance, the mower ran into his next-door neighbour’s garden and caused seismic damage. Thankfully, the royalties he’s earned from ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ have more than compensated his wallet in the long run.
On that day, Walsh’s chips were down, and he’d begun to question every decision that landed him in this perilous position. However, everyone happens for a reason, and quitting the James Gang brought him to Colorado, which, in turn, led to the creation of ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ that marked a new artistic zenith for Walsh.
