The singer Joe Walsh called “one of the greatest stars rock has ever produced”
In the grand history of rock and roll musicians, no one seemed to be having the time of their lives quite like Joe Walsh.
He may have studied under some of the greatest partiers of his day, like Keith Moon, but even at his lowest points, you could still hear the brilliance that he had whenever he picked up an electric guitar with the Eagles. He was out there for a good time every single moment he was onstage, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still wow a few people once he ventured into the studio.
‘Life’s Been Good’ might be one of the most on-the-nose odes to the partying lifestyle, but over the course of eight minutes, there’s hardly anyone who could match what Walsh could do with a guitar in his hand. That kind of ingenuity is half the reason why Glenn Frey wanted him in his band to add a little bit of muscle, but Walsh was still a songwriter before anything else whenever he played.
Sure, he had ‘Funk 49’ under his belt, but a lot of the greatest tunes in his arsenal were about having some real struggles to work through. Most of So What is coated with tunes about losing his daughter, and even when he joined Eagles, seeing the court jester of the band come out with one of the best ballads that they ever wrote, like ‘Pretty Maids All in A Row’, helped show off his range a lot better than the riff from ‘Life in the Fast Lane’.
And when listening to how his tunes were arranged, he wanted to do a lot more than overdub one guitar after another onto every track. He wanted everything to sound like a musical symphony whenever he performed, and even on Long Road Out of Eden, tunes like ‘Last Good Time in Town’ have a lot of moving parts creating the bed of the track. So with that in mind, how did it take him so long to end up working with someone like Jeff Lynne?
The ELO frontman was known for making some of the finest rock and roll epics ever conceived, and while he wasn’t necessarily prog rock by any stretch, hearing his attention to detail on everything from Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever to Out of the Blue made him the perfect foil to Walsh in many ways. But it wasn’t until Walsh started working with him that he realised the kind of genius that he had on his hands.
Compared to the glorious harmonies of Eagles, Walsh felt that Lynne was a cut above every other producer that he had ever worked with, saying, “[He is] one of the greatest stars rock has ever produced. Personally I think Jeff Lynne is a musical genius and I mean that. He is one big humble and lovable reason rock ‘n’ roll is now and forever king.” And given how many hits that Lynne has had, it’s hard to really argue with all the melodies that he has written.
Much has been made of some of his bigger hits like ‘Can’t Get It Out of My Head’ and ‘Mr Blue Sky’, but when you start digging into the deeper cuts on Face the Music or Out of the Blue, you start to put it together. Lynne was a song craftsman half the time he walked into the studio, and every single one of his tunes is further proof of the kind of genius that he was when arranging everything from the right guitar line to the greatest string section you’ve ever heard.
So while Walsh can play up the wild man all he wants every single time he greets the audience at an Eagles show, the fact that he could see what Lynne brought to the table speaks to the musician that he always was behind the scenes. Sure, he could be more than a little bit silly when the time called for it, but he was looking to see how people like Lynne could beautifully construct their musical masterpieces.
