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Joe Walsh--Music Appreciation
Born in New York and raised in Ohio, Walsh was inspired by the rock and roll of the '50s and the British Invasion of the early '60s. He played oboe, bass, and clarinet in high school, but didn't pick up the guitar seriously until college. Walsh attended Kent State University in Ohio for six years without ever graduating--something of a feat in itself. He was a devout eclectic, majoring in an odd conglomeration of courses--electronics, music theory and welding--and supplementing his conventional training with intensive, self-imposed extracurricular studies of Beatles songs. He knew them all and became a local legend by performing the dual-guitar harmony riff in "And Your Bird Can Sing" from the Revolver album on a single guitar. Actually, he didn't realize it wasn't one guitar and found a way to "make it work"--a typical Joe Walsh philosophy in music and in life. life. While attending classes as "the phantom student of Kent State," Walsh practiced guitar incessantly and assembled an impressive and colorful style melding the influences of The Beatles, James Burton (Rick Nelson's guitarist) , Jeff Beck, .Albert King, and Eric Clapton. He played around the Cleveland, Ohio, area with a semi-pro group, The Measles, before joining The James Gang in 1966. The James Gang was, originally a quintet that garnered a large Midwestern following while opening for many of the major rock acts of thee time. Then, with the band scheduled to open for Cream at the Grandview Ballroom in Detroit, two members suddenly quit, leaving just Walsh and rhythm section, Jim Fox (drums) and Tom Kriss (bass), to fend for themselves. JUST??? On that momentous night, The James Gang was reborn as the area's premier power trio, with Walsh as lead singer and lead guitarist. Walsh recalls valiantly going out that first night as a three-piece--giving it all he had and going crazy, come what may. It was the only way to get gas money back to Cleveland. As their notoriety grew, The James Gang secured a recording deal with ABC/Cunhill in 1968. The debut disc, Yer Album, was a rough and ready mix of covers (Yardbirds, Buffalo Springfield) and hard-driving Walsh originals. High points included "Take A Look Around," "Funk #48," and "Tuning: Part 1." During this period, Walsh's guitar playing was lauded by The Who's Pete Townshend, who claimed that Joe was his favorite player. This added considerably to The James Gang's reputation, and under Townshend's patronage the trio toured America as the warm-up act for The Who. The follow-up album, The James Gang Rides Again (1969) reached the Top 10 and was an ambitious and more evolved work featuring the smash hit "Funk #49 (no relation to #48). An early but durable Walsh song, it epitomized Walsh's trademark blend of rock, blues and r&b elements, delivered with his unmistakable, cutting tone of the era, coaxed from a Fender Telecaster sent through a Fender Vibrolux amp. The opening guitar solo break, is exemplary: a tight, two-bar phrase combining some of Walsh's most familiar guitar traits in capsule form. The main riff is a prim early example of Walsh's lead-rhythm style, and foreshadows his chord work on future funk-rock tracks like "Life in the Fast Lane." Here, he plays simple triads over a pedal tone (in the bass past) in a manner consistent with both the r&B of the '60s and the hard rock and metal music of the next two decades. The hammered A7 voicing is a staple of funk, should and modern blues, as are the percussive muted-string rhythm strums, while the hammered D/A to G/B pattern is a perennial fixture in rock. Tongue in cheek, Walsh now claims that if he had known he would have to play "Funk #49" for the rest of his life, we would never have written it. Walsh left The James Gang in 1971 to pursue a solo career and new musical tangents. moving to Colorado, he formed Barnstorm, a group with Kenny Passarelli (bass) and Joe Vitale (drums, who co-wrote "Pretty Maids All In A Row" with Walsh for Hotel California). The group's self-titled 1972 debut album found Walsh's hard-rock approach refined, with the addition of more involved guitar orchestration and vocal harmonies. 1973's The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get provided the group--billed as Joe Walsh & Barnstorm, by then a quartet with the addition of keyboardist Rocke Grace--with a monster hit single in "Rocky Mountain Way." "Rocky Mountain Way" is a landmark Joe Walsh track with all the right ingredients, an innovation in the genre complete with layered guitars, soaring slide guitar and a relatively obscure sound processor known as a talk box. The main riff, is a strutting, simple rhythm figure played by two guitars--uncluttered and irresistibly propulsive. Notice the modernization of the 5th to 6th blues/ rock and roll comping pattern and its shuffle feel, as well as the more contemporary elements like the throbbing, often palm-muted low E and slashing E chord strums on beat 4. Slide guitar, a Walsh specialty is heard prominently in the interludes and solos on "Rocky Mountain Way." Joe's slide work owes much to the pervasive influence of Duane Allman, a personal hero and slide mentor. Walsh usually resorts to a different guitar setup specifically for slide: i.e., extra-heavy strings and higher action. He plays with both metal and glass slides and favors open tunings such as the open E tuning (E B E G# B E, which Allman showed him personally) used in this case. The first slide solo (at 1:32) and fifth (1:43) bars of the solo--further evidence of Walsh's balance of rock improvisation and song consciousness. Walsh introduces the talk box in an interlude near the climax of the tune to add a new timbral element. An effect rarely heard on record (Link Wray of "Rumble" fame used one in the '50s, as did Pete Drake on "Forever"), the talk box came to Walsh by the way of Bill West, husband of country & western singer Dottie West. After its inclusion in "Rocky Mountain Way," it was assimilated into the rock mainstream--surfacing conspicuously on '70s records by Jeff Beck ("She's a Woman") and Peter Frampton ("Show Me the Way"), in the '80s by Bon Jovi ("Livin' On A Prayer"), and surviving into the '90s with Alice In Chains ("Man in The Box"). The talk-box lines in "Rocky Mountain Way" are stated first by Gtr. IV in a characteristic blues-rock, pentatonic-minor riff at 3:10. A few measures later (at 3:33), a second talk-box guitar enters, harmonizing the main part an octave higher. The two-part texture culminates In a semi-improvisational talk-box duet (at 3:40) t usher in the third and most animated slide solo at 4:05. During this same period, Walsh began to branch off into producing and session work, appearing on records by Randy Newman, Dan Fogelberg, Warren Zevon and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. A third solo album, So What (1975), and a live recording, You Can't Argue With a Sick Mind (1976), capture this phase of his career succinctly. Walsh joined the Eagles (replacing Bernie Leadon) in late 1975, just in time to participate in the making of Hotel California, the band's magnum opus and an all-time classic rock record. As an integral member rather than a sideman, Walsh added his aggressive but melodic hard-rock/blues style to the Eagles' already successful, vocal-heavy, country-pop amalgam. For the title track, Walsh was commissioned as an instrumental specialist to arrange, coordinate and perform the multiple guitar sections with primary composer/guitarist Don Felder. In the Hotel California album, Walsh also contributed original material ("Pretty Maids All in a Row." "Life in The Fast Lane"), played keyboards ("New Kid in Town," "Wasted Times," "The Last Resort") sang lead and harmony and added numerous slide and lead guitar touches. "Life in the Fast Lane," a Top 20 hit single from the record, captures the spirit and scope of his Eagles co-writing and lead guitar playing. The main riff, is definitive Walsh. Two guