Joe Walsh on what he learned from Pete Townshend
American guitarist Joe Walsh is set to host the sixth annual VetsAid music festival this Sunday. The Columbus, Ohio, event will raise funds for military veterans and their families. This year’s instalment welcomes Dave Grohl, Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, The Breeders and the recently reunited James Gang, among many others, to celebrate the brave and fallen heroes of the US military.
“I decided I could make a difference helping, and there’s so many ways that vets need help,” Walsh recently told Consequence. “I think they should just put a billion dollars aside when they decide to do a war for when they come back because the transition back to civilian life is almost too much of a mountain to climb.”
Walsh has strong ties with the military. His father, a flight instructor in the United States Army Air Forces, died while on active duty in Okinawa, Japan, when Walsh was just 20 months old.
“War is hell for everyone involved,” Walsh told VetsAid in 2017. “I lost my father when I was a baby, before I could even make a memory of him. I stopped counting the number of friends I lost in the Vietnam War or that came home forever scarred mentally or physically or both. We’ve only just begun to appreciate the long-term impacts on our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan”.
He added: “I had to do something, and seeing as though rock-and-roll seems to be what I do best, it’s also the least I could do for those who have served and continue to serve our country. We’re all in this together as Americans, and seems to me lately that people are forgetting that. So I decided to put on a show, raise some money, bring people back together and celebrate our vets… and let’s do it every year!”
Over his illustrious career, Walsh has had the honour of playing with the James Gang, Eagles, and Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. His wondrous journey began in Ohio in the late 1960s as he formed his first band, The Measles – a name he “doesn’t like to brag about”. Shortly thereafter, Cleveland band James Gang parted with their guitarist leaving a vacancy open. “I had some big shoes to fill and also had to learn how to sing lead and play lead at the same time,” Walsh told Consequence.
Fortunately, the young guitarist received some help from British rock legend Pete Townshend. “Luckily, we played some shows with The Who, and that turned into a longtime friendship,” Walsh added. “In a three-piece band, it’s kind of hard to navigate. [Pete Townsend] showed me how to play. We call it lead rhythm, where you play rhythm guitar and lead at the same time and just kind of wander back and forth. And that’s the secret of a three-piece band.”
While James Gang never scaled to the heights of The Eagles or The Who, they carved a comfortable notch in rock‘n’roll history and boasted late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins as a leading endorsement.
“Taylor Hawkins, his favourite band in the whole world was the James Gang. He told me that many times,” Walsh added. “And when Dave Grohl decided to do some concerts in memory of Taylor, I thought about it and said, ‘What if I get the James Gang together to be part of this?’ And he thought that was the best idea he’d heard in a long time.”
In early September, the newly reunited James Gang joined the star-studded bill for Taylor Hawkins’ tribute concert at London’s Wembley Stadium.
“It was a beautiful thing. The greenroom backstage was just full of everybody,” Walsh says. “A lot of us had known each other for years and years and years, and the whole community got together in remembrance of Taylor.”
Watch footage from the performance below.
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