The guitarist Glenn Frey thought could easily play any riff in the world
Eagles are the only band with two separate albums in the top ten best-selling of all time list. That puts the group on a hit-making pedestal alongside The Beatles and, well, nobody else. In order to get to the point where playing hits proves easy, you have to know what not to play, too.
Fortunately, in Glenn Frey, they had a maestro who knew Motown as well as he knew Mozart. He might have yielded a guitar for the group, but behind a piano, the Michigan-born musician was a master of melody. This gave Frey a unique outlook on music.
“It seems when I put together records, as Henley used to say, they’re just like movies. They should have action, tension, love scenes, places to relax,” he once said.
You need to have fully ironed-out skills to view music in such a manner. Frey certainly wasn’t just fumbling around thinking about what chords might sound nice together; he always drew on a huge body of art, reconstructing it into little movies that struck a chord with the masses and blessed the Eagles with monumental hits.
The same can be said of his musical ally in the band, a guitarist who Frey thought could easily play any riff in the world. When Joe Walsh joined the Eagles as a replacement for departing founder Bernie Leadon, he instantly brought added chops to the band. After all, he’d been taught slide guitar by the great Duane Allman, he’d jammed with Pete Townshend, and he’d opened for Cream.
But what amazed Frey instantly was how complete he was as a guitarist. His understanding of music seemed innate. Any song you could test him with, he’d end up triumphing, playing along after hearing only a few notes. “Walsh is like an almanac,” Frey said, singing his former bandmates’ praises.
Together, they’d jam through covers until they’d run out of songs worth remembering. “I could sit down at a piano at any given moment and play every song the Drifters ever recorded,” Frey added in an interview for In Their Own Words. “But Joe can do the same thing with Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton. I mean, every single blues lick.”
In fact, he was such a natural guitarist that Frey figured his finest asset was having the ability to discern what was worthwhile from the realm he had conquered. “Joe has gourmet tastes,” he said ahead of their tour in 1993. “He’s not just the crown prince of the electric guitar. Joe likes fine wine and fine dining.”
With great prowess and skill, Walsh was able to elevate the group to new heights. He was able to slip right into their cinematic songwriter, keenly deciphering not just the motif of “action, tension, love scenes, and places to relax”, but exactly which notes would offer the highest version of each of those elements. Leaning on his encyclopedic knowledge of guitar, he was able to say, ‘Well, Chuck Berry would throw in this flash for action’ or ‘Eric Clapton might wail down here a little for a little bit of romance’.
