DaveWadding
08-13-2006, 09:46 AM
wrote multiple classic rock staples, was a key part of one of the top 5 greatest bands of the 1970s, ran for President, beat a 30 year alcohol and coke addiction, and chainsawed down hotel rooms from coast to coast...and Rolling Stone finally gives him some press.
Ladies and Gentlemen, MISTER JOE FUCKING WALSH. (Free Gas for Everyone!)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/11122371/joe_walsh_rides_again/
Joe Walsh Rides Again
He's trashed hotel rooms with Keith Moon, had a love affair with a chain saw and was drunk for thirty years, but against all odds he survived. Now one of rock's most under-rated guitarists is ready to hit the road with his original band
ERIK HEDEGAARD
Maybe you don't have any idea who Joe Walsh is, or maybe you only know him as the guitarist in the Eagles, turning in stellar hot-stuff licks on "Hotel California." Or maybe the name rings a bell as the guy behind two of the most beloved rock songs of the 1970s, "Rocky Mountain Way" and "Life's Been Good," that cheerfully deadpan paean to the overfed life of a rock star. Or maybe, more recently, you've seen him looking awkward but happy on a few episodes of Drew Carey's improv comedy show. Or maybe, if you're lucky, you already know Walsh all the way back to 1969 and his place in the James Gang, the first American power trio to make it big. Walsh's guitar was a ripping, tearing, scratching thing on "Funk #49," delicate and brutal on "Walk Away," soaring whenever he slipped a finger into a Coricidin-bottle slide. He was a favorite of guitar heroes like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend (who once said, "I don't want to sound ridiculous, but [Walsh] is one of the guys I go nuts-rapturous about"). And yet, strangely, and improbably, Walsh has never reaped the rewards that by all rights should naturally accrue to a guitarist such as him. In 2003, for instance, did this magazine award him a position among the "top 100 rock & roll guitarists of all time"? It did not. And Walsh looked to see, scanning for his name and sighing at the exclusion. But, really, he doesn't care much. He knows he's lucky just to have survived his years on the road, which were often accompanied by a chain saw and sweetened by booze and more than a little coke. His attitude about rock stardom has always been pretty much the same: ambivalent, hesitant, suspicious, averse, wavering and reluctant. In fact, he may be the most reluctant rock star ever. But he's always loved to play in front of a crowd and still does. He just finished touring Europe with the Eagles (the band is reportedly working on a new album) and is now about to hit the road again, with the James Gang reunited. He's fifty-nine. It's the first time the James Gang have toured since he abandoned the band in 1971, and it should be great fun to see, because Walsh front and center in the James Gang is a whole bunch different than team-member Walsh in the Eagles. You get to see him undiluted, playing both rhythm and lead guitar and shouting as much as singing. Does he still have it in him?
"I'm terrified," he says, "but, yeah, I still can play that way. I mean, the James Gang used to be 'somebody counts off, and when everything's broken, we're done.' But it is scary. So we'll see."
For Walsh, much will be different this time around, of course. He's married, has kids and won't be consorting with groupies, should any James Gang groupies even remain extant. Lines of coke and tumblers of booze -- he'll be having none of that; they nearly cost him everything. Jumping off the risers -- falling, more likely. But Jimmy Fox will still be on drums and Dale Peters on bass, and at the end of the tour, after spending countless hours with Walsh, they'll undoubtedly say to themselves what they've always said about him: Who is that guy? Because while Walsh is good-natured and easygoing, nobody seems to really know who he is. Mostly he slides along in silence or behind a grin. Says Peters, "He's very funny, and his guitar playing is insane. But he's very hard to get to know."
And that, it seems, is the way he has always wanted it to be.
Walsh has a smoking-hot daughter, Lucy, 22, blond, from the second of his three marriages. She's a musician too, and played keyboards in Ashlee Simpson's band before getting a solo deal with Island Def Jam. She's also in the midst of filming an MTV reality-show pilot focusing on her career and her sometimes rocky relationship with her dad. Walsh explains: "She's got a famous dad who was drunk until she was twelve, and since then we've had to get to know each other, kinda, so MTV thought there might be an angle. It's a big pain in the ass, but I can't say no. She's my daughter."
