‘Life’s Been Good’: Hotel damage, Keith Moon, and Joe Walsh’s ode to fame ruining rock music
There aren’t many people who can talk so extensively about rock star behaviour as Joe Walsh. Long before he joined the Eagles in 1975, he had been deeply ensconced in the world of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll with his previous outfits, James Gang and Barnstorm, and had made his name as both a hard rock hero and a hard partier.
Of course, after he joined the Eagles, he would not only help the band refine their craft, providing a gritty foil to Don Felder’s slide guitar playing, but he also added another figure to the mix closely associated with the rockstar behaviour of the day. While his music before joining the group might have differed from theirs, his day-to-day life was not.
To understand how hard Walsh partied and how much of a stereotypical rocker he was during this era, we must look to the man who taught him the way: The Who drummer Keith Moon. Because of his appetite for destruction, Moon was known as ‘Moon the Loon’ to his friends. Walsh got to know Moon when the James Gang opened for The Who in Europe after they premiered 1969’s Tommy.
The madcap drummer took a shine to the young Walsh, which terrified him, but before too long, he had been shown the delights of the dark side. Throughout the tour, Moon taught Walsh the art of hotel damage, wanton devastation, and how to push himself and his surroundings to the brink.
As the decade wore on, Walsh put his spin on the way of life, and in 1978, as the Eagles were winding down, he lampooned rockstar behaviour and how the trappings of fame ruined the genre in ‘Life’s Been Good’. It’s one of his ultimate works and the highlight of But Seriously Folks… Not only does the song feature some of his best guitar playing, but his finest words, too.
The beauty of the words and their resonance is that they’re comprised of autobiographical moments, ones inspired by other musicians, and strokes of fiction. Comprised of classic lines such as “I have a mansion, forget the price / Ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice” and “My Maserati does one-eighty-five / I lost my license, now I don’t drive”, it’s the best satire of this way of life ever written. Walsh has even revealed that the line, “I live in hotels / Tear out the walls” was inspired by Moon.
When speaking to the BBC in 1981, Walsh explained why “I wanted to make a statement” with the song. He said: “I wanted to make a statement involving satire and humour, kind of poking fun at the incredibly silly lifestyle that someone in my position is faced with – in other words, I do have a really nice house, but I’m on the road so much that when I come home from a tour, it’s really hard to feel that I even live here. It’s not necessarily me, I think it paraphrases anyone in my position, and I think that’s why a lot of people related to it, but basically, that’s the story of any rock star – I say that humbly – anyone in my position.”
While the song perfectly captured the strange lifestyle of a rockstar, it would be taken at face value and affect him. He later admitted to becoming an even crazier rockstar after its release, with it becoming a challenge just to stay alive as he blurred the lines between himself and the character presented in ‘Life’s Been Good’.
