(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sat 24 January 2026 18:00, UK
In a world full of guitarists who take themselves too seriously, it pays to be someone like Joe Walsh.
He never claimed to be the most talented guitarist in the world, but whenever you saw him playing with the Eagles, he never ceased to be entertaining, whether that was acting like an absolute goofball onstage or playing circles around everyone else onstage when playing ‘Hotel California’. But when looking at the greatest guitarists of all time, Walsh is a bit more qualified to crown one of the greatest of all time than most.
When looking at his track record, Walsh has been the one hanging out with some of the kings of rock and roll guitar. Not everyone gets the chance to hang out with both Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend and give them guitars, and that came before he had even joined the Eagles. He was simply a great guy to hang around with, and if that wasn’t enough, the fact that he hung out with Jimi Hendrix is enough to put him in rock and roll Valhalla for the rest of his time on this Earth.
But there was a lot more than rock and roll that made Walsh fall in love with music. Before the likes of The Beatles and The Stones, Walsh was already listening to what Ray Charles could do and saw how much fun people could have when they were playing music together. You’d hardly hear that much R&B in the way he plays, but if there was one thing that he learned more than anything, it was the feeling that you put into every single tune.
No one was going to listen to someone who was going through the motions every single time they took the stage, so Walsh was practically a godsend to the Eagles. He was the one who actually seemed to be enjoying himself onstage while the rest of the band stood and sang those brilliant harmonies, but whereas they were the benchmark for country rock, The Allman Brothers Band brought a little something different from their next of the woods.
While the world has written about the Allmans as one of the greatest Southern rock bands of all time, Duane Allman never thought along those lines. He was as influenced by the greatest blues players like BB King as he was by Miles Davis, and when listening to the way they improvise, they were a lot closer to a fusion band that happened to have a bluesy singer with a Southern accent.
But beyond Gregg Allman’s voice, Walsh felt that no one could ever touch what Duane could do on slide guitar, saying, “Duane was it on slide. He’s really responsible for me learning how to play slide, and he’s the best that there’ll ever be. It’s incredible slide playing — the tone, his right-hand touch. He was ridiculously amazing.” That’s not to say that Walsh couldn’t follow in his footsteps every now and again.
Sure, not all of Eagles’ greatest songs demand a mile-long slide solo like the ones you’d find on At Fillmore East, but the few times that they broke out the slides made for the most tasteful playing Walsh ever did. ‘Pretty Maids All in a Row’ might be a vehicle for Walsh’s voice and the band’s vocals, but that slide solo is probably the closest that he ever came to making the guitar sound like a human voice the same way that Duane used to.
So while Hendrix might be considered the best in general, and people like Jeff Beck continued to innovate the guitar until the day he died, Duane’s playing was working off pure emotion half the time. He absorbed all the techniques that anyone ever needed, but when he picked up the guitar, he could usually let go of reality and let his soul do the talking over the course of a few minutes.
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