These days, Lucy and the crew are showing up daily at Walsh's California ranch-style stucco pad, on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Typically, she wears tight-fitting T-shirts that accentuate her figure, while he wears much baggier T-shirts, shorts, blindingly white K-Swiss sneakers and calf-high white socks. Actually, Walsh has two homes, the one here and another in San Diego, where his current wife and two boys, ages ten and seven, primarily live. This is a place no wife would put up with, mainly because it's filled with a vast assortment of dusty old tube-style ham-radio gear, Walsh's obsession. Most of it he's bought off eBay. A few years ago, while touring with the Eagles, Walsh was faced with the choice of going onstage with the rest of the band to play before 20,000 fans or staying in front of his PC to place a last-minute bid on eBay; he chose to make the band and the crowd wait. This says less about Walsh's priorities, however, than about how his past tends to reverberate into the present.
"I was living in Columbus, Ohio, in 1958 and quite happy there with vacant lots and BB guns," he says one afternoon. "But around fifth grade, my parents and I moved to New York City in the summer, with nothing for me to do, and I'm freaking out. On the roof of my building, though, I found a wire leading down to the first floor. I knocked on the apartment and told the guy I wanted to know what it was, since it was the most exciting thing I'd seen since leaving Columbus. It was an antenna. He invited me in, and I saw him talk to people around the world on his radio. Soon I became an operator. His name was Jim Walden, and he saved my life."
Walsh's current collection consists of an old Collins KW-1 transmitter; a Hallicrafters model HT-32; a Multi-Elmac AF-67 exciter; a copy of Basic Electronics Theory With Projects and Experiments, fourth ed.; an old Racal RA6790/GM; an old National high-frequency receiver; and an old coil set, "type C." And that's not a fraction of it.
"I mean, there was a whole long period of being an alcoholic, when I didn't pursue any hobby other than vodka. I like to say I only got drunk once -- for thirty years. It was a good run. But that's a whole other story. This is my hobby. I'm a ham-radio operator. And I finally got all those radios I dreamed of since I was twelve, every last one of them."....
>> Get the full article in the current Rolling Stone, on newsstands until August 24th, 2006. (That'd be the one with Christina Aguilera on the cover)
Classic Walsh
Six reasons why he should have made our Top 100 Guitarists list
DAVID FRICKE
Play all the classic Joe Walsh tracks (javascript:void(0);)
James Gang "Take a Look Around" (javascript:void(0);)
(Yer' Album, 1969)
The James Gang's debut album was heavy on covers (the Yardbirds, Buffalo Springfield) and psychedelic effects. But this trippy Walsh song, wrapped in brooding acid-gospel organ, was an early triumph, rich in melodic hooks and soaring guitar soaked in echo.
James Gang "Funk #49" (javascript:void(0);)
(Rides Again, 1970)
Like "Funk #48," its predecessor on Yer' Album, this punchy James Gang hit started out as a warm-up riff at sound checks. Walsh's intro may be his best five seconds of guitar on record: heavy-Cream R&B with bent-string bite.
James Gang "Walk Away" (javascript:void(0);)
(Thirds, 1971)
Walsh may have been writing about himself. He quit the James Gang soon after this single stopped shy of Billboard's top fifty. The record - a compact mix of overdubbed-guitar crunch, bright harmonies and love-gone-sour poignancy - deserved better.
Joe Walsh "Turn to Stone" (javascript:void(0);)
(Barnstorm, 1972)
Walsh was more spaced cowboy than guitar hero on his solo debut, setting his country-flavored writing in luscious pop textures - except on this heavy-blues blowout, where he piles on the riffs and fuzz like a one-man Mountain.
Joe Walsh "Rocky Mountain Way" (javascript:void(0);)
(The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, 1973)
Walsh's vocal is way back in the mix, like he's already up where the air is rare. But his guitars are the real stars: the beefy main riff, his sinewy slide runs and that voice-box effect in the solo, a gimmick Peter Frampton soon took to the bank.
The Eagles "In The City"
(The Long Run, 1979)
Walsh's guitar work was a highlight of the Eagles' Hotel California - and the saving grace of its woe-is-me follow-up. Co-written by Walsh, "In the City" sounds like an outtake from one of his solo records, with its power-chord hook and arching slide guitar. Which makes it one of the best things on the album.
