(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sat 20 December 2025 18:27, UK
Rock and roll might well be rebellious, and it certainly has its share of dirt under the fingernails, but, for the most part, it is also insanely glamorous. It is a genre of music that reeks with intrusive showmanship and unstoppable glitz. But perhaps its overriding theme is that of sex.
Sex sells and so does rock and roll, making up two parts of the unholy triumvirate that so many rebels lived upon during their wilder years. It’s why some of the best bands and artists, as well as songs and albums, are completely dripping in the carnal act. But getting those kinds of sounds beyond a prissy record label is tough to pull off.
The record label is known by many as the lifesaver for bands starting out. If you’ve been in the industry long enough, they are also the destroyers of fun. From the minute that you sign that contract, it’s almost as if the executives in charge think they own every artist on their roster and will go to great lengths to try to make sure they do their bidding, no matter what. That means making everything fit in with family-friendly entertainment, but Joe Walsh found a way to sneak a filthy song past his higher-ups on ‘I.L.B.T’.
Granted, going against the grain has always been a key part of why rock and roll has worked so well. The minute that you tell a rock star that they are prohibited from doing whatever it is you don’t want them to do, that’s practically inviting them to do it even more. Boundaries are always enticing for artists who have spent their careers climbing over them.
For a band so entrenched in the quagmire of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, it is perhaps only fair that one Eagles member would find himself moving toward the tantalising prospect of a naughty song on an album. Walsh was always going to play by his own rules. Sure, he had the pedigree of being one of the craziest guitar players on the planet from the minute he started playing with James Gang, but that felt like just a warm-up compared to his solo career.
Once he finally got to fly, songs like ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ were closer to the kind of grizzly rock and roll tone he had always been chasing. Even when working in the Eagles, Walsh was the man known for bringing an edge back into the California rockers, sprinkling in licks from ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ between the ‘Desperado’ in the setlist.
When you reach that level of success, there comes the point where it seems like you can’t fail, and ‘I.L.B.T.’ saw Walsh test that theory. Outside of the meaty guitar tone he got on the record, how the hell were you going to make something called ‘I Love Big Tits’ on the radio?
Since this was Walsh, though, the record company decided to ship it out anyway, only to get pissed when they figured out what it meant. Once they called the guitarist up to complain, he couldn’t have cared less, telling Rolling Stone, “It came out and then they heard it, and they called up and said, ‘You can’t do that’. And I said, ‘Well, you shipped it three weeks ago. It’s a little late to just be listening to it for the first time!’”
Are we really expecting anything less from the same guy who made the tongue-in-cheek humour in ‘Life’s Been Good’? There had been a lot of different rock songs about sex, but something this blunt often toes the line between being offensive and almost too dumb to take all that seriously.
It is a joyful expression of one of the most human experiences we know. Not only did Walsh write a good song about sex, but he did so with the cheeky grin of a chimney sweeper from Victorian London.
It’s completely in Walsh’s nature to do something like this, too, so the fact that the label didn’t bother looking it over says more about them than it does about him. Looking back on it, this is the kind of non-PC stunt that just makes people look back at Walsh with that “Oh, you” expression.
Related Topics