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Sun 2 August 2026 17:29, UK
Even before Joe Walsh joined the Eagles, he was considered by many as one of the best guitarists around.
Fusing a hard rock edge with a refreshingly funky predilection, his work in the James Gang and Barnstorm placed him firmly at the forefront of American rock in the early 1970s and saw him tour with The Who and even destroy hotel rooms with John Belushi.
Simply put, he was a star in his own right and had already broken through to the other side of fame when he joined the Los Angeles band in 1975.
It was a masterstroke when the Eagles hired Walsh to replace the departing Bernie Leadon. Not only was the guitar hero ready to step away from leading his own band and carrying the burden of writing its songs, but he also had the stature to fill Leadon’s shoes. As a former member of the Flying Burrito Brothers, Leadon had arrived with more success than any of the other Eagles before the band formed. If they needed any more reassurance, the chemistry was already there. Barnstorm’s 1974 album So What featured Eagles members Glenn Frey, Don Henley and Randy Meisner, giving everyone a glimpse of how well they worked together.
When Walsh joined, he was the final part of the puzzle in many ways. Allowing songwriter and vocalist Frey to concentrate on rhythm guitar also meant the group could stick to having a twin-lead six-string assault, with it quickly becoming apparent that Walsh was the perfect foil for Don Felder. The band’s first album featuring Walsh was 1976’s Hotel California, a record drenched in the melodic push and pull between the worlds of fire and ice that Walsh and Felder represent, to the extent that Henley would later describe their convergence as “Duane Allman and Eric Clapton” combined.
While Walsh is widely hailed as the man who qualified the Eagles to take the step up and become a truly legendary band, with Hotel California one of the best-selling albums of all time, he has always been one of the more unassuming figures of his stature. He’s even maintained that playing the title track, which features the two minutes 12 seconds-long solo, in which he and Felder weave between each other, is “still a challenge” to play, a surprising comment considering how many times he’s played it, and just how lauded he is on the fretboard. It shows that even the highly mythologised greats are still human, no matter how many storied musical moments they lay down in the studio.
Speaking to The Telegraph in 2013, Walsh said that he has never grown tired of playing the guitar solo in ‘Hotel California’, despite doing it literally thousands of times. He then revealed: “It’s still a challenge. I really have to pay attention. I mean, I can play it crappy. But I like to play it good.”
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A good conversation should never be rushed, and that’s perhaps why the song’s finale remains so difficult to master. While most guitarists can practice running up and down the fretboard at speed, this track is meant to be a dialogue between Felder and Walsh’s instruments. It relies on the back and forth of two players working together.
That also explains why Walsh insists he still has to concentrate every time he plays it. Remembering the notes is the easy part. It’s the phrasing, the feel and the emotion behind every line that present the real challenge. The track is a tightrope that demands perfect balance, and one wrong step can send one of the world’s most beloved songs tumbling.
Looking back on that fast time when the band was more immersed in the artistic flow state than they would ever be, Walsh explained that he and Felder had an empty slate after the singing had been captured, and they could do what they wanted. The pair agreed that they would make individual statements in the song’s body and then come together as one at the end.
This made it all the more unusual because, as lead guitarists, they were used to pushing each other, each determined to outdo the other. Yet, for the closing section of ‘Hotel California’, they played as one. It’s no surprise the song continues to resonate more than almost any other in the Eagles’ catalogue, capturing the spirit of the era in which it was made. It was one of those rare moments when everything clicked, so it’s hardly surprising Walsh still finds it such a challenge to recreate. Moments like that, when everything falls perfectly into place, don’t come around very often.
Joe Walsh’s thoughts on the Eagles album Hotel California
Given that Hotel California was the moment that changed the Eagles’ career forever, and saw the band refine their classic soft rock sound to a degree that it sharply pierced the mainstream, Walsh is a big fan of the LP.
Yet, others in his position might not have been so democratic, given that, despite his renowned and instrumental impact on its success, he only has a handful of songwriting credits on it. Remarkably, he didn’t even receive a credit for his key role in the title track, which is astounding when listening to the supreme dovetailing between him and Felder during the climax.
Walsh is no fool, though, and he knows that ‘Hotel California’ was an artistic high point that the band would never replicate. In one interview, he admitted that the success of Hotel California was beyond any of the band members’ “wildest dreams”.
He said, “I think having been a part of the making of Hotel California and then having it succeed beyond any of our wildest dreams, that was truly a high point.”
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