Ladies and Gentlemen, MISTER JOE FUCKING WALSH. (Free Gas for Everyone!)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/11122371/joe_walsh_rides_again/
Joe Walsh Rides Again
He's trashed hotel rooms with Keith Moon, had a love affair with a chain saw and was drunk for thirty years, but against all odds he survived. Now one of rock's most under-rated guitarists is ready to hit the road with his original band
ERIK HEDEGAARD
Maybe you don't have any idea who Joe Walsh is, or maybe you only know him as the guitarist in the Eagles, turning in stellar hot-stuff licks on "Hotel California." Or maybe the name rings a bell as the guy behind two of the most beloved rock songs of the 1970s, "Rocky Mountain Way" and "Life's Been Good," that cheerfully deadpan paean to the overfed life of a rock star. Or maybe, more recently, you've seen him looking awkward but happy on a few episodes of Drew Carey's improv comedy show. Or maybe, if you're lucky, you already know Walsh all the way back to 1969 and his place in the James Gang, the first American power trio to make it big. Walsh's guitar was a ripping, tearing, scratching thing on "Funk #49," delicate and brutal on "Walk Away," soaring whenever he slipped a finger into a Coricidin-bottle slide. He was a favorite of guitar heroes like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend (who once said, "I don't want to sound ridiculous, but [Walsh] is one of the guys I go nuts-rapturous about"). And yet, strangely, and improbably, Walsh has never reaped the rewards that by all rights should naturally accrue to a guitarist such as him. In 2003, for instance, did this magazine award him a position among the "top 100 rock & roll guitarists of all time"? It did not. And Walsh looked to see, scanning for his name and sighing at the exclusion. But, really, he doesn't care much. He knows he's lucky just to have survived his years on the road, which were often accompanied by a chain saw and sweetened by booze and more than a little coke. His attitude about rock stardom has always been pretty much the same: ambivalent, hesitant, suspicious, averse, wavering and reluctant. In fact, he may be the most reluctant rock star ever. But he's always loved to play in front of a crowd and still does. He just finished touring Europe with the Eagles (the band is reportedly working on a new album) and is now about to hit the road again, with the James Gang reunited. He's fifty-nine. It's the first time the James Gang have toured since he abandoned the band in 1971, and it should be great fun to see, because Walsh front and center in the James Gang is a whole bunch different than team-member Walsh in the Eagles. You get to see him undiluted, playing both rhythm and lead guitar and shouting as much as singing. Does he still have it in him?
"I'm terrified," he says, "but, yeah, I still can play that way. I mean, the James Gang used to be 'somebody counts off, and when everything's broken, we're done.' But it is scary. So we'll see."
For Walsh, much will be different this time around, of course. He's married, has kids and won't be consorting with groupies, should any James Gang groupies even remain extant. Lines of coke and tumblers of booze -- he'll be having none of that; they nearly cost him everything. Jumping off the risers -- falling, more likely. But Jimmy Fox will still be on drums and Dale Peters on bass, and at the end of the tour, after spending countless hours with Walsh, they'll undoubtedly say to themselves what they've always said about him: Who is that guy? Because while Walsh is good-natured and easygoing, nobody seems to really know who he is. Mostly he slides along in silence or behind a grin. Says Peters, "He's very funny, and his guitar playing is insane. But he's very hard to get to know."
And that, it seems, is the way he has always wanted it to be.
Walsh has a smoking-hot daughter, Lucy, 22, blond, from the second of his three marriages. She's a musician too, and played keyboards in Ashlee Simpson's band before getting a solo deal with Island Def Jam. She's also in the midst of filming an MTV reality-show pilot focusing on her career and her sometimes rocky relationship with her dad. Walsh explains: "She's got a famous dad who was drunk until she was twelve, and since then we've had to get to know each other, kinda, so MTV thought there might be an angle. It's a big pain in the ass, but I can't say no. She's my daughter."
