(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Thu 11 September 2025 19:30, UK
Before Joe Walsh settled into the Eagles, things were tough. Like with every musician trying to make it work, his story was much of the same – a talented man, looking for something that would stick.
Go to any famed guitarist’s Wikipedia page, and the tale is likely the same. Unless they were lucky enough to be an essential founding force in a group that went the distance, chances are there was some back and forth going on as they moved from band to band to band.
Before Ronnie Wood joined The Rolling Stones, his résumé was long. Even the likes of Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton played in lengthy lists of different groups, in varied forms and lineups. In the music world, players are traded like hot commodities, so it’s rare for one guitarist to have simply stayed in one place forever.
But while that’s common, it doesn’t make it any less settling. It’s not like in football, where players are traded or sold for higher bids. Instead, the changing over of bands usually came after a collapse. One group would break up, and, at least for a moment, the guitarist likely thinks that’s it, it’s all done.
That’s how it felt for Joe Walsh when he played a gig that he truly thought could be his fucking last. During his time in James Gang, the power trio formed by Tom Kriss, Jim Fox and Glenn Schwartz, who Walsh soon replaced, the guitarist recalled one gig that felt like a finale, even though his time there had just begun. And when something feels like a finale, there’s a level of fun you can have with the thrill of the end.
“We thought, ‘Oh well, this’ll be our last job,’” Walsh recalled as the band prepared to step onto stage at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit. Really, he had only just joined the band, was barely even an official member, when things were already crumbling. Somehow, the band had managed to lose two members: a keyboard player and another guitarist. Suddenly down to being an unexpected three-piece for their live show, rather than the extended five-piece they usually played in at gigs, they had to just wing it.
“It was a make-it-or-break-it night, and we were deadly scared. It was purely experimental on stage that night, three guys trying to get together what five guys normally did,” Walsh said as the band tried to make it work, but also mostly just improvised their way through the show. This was all going down as they were supporting Cream, so one can only really imagine the stress of the situation, and how that would be doubled by Eric Clapton’s eyes watching on.
But then, when it was over, a noise started building. Applause broke out, people got to their feet, and Walsh looked up, “We got an ovation.”
In a make-or-break situation, it was make for the James Gang, and after that night, Walsh was locked in as a committed member – at least for a while.
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