The one song Joe Walsh wished he didn’t have to play
Rarely has any rockstar seemed more like a goofball than Joe Walsh.
He might have his moments where he can write heartbreaking ballads or the occasional badass tune, but whenever he was with Eagles or on his own, it felt like he was a natural comedian more than a guitarist half the time. But for all of the strange humour that he plugged into everything he made, there were a few pieces of his set that he could get extremely tired of playing after one too many shows.
But Walsh was the kind of rockstar that was born to be on the road. He wanted to give his music to the people directly, and from the minute he started in James Gang, he was already racking up famous fans along the way. Not many artists can garner the respect of Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend within the span of a few years, but when listening to his guitar playing, it’s not like Walsh wasn’t qualified.
He had the kind of tone that most people would kill to figure out, but whenever he played, every single note was perfectly tasteful for whatever was going on. There was no need for him to absent-mindedly shred every time he played, and when he did fly off the handle, you could practically sing along to a few of his lead breaks.
And for guitar players, Walsh’s riffs are always an absolute blast to play. ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ is the kind of blues that every single teenager cuts their teeth playing when they are banging away in their garage, and when he eventually joined Eagles, that lick from ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ never fails to give anyone that adrenaline rush that you’d get from revving the engine of a luxury sports car.
If Walsh is going to go down in history for one lick, it will probably be ‘Funk 49’. Although the tune was never the most commercial single that he ever released, the guitar sound on the record is one of the most satisfying licks anyone has ever made, especially when the band gets grooving on the bridge lick before going back to the main spine of the song.
But as much as Walsh loved playing with James Gang, he remembered feeling a little bit disheartened about having to perform ‘Funk 49’ on his solo tours, saying, “I don’t think the audience would let me phase out the older material, though I would love to not play ‘Funk 49’ anymore. I feel they’ve paid to come and hear the record and I owe it to them to play that.” Even if Walsh wouldn’t be let out of the building without performing it, there aren’t many rock songs that could beat it, either.
The lick is fairly simple when getting the notes right, but the real issue is getting the right feel for the song. Everyone is going to play the track a little differently, and while Kenny Loggins may have stolen the entire melody of the guitar lick for the theme song for Footloose, that only serves to prove that the track is evergreen, even if Loggins’s version is far more polished than the original.
Any Eagles audience is probably expecting much different tunes in the setlist whenever Walsh plays with them, but there’s a reason why ‘Funk 49’ was still in heavy rotation once their Hell Freezes Over tour kicked into gear. Don Henley and Glenn Frey could write impressive tunes, but there was no sense in trying to replace one of the best riffs of the 1970s, either.
