The one musician Eagles were scared to work with: “Somehow it worked”
The entire process of getting Eagles’ album off the ground always came back to that partnership between Glenn Frey and Don Henley.
Every band of their calibre needs their Lennon and McCartney, and while Henley never thought of putting himself on that level, he did at least have a good idea of how the band was meant to sound when he first started working on their classics. But when things started shifting once they got their bearings, it was anyone’s guess whether they were going to make the right decision whenever the right person walked into their lives.
Then again, it’s not like they didn’t have good intuition when it comes to their best career moves. Getting Irving Azoff as their manager was one of the greatest blessings that they could have had at the time to get them out of trouble, but when people started to think about walking away, it was always going to throw a wrench into things. They had built the band to be the greatest musicians in California, and if you take any one of them out of the equation, it’s going to throw everything out of whack.
But when Don Felder joined the band, it looked like they were going from strength to strength for a while. Bernie Leadon wasn’t the one coming up with the greatest rock and roll licks, and while he could lay down a solid foundation on any of their country songs, it was a walk in the park seeing Felder fly all across the guitar neck and bring a lot more chops to songs like ‘Already Gone’ and ‘One of These Nights’.
Having a three-guitar attack was already a bit much for everyone to take in, but Leadon wasn’t meant to be in the band forever. He didn’t like the idea of them reaching the highest levels of superstardom every single time they played, and when they started to tour with Joe Walsh, Frey started to get a much better idea of what the band should sound like with someone like that at the helm.
Are Walsh’s vocals nearly as good as the rest of the band’s? Absolutely not, but that didn’t matter. The band wanted to have a bit more credibility in the rock and roll community, and getting the same guy who made classics like ‘Funk 49’ was as close as they could get to being an authentic hard rock act. But before Walsh even played a note with them, Henley had more than a few questions before he brought him on.
There was already a lot of camaraderie between all of them, but the drummer was convinced once Walsh strapped on his guitar for the first time, saying, “We in the band had some trepidation because, although we liked him personally and we liked his music, we weren’t sure that he’d be able to fit into an already established group. But somehow it worked, and Joe has always been able to live in both worlds. In the studio, he brought his distinctive guitar sounds and his versatile chops.”
And aside from being one hell of a writer, it’s the subtle things that made all the difference whenever Walsh played. He could switch between the guitar and the piano whenever necessary, and while ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ could have easily stayed a warm up exercise, Frey got the entire idea of those sleepless nights driving through LA the minute that Walsh played that opening lick.
Walsh was bound to bring a reckless side to all of their songs, but that was hardly a problem when they had the right songs behind them. They had spent years having one foot dragging back into the country world, but this was the first time where people got to hear them as a musical tour de force.