These days, Lucy and the crew are showing up daily at Walsh's California ranch-style stucco pad, on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Typically, she wears tight-fitting T-shirts that accentuate her figure, while he wears much baggier T-shirts, shorts, blindingly white K-Swiss sneakers and calf-high white socks. Actually, Walsh has two homes, the one here and another in San Diego, where his current wife and two boys, ages ten and seven, primarily live. This is a place no wife would put up with, mainly because it's filled with a vast assortment of dusty old tube-style ham-radio gear, Walsh's obsession. Most of it he's bought off eBay. A few years ago, while touring with the Eagles, Walsh was faced with the choice of going onstage with the rest of the band to play before 20,000 fans or staying in front of his PC to place a last-minute bid on eBay; he chose to make the band and the crowd wait. This says less about Walsh's priorities, however, than about how his past tends to reverberate into the present.
"I was living in Columbus, Ohio, in 1958 and quite happy there with vacant lots and BB guns," he says one afternoon. "But around fifth grade, my parents and I moved to New York City in the summer, with nothing for me to do, and I'm freaking out. On the roof of my building, though, I found a wire leading down to the first floor. I knocked on the apartment and told the guy I wanted to know what it was, since it was the most exciting thing I'd seen since leaving Columbus. It was an antenna. He invited me in, and I saw him talk to people around the world on his radio. Soon I became an operator. His name was Jim Walden, and he saved my life."
Walsh's current collection consists of an old Collins KW-1 transmitter; a Hallicrafters model HT-32; a Multi-Elmac AF-67 exciter; a copy of Basic Electronics Theory With Projects and Experiments, fourth ed.; an old Racal RA6790/GM; an old National high-frequency receiver; and an old coil set, "type C." And that's not a fraction of it.
"I mean, there was a whole long period of being an alcoholic, when I didn't pursue any hobby other than vodka. I like to say I only got drunk once -- for thirty years. It was a good run. But that's a whole other story. This is my hobby. I'm a ham-radio operator. And I finally got all those radios I dreamed of since I was twelve, every last one of them."....
>> Get the full article in the current Rolling Stone, on newsstands until August 24th, 2006. (That'd be the one with Christina Aguilera on the cover)
Classic Walsh
Six reasons why he should have made our Top 100 Guitarists list
DAVID FRICKE
Play all the classic Joe Walsh tracks (javascript:void(0);)
James Gang "Take a Look Around" (javascript:void(0);)
(Yer' Album, 1969)
The James Gang's debut album was heavy on covers (the Yardbirds, Buffalo Springfield) and psychedelic effects. But this trippy Walsh song, wrapped in brooding acid-gospel organ, was an early triumph, rich in melodic hooks and soaring guitar soaked in echo.
James Gang "Funk #49" (javascript:void(0);)
(Rides Again, 1970)
Like "Funk #48," its predecessor on Yer' Album, this punchy James Gang hit started out as a warm-up riff at sound checks. Walsh's intro may be his best five seconds of guitar on record: heavy-Cream R&B with bent-string bite.
James Gang "Walk Away" (javascript:void(0);)
(Thirds, 1971)
Walsh may have been writing about himself. He quit the James Gang soon after this single stopped shy of Billboard's top fifty. The record - a compact mix of overdubbed-guitar crunch, bright harmonies and love-gone-sour poignancy - deserved better.
Joe Walsh "Turn to Stone" (javascript:void(0);)
(Barnstorm, 1972)
Walsh was more spaced cowboy than guitar hero on his solo debut, setting his country-flavored writing in luscious pop textures - except on this heavy-blues blowout, where he piles on the riffs and fuzz like a one-man Mountain.
Joe Walsh "Rocky Mountain Way" (javascript:void(0);)
(The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, 1973)
Walsh's vocal is way back in the mix, like he's already up where the air is rare. But his guitars are the real stars: the beefy main riff, his sinewy slide runs and that voice-box effect in the solo, a gimmick Peter Frampton soon took to the bank.
The Eagles "In The City"
(The Long Run, 1979)
Walsh's guitar work was a highlight of the Eagles' Hotel California - and the saving grace of its woe-is-me follow-up. Co-written by Walsh, "In the City" sounds like an outtake from one of his solo records, with its power-chord hook and arching slide guitar. Which makes it one of the best things on the album.