The guitarist Joe Walsh said everyone “wanted to be”
No one ever said that rock and roll was fair.
The business is all about getting the most out of every single artist, and even if they have influenced legions of players since then, there’s no telling if they’re going to be a legend in their field or tossed out when their music doesn’t have staying power on the charts. But as far as Joe Walsh was concerned, the forgotten legends are often more important than the ones that end up having the platinum plaques lining the walls of their mansion.
Granted, Walsh is one of the few fortunate enough to win that musical lottery fairly early in life. He was already becoming one of the biggest names in guitar before he had even left James Gang, but even with all the kind words from people like Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend, anything that he did as a solo artist was always going to be dwarfed by what he did with the Eagles.
‘Life in the Fast Lane’ and ‘Pretty Maids All in A Row’ were bound to get him new fans that didn’t hop on during the era of ‘Funk 49’, but Walsh’s heart was always in making heavier music. He could sing ballads if he wanted to, but in between the massive journeys of tunes like ‘Life’s Been Good’, Walsh was always the reckless spirit of whatever band he was in, usually serving as the comic relief whenever he worked with the Eagles.
But a lot of the flashiness he had didn’t come from him wanting to copy people like Jimmy Page or anything. He knew that there were bars that were out of his reach as far as technique was concerned, but when looking at the music that landed on his records, it was much more about setting up a certain vibe whenever he worked on a song, rather than trying to shoehorn in every lesson he learned.
And while the first few guitar bends of ‘Funk 49’ were fantastic, Walsh figured that attitude was all down to listening to Link Wray when he first picked up the guitar. Most people would often remember the song ‘Rumble’ more for its reputation than for what it sounds like, but outside of being one of the few instrumentals to ever get banned, Walsh knew every guitarist in the world was listening for when the tremolo guitar came in with those ripping chords.
There had been a lot of innovations in the world of guitar at that point, but when talking at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, Walsh felt Wray’s playing was more than enough to give him a spot in the history of the genre, saying, “There was a guy that didn’t make it last year called Link Wray. He had a song called ‘Rumble’ in the ’50s, and all us guitar players wanted to be Link Wray. And he didn’t get in because nobody knows about him.”
It doesn’t sound like much today, but considering the level of danger that people felt listening to it back in the day, there’s a chance that many guitarists would have never thought to make strange sounds later had Wray not come first. There was a nastiness to the way that he played, and when listening to him play those blaring chords, you can hear the genesis of everything from The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’ to Led Zeppelin’s first tunes in how he punishes his guitar strings.
Walsh might get a lot more recognition for what he helped bring out of the Eagles, but every guitarist of his generation owed Wray a debt of gratitude for daring them to dream bigger with their guitar sounds. It might only be a few chords throughout its runtime, but Wray said more with a tune like ‘Rumble’ than most people could convey with an entire album’s worth of tunes.
