The one Eagles album Joe Walsh called “painful” to make: “We were overdoing everything”
When the Eagles first got together, they had prided themselves on being a reasonably serious rock band. Although Glenn Frey and Don Henley were known for writing carefree songs like ‘Take It Easy’, albums like Desperado saw them looking closer at the human psyche, examining what draws people to the darker side of life. Once the band started to get a bit too serious for some people’s tastes, though, Joe Walsh came in to add some fun to the group.
When thinking about the characters within the band, it is often easy to see them as the desperado cowboys they so happily sang about. Allow us to run with that metaphor, and you’ll quickly see Walsh as a real sharp-shooter. Not only was he incredibly skilful with his six-string weapon, but he had some serious style. He didn’t just duel with the bandits; he made the ladies swoon, too.
Replacing original guitar Bernie Leadon, Walsh had already come off a stellar solo career, having hits such as ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ already under his belt. Although Frey was hesitant to take Walsh on because of his unique approach to vocals, his chops on guitar and his penchant for wildman antics onstage made him the perfect foil for the rest of the band.
Once they returned to the studio to work, though, Frey and Henley were on the cusp of creating their masterpiece. After working on a demo that Don Felder had cooked up, ‘Hotel California’ became the centrepiece for their next album, with everyone adapting their songwriting styles to fit the theme of the alienation that comes from the American dream.
While Walsh would offer the uncharacteristically heartfelt ‘Pretty Maids All In a Row’, his main contribution came from the massive guitar lick that kicks off ‘Life in the Fast Lane’, being birthed from a warm-up exercise. Following the massive success of One Of These Nights, Hotel California would become one of the most successful albums of the decade, turning the band from California rockers into some of the best songwriters in the music world.
As the band ventured into the studio after a lengthy tour to crank out a follow-up, no one could be bothered to think of anything. After the gruelling months on the road, the band couldn’t conjure up a single song, leading to every session grinding to a halt for months on end.
Compared to his first album with the band, Walsh thought The Long Run was born out of pain, telling History of the Eagles, “We were young. We were overdoing everything. It was a much more painful birth doing The Long Run. I think I remember Henley saying, ‘I know what to call this one. Look at us!’”.
The record just didn’t land in the same way. What had been so present in their previous work failed to come through. The laconic energy that seemed to underscore their tight harmonies and soft rock stylings was missing.
Even though the band worked tirelessly to get the right take on every track, newcomer Timothy B Schmidt would walk away with one of the album’s biggest hits, penning the ballad ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’ with Henley and Frey. While Schmidt may have helped put the album on stable ground, Walsh remembered the immense pressure before they entered the studio.
Seeing how the last album sold in droves, Walsh felt the label breathing down his neck, explaining, “The record company didn’t care if we farted and burped [on record]. They would put that out. ‘What can we have it?’. That was their whole corporate quota”. While the label eventually got the idea in time to kick off the 1980s, it came at a price once the band took to the road.
After years of tension between band members and getting blitzed on cocaine, the band’s charity gig for Senator Alan Cranston marked the last time they would share a stage for a decade, culminating in Frey and Felder fighting onstage. While Walsh was devastated to see the band break up, chances are he would have gladly returned to his solo career rather than re-record The Long Run.
