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Sun 25 January 2026 19:00, UK
In a band as self-serious as the Eagles, you almost need Joe Walsh to help liven things up every now and again.
Don Henley and Glenn Frey may have written some fantastic songs together, but since they seemed to take every single breath they breathed a little too seriously, hearing someone like Walsh break up the monotony with his goofy mood helped bring a lot more levity to every one of their shows. He was the resident rock and roller every single time they played, but even he could recognise when he heard one of the greatest songs of all time coming to life out of the speakers.
Because for as goofy as Walsh was able to appear, a lot of it was to disguise a lot of his own personal hangups. He was intimidated by how well Frey and Henley wrote, and while he was no slouch, either, a song like ‘Pretty Maids All in Row’ was him trying to see if he could sprinkle a tiny bit of magic over the band. He knew he could never write anything as good as his bandmates, so the next best thing was for them to lend their voices to his tunes.
Granted, a lot of the sophomoric attitude behind a lot of Walsh’s tracks is the reason why he is one of the greats. He was always a straight shooter whenever he played one of his tracks, and while that didn’t always lead to Bob Dylan-esque lyrics or anything, it did have a certain charm missing from everyone else’s tunes. None of them really had a ‘Life’s Been Good’ in them, and yet Walsh made that song one of the greatest in the rock and roll canon.
But Walsh didn’t take his position for granted. Even before he joined the Eagles, his charm was what won him a front-row seat to some of the greatest guitarists in the world. Pete Townshend had been gifted a guitar by Walsh that defined the sound of Who’s Next, and the James Gang actually got to jam with Jimi Hendrix when he was touring, but if he hadn’t struck up a friendship with Jimmy Page, rock and roll would have been very different.
Page was already looking to make the greatest rock and roll imaginable in Led Zeppelin, but by the time Walsh was making the rounds across America, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ seemed to stop time the minute it came out. The guitarist had been working to create a masterpiece, and over eight minutes of music, they created a song that felt like an entire musical journey by the time it ended.
From the blistering solo to the moody sections in the beginning with John Paul Jones’s recorders, Walsh knew he was listening to one of the best rock songs he had ever heard, 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.” Even if Page wasn’t sporting his classic Les Paul, it didn’t seem to matter all that much.
The band had proven that a great song could transcend every other formulaic pop tune on the radio, and while most of their songs weren’t released as singles, seeing it become iconic did plant an idea in Henley’s brain when Eagles drafted in Walsh. They had already taken on concepts before, but it’s hard to imagine a song like ‘Hotel California’ existing without ‘Stairway to Heaven’, especially with the same episodic structure and Walsh getting his own iconic solo to put on his resume.
But even if Walsh has solidified a place in rock history alongside Zeppelin, there’s no replacing a song like ‘Stairway’ after someone’s heard it for the first time. There are many long songs in the history of rock and roll, but even from the first acoustic guitar notes, this is the kind of tune that grabs you by the throat and never lets go for a second.
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