Six Definitive Songs: The ultimate beginner’s guide to Joe Walsh
Joe Walsh is still rock and roll incarnate. With nearly six decades of experience in supercharged guitars, loud drums, and killer antics, Walsh remains one of the purest examples of what distortion, a lot of genius, and a little bit of insanity can do. He might not be trashing hotel rooms with chainsaws anymore, but if you’re compiling a list of the greatest rock survivors, Joe Walsh is right at the top.
Perhaps most impressive is that Walsh managed to stretch his talents across a number of different groups. Initally bursting onto the hard rock scene as the leader of Detroit power trio the James Gang, Walsh immediately established his wildman persona on his solo albums and his collaborations with the band Barnstorm. There was still room to grow, and soon, Walsh would find himself in the biggest band of the late 1970s.
The Eagles needed a good kick in the ass. Across the first half of their career, the California band became known for their polished harmonies and for pioneering country rock. But they wanted more: they wanted to be a true-blue rock and roll band for 1977’s Hotel California. There was only one man who could bring that kind of energy, and his name is Joe Walsh.
Walsh didn’t keep his secrets to himself either. Inherently generous and easygoing, Walsh was happy to give guitars to the likes of Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend, inadvertently helping to shape the direction of rock music in the 1970s. If you’ve ever jammed out to Led Zeppelin II or Who’s Next, you have Walsh to thank for providing the tools.
Walsh’s influence on rock music is widespread, so much so that it’s occasionally hard to whittle down his most important contributions to the genre’s canon. To help, we’ve assembled six of Walsh’s most essential tracks from across his diverse career.
Joe Walsh’s six definitive song:
‘Funk #49’ – James Gang (1970)
Despite being synonymous with rock and roll music, Walsh’s first great contribution to music was in the genre of funk. A very specific Detroit-bred style of white-boy funk, but funk nonetheless.
‘Funk #49’ is infectious and instantly identifiable with Walsh’s spontaneous and fiery guitar style. Lyrics out staying “out all night/sleep all day” helped define Walsh as a hell-raising rabble-rouser, something that would follow him all throughout his career.
‘Walk Away’ – James Gang (1971)
Walsh’s work with the James Gang featured the young guitarist at his most primal. No overdub was too indulgent, and no level of distortion was too high. All the while, Walsh was finding his voice as a singer and songwriter, crafting melodies that began to compliment his style and flesh out his talents in a more noticeable way.
Those extremes are still present, though. Just look at ‘Walk Away’, the track where Walsh is literally credited for a “train wreck” thanks to his aggressive guitar cacophony. ‘Walk Away’ was everything great about the James Gang in three minutes, but Walsh was already set to move ahead.
‘Rocky Mountain Way’ – Joe Walsh and Barnstorm (1973)
Once Walsh left the James Gang, he needed a strong track to prove that he could make it on his own. Luckily, he had the perfect hard rock track at the ready. Assembling a new band called Barnstorm to back him up, Walsh plugged in a fairly new invention called a talk box and unleashed his signature song, ‘Rocky Mountain Way’.
‘Rocky Mountain Way’ set the stage for Walsh’s next decade of rock and roll dominance. Specifically, it paired him up with producer Bill Szymczyk and manager Irving Azoff, both of whom would eventually help broker the connection between Walsh and his future band, the Eagles.
‘Pretty Maids All In a Row’ – Eagles (1977)
Walsh was brought into the Eagles to replace departing country-rock guitarist Bernie Leadon. Walsh didn’t have any country in him, instead bringing a palpable rock edge to the lightweight harmony-focused group. In turn, Walsh learned how to soften his sound and produce memorable ballads.
‘Pretty Maids All In a Row’ probably wasn’t what anyone thought Walsh was going to bring to the table for the Hotel California sessions. Still, the languid piano-heavy song is Walsh at his most tender and emotionally resonant. Even better, it avoids the schlock and saccharine elements that usually bring down Eagles’ ballads.
‘Life’s Been Good’ – Solo (1978)
Joe Walsh had lived a hell of a life by 1978. A decade of antics, destruction and occasional music gave Walsh a story or two to tell and what better way to tell those stories than through a song? With plenty of real-life inspiration to pull from, Walsh crafted the ultimate self-referential rock track with ‘Life’s Been Good’.
With a lilting reggae rhythm and a monster guitar riff at its centre, ‘Life’s Been Good’ never lags, even in its eight-minute length. Walsh is at his goofy and charming best, spinning tales of tearing out hotel room walls and staying at parties too long because he can’t find the door. It’s Walsh’s life story, stage persona, and legacy, all wrapped into a single song.
‘A Life of Illusion’ – Solo (1981)
If you watch the excellent documentary History of the Eagles, Glenn Frey directly states that the reason Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmidt got paid less than he and Don Henley once the Eagles reunited was that the two of them did the least in their solo careers. That’s just not true, considering how Walsh maintained a successful solo career all the way up until the band’s reunion in 1994.
The surest sign that Walsh was going to be just fine was ‘A Life of Illusion’, the intoxicating hit single that represented Walsh’s first post-Eagles track. Walsh actually recorded most of the song back in 1973, but a decade of waiting only made the sweet sounds of ‘A Life of Illusion’ all the better.
