Joe Walsh on the lowest point of his career: “I was pretty pitiful”
When any rock star reaches the top, none of them think of what’s going to happen on the way back down. It usually takes years, if not decades, for someone to realise their vision and ascend to their peak, so when all that energy is built up, there’s no way to account for what happens on the backslide. While the Eagles eventually dissolved into thin air at the beginning of the 1980s, it took a few more years for Joe Walsh to truly hit his low point.
Once he decided to join the California rockers, though, Walsh was about to enter onto the musical equivalent of a rocket ship. The Eagles had gained momentum off of One of These Nights, and even though Hotel California was the first record they made without longtime guitarist Bernie Leadon, having Walsh lay down the brilliant trading solo on the title track and the opening lick to ‘Life In the Fast Lane’ was just the kick in the ass they needed.
But with success comes a lot of extracurriculars, and Walsh was among the biggest wildmen in rock. His becoming best friends with Keith Moon wasn’t by accident, and the tales of his escapades with John Belushi in Chicago and trashing hotel rooms night after night are still the stuff of legend in American rock and roll.
That’s never easy to manage, though, and during the making of The Long Run, everyone was bottoming out. No one was getting along, and with no inspiration to put together anything else, the fight between Frey and Don Felder at a benefit show that ended them felt like a mercy killing for the group after months of having nothing to work with.
Now, without a band for the first time since the James Gang, Walsh continued with his solo career and began to get as loaded as possible. Even when Don Henley was soaring even higher with ‘Boys of Summer’, Walsh seemed destined to follow in Moon’s footsteps as a rock and roll casualty.
Looking back on that time, Walsh thought that those few years after the Eagles were the lowest that he ever sunk in his career, telling Louder, “The low point was probably my last three years of vodka and substance abuse. I was pretty pitiful. I had lost myself. I always thought: ‘Well, if I need to, I can stop.’ And then I realised that wasn’t the case, and I did not know what to do.”
Then again, it’s hard to fault Walsh for going down the route he did. Drugs had become a source of inspiration and escape for him for years, so when they didn’t have the same effect, it was only natural for him to chase it before someone told him that enough was enough.
Despite not playing with them for ages, Frey and Henley eventually saved his life. After pitching the idea of getting the group back together, Walsh would enter rehab and finally kick his demons, which also meant having to deal with the fear of playing his first shows completely sober.
But a few nerves before a show is better than not being able to play at all, and Walsh was always grateful for the group helping him back from the edge. In an era when most artists fall prey to their nasty habits, Walsh joined the same club as David Crosby for those who crawled out from their personal hell and lived to see the other side.
