The guitarist Joe Walsh said no one could touch: “Tough and unique”
When guitarists talk about their personal favourite players and major inspirations, they can vary wildly from the guitarist’s actual style, and the Eagles’ Joe Walsh is no exception to this rule.
Of course, a fair number of guitarists do have personal favourites who are more in line with their own output, such is the nature of inspiration, and you can understand why the likes of Eddie Van Halen looked up to other guitar icons such as Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. As obvious and universally admired as these sorts of figures are, however, others tend to look to more unusual sources to be blown away.
Walsh, it must be said, is no slouch when it comes to being able to pull out showstopping performances, and his lead work on the latter period of the Eagles’ output is a sublime showcase of his talents on the fretboard. However, what inspires him the most in terms of soloing ability is not the people he has tried his hardest to emulate, but instead those whose work stands completely separate from his own, and has a certain flair to it that he feels unable to compete with.
The American primitive guitar movement is home to some of the most individualistic and spellbinding players to have graced the planet, but because of the movement’s lack of mainstream attention in comparison to more traditional genres it has indirectly influenced such as rock, folk and jazz, and its occasional forays into more avant-garde experimentation, players of this ilk tend to get overlooked.
However, when it comes to being lauded by fellow musicians, the complexity of their work is far more greatly appreciated, which is why you’ll more frequently see other guitarists name-drop the likes of John Fahey, the father of the genre, and early proponents such as Robbie Basho as being among their favourites.
While Walsh is a fan of both of these artists, there is one player in particular who stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of his ability to voice his guitar in such an expressive way, and during a 1988 interview with Guitar Player, where he was asked to name his 12 favourite solos of all time he revealed the one American primitive guitarist who he regards as being the true master.
“Anything that Leo Kottke ever recorded is one of my top 12 solos,” he declared, slightly overlooking the fact that Kottke recorded considerably more than a dozen solos in his career. “He’s very tough and unique, and I love him. John Fahey and Bert Jansch are good, too, but nobody can touch Leo Kottke on acoustic 12-string bottleneck.”
Well-known in the guitar community for his use of slides and 12-stringed instruments, Kottke’s playing when heard seems as though it would take an intense amount of effort to pull off, but the relative ease with which he fluctuated between harsh lead playing and punctuating it with more rhythmic elements is truly sublime, and something that few others are able to perfect in a lifetime of practice.
While the American primitive guitar movement is still active and thriving, with artists such as Hayden Pedigo, Gwenifer Raymond and William Tyler all continuing in the same tradition, the emergence of someone as singular as Kottke in the late ‘60s would have been mind-altering to anyone looking for a radically different approach to the instrument. It’s fair to say that Walsh, along with many others, had his perceptions of the instrument and soloing permanently changed by Kottke’s innovative style, and that few others will ever come close to matching that level of magic.
