Credit: Far Out / Eagles / dana wullenwaber
November 11th, 2026 · 6:30pm GMT
Joe Walsh didn’t ever need permission to have a good time whenever he strapped on his guitar.
Being one of the best guitar players in the world came naturally to him when he started performing, and there’s a good chance that hanging out with people like Pete Townshend and getting to jam with Jimi Hendrix didn’t really hurt his chances, either. But when looking at the grand scheme of rock and roll, there were heights that Walsh was certain that he would never be able to reach properly.
He had spent some of the biggest years of his career just trying to follow in the footsteps of his guitar heroes, but he also realised that it wasn’t always about the flash every time you played. His Beatles fandom taught him long ago that all he needed to worry about was the quality of the song, and when you look at what he was working on right out of the gate in The James Gang, he was still trying to find that one magical hook that put him in the same conversation as his idols.
While there were much more lucrative hits to be had when he eventually joined Eagles, part of the reason why he was welcomed in wasn’t always about him being a balladeer. Don Henley and Glenn Frey needed a bit more muscle behind all of their songs, and it usually helped to have someone like Walsh who could dig into a song like ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ whenever they played live or showed everyone what he could do with a slide guitar on any number of their best tunes.
But one of Walsh’s secret abilities was to be a guitar whiz for some of the greatest musicians in the world. Even though he was all too happy to just be the one in the back playing the massive solos, he was more than generous with a number of his guitars, and more often than not, some of his instruments would become legendary once they were put into another set of hands throughout the 1970s.
Pete Townshend had borrowed a guitar from Walsh that would become one of the biggest instruments of his career when working on Who’s Next, and when Walsh gifted Jimmy Page one of his guitars, it was a match made in heaven. Page was already trying out different ideas on multiple guitars, but even if he put his signature Les Paul down for a Fender Telecaster for the solo in ‘Stairway to Heaven’, Walsh couldn’t argue with what he heard when it came on the radio.
So many people would have been too intimidated to write such a daunting number, but Walsh felt that Page’s guitar work on the tune is still one of the greatest moments for the instrument as a whole, saying, “Jimmy Page’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ solo is amazing. That’s classic Page. He is unique; he just comes from a different part of the cosmos. That whole song is his finest moment, and it’s one of the finest things ever in rock and roll.”
Further reading: From The Vault
And while Walsh could try his best to learn the solo note-for-note if he wanted to, Page did actually throw in a couple of techniques that weren’t that out of place for what Walsh was already doing. The song is still one of the most iconic performances that he ever gave, but even if you can hear Page’s blues influences and lyrical way of playing throughout the piece, that little flourish at the end isn’t actually all that dissimilar from what Walsh had been playing all throughout his career.
But that’s part of the beauty when it comes to some of the finest rock and roll players of all time. There are a million different ways to play the guitar, but when you land on the right song, any guitarist can start speaking the same language when they all start adding their own sonic spice to the mix.
ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE 
The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter
All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.