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Mon 24 August 2026 19:48, UK
For most artists, picking just one song as a career favourite is a thankless task, but for Joe Walsh, there’s no debate.
Everyone has their different reasons for placing a certain song in pole position when looking back on their career. Typically, this might be due to artistic pride, the connection it made with the people en masse, and perhaps even the doors that it subsequently opened. For Walsh, all three of those played a role in his decision-making process.
As much as he’s been a vital part of the Eagles for 50 years, that is only part of his story. While he has contributed to the songwriting process, including on Hotel California, that was always left primarily to Don Henley and Glenn Frey. Therefore, it is unsurprising that his proudest songwriting moment pre-dates his tenure.
Walsh wasn’t plucked out of obscurity to join the Eagles. He’d been putting in the hard yards as a musician for a decade, which gave him the experience to take on replacing founding member Bernie Laudon. Admittedly, at first, it seemed like an unconventional choice to join the fold; those fears were quickly quelled when his first album with the band Hotel California arrived in 1976.
As a songwriter, he only contributed to two songs on the record, including the mega-hit ‘Life in the Fast Lane’. Nevertheless, while his role only continued to grow as the years passed, Walsh knew that it wasn’t his band. Naturally, on a personal level, it’ll never have equal meaning to Walsh as the song that truly launched him as an artist.
Before joining the Eagles in 1975, Walsh had already had some moderate success with the James Gang. This period acted as an apprenticeship for Walsh and was an invaluable chapter of his career. He got to see up close what it was like to be A-list when they supported The Who on a European tour, which also saw Keith Moon teach him how to be a rock star.
However, he still felt unfulfilled. In 1971, Walsh decided it was time for a new adventure. He left the James Gang and started as a solo artist with the help of his backing band, Barnstorm. The first album was a flop, making it seem like Walsh had made a grave error in quitting the James Gang. Then, the second album looked set for a similar trajectory and potentially being dropped by his label, until ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ changed everything for him.
Further reading: From The Vault
It was a major hit for Walsh, altering the trajectory of his career and making more people stand up to take notice of his talent. Following the failure of his first album, even Walsh was questioning if he’d backed the right horse. Then, he wrote ‘Rocky Mountain Way’, and everything fell into place. To this day, Walsh still believes it to be the best song he’s ever written.
He explained his circumstances, at the time of writing the classic track, to Howard Stern during an interview in 2012: “I was in Colorado, I had left the James Gang and was worried that I might have made a mistake because we were doing fine.”
On his departure, Walsh said he’d become “saturated with playing really loud and being a kick-ass guitar guy,” which made him want to start something new.
Just as the regret was taking over, out of nowhere, an epiphany came to him at the most unexpected time, recalling, “I’m mowing the lawn. I look up, and there’s the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, and there’s snow on them in the summer. And it knocked me back because it was just beautiful. And I thought, ‘Well, I have committed. I’m already in Colorado, and it’s too late to regret the James Gang. The Rocky Mountain way is better than the way I had because the music was better.’ I got the words. Bam!”
After the lyrics arrived in his mind, nothing else mattered. Walsh quickly raced into his home and forgot about mowing the lawn, which majorly damaged his next-door neighbour’s garden. It proved to be a small price to pay for producing a song that would pick him out of the gutter and put his career back on track.
At this crucial juncture, Walsh’s chips were down, and he’d begun to question every decision that landed him in this perilous position. However, everyone happens for a reason, and quitting the James Gang brought him to Colorado, which, in turn, led to the creation of ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ that marked a new artistic zenith for Walsh.
If he didn’t write ‘Rocky Mountain Way’, then perhaps the Eagles wouldn’t have eventually made the call for him to join, either. While we will never know that for certain, one thing is for sure: Walsh deciding to mow his lawn that day is the best decision he has ever made.
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