(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 21 November 2025 20:49, UK
Any record that Joe Walsh was ever involved in always felt like one big party.
As much as people loved the idea of him being the crazed guitar legend, though, there were bound to be a few times where he could break up the non-stop party with the occasional genius guitar hook or ballad that could leave everyone stopped in their tracks. But when he first got the call to work with Eagles, he knew that there was a chance for him to leave his mark in a much bigger way than before.
Compared to what he was doing as a solo artist, Walsh couldn’t have asked for a better gig than joining Eagles. They had all of the massive sales figures that he wished he could have had back in the day, and while the James Gang was a great band for their time, Walsh knew that he could leave his mark if he had the right people writing the songs behind him while he played the best solos he could think of.
But, really, Eagles needed him just as much. There had been far too many years of them looking like cheeky rock and roll stars absent-mindedly strumming away on their guitars every single night, and now that they had Walsh in the band, he got them to loosen up a lot more than they would have if they stayed the course with Bernie Leadon. And when Walsh entered the studio, he knew that the band was working with something a lot stronger.
So when Glenn Frey and Don Henley came up with the idea for Hotel California, the whole thing was almost too perfect. Here they were years gone from the Desperado debacle, and now that they had their wits about them and everyone was on the same page, they could finally make the kind of record that they felt could stand alongside the conceptual masterpieces coming out at the time.
And while Walsh was confident in the songs, he did end up chalking up some of the album’s success to divine intervention, saying, “We were in a really creative phase, and it just so happened that [producer] Bill Szymczyk pressed ‘RECORD’. Thank God.” But it’s not like the band were struggling to find the right sound when it came time to work on the final record. They were going after a specific sound, and they were going to make sure that they captured every single last piece of brilliance that they could.
Even by Walsh’s comical standards, though, he was also able to deliver the most stunning performances of his career on the record. No one was expecting anything as beautiful as ‘Pretty Maids All in a Row’ from him, but when the record started moving multiple units, people started to see the pure beauty in the deep cuts rather than focus on the fast lick on ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ or the Twilight Zone narrative on the title track.
But beyond being a great record, it stands more as a statement for what the band could be at their best. Henley saw nothing wrong with calling the album one of the many peaks of the band’s success, and when looking through a lot of their solo works, there aren’t too many times where any of them came within spitting distance of what they captured back in 1976.
God may have played a small factor in getting them to the top of the rock and roll world, but there’s no way to discount the brilliance they all had on their own. They were in it to become the greatest band that any fan had ever seen, and by the end of that tour, there was hardly anyone that didn’t want to sing along whenever their tunes came on the radio.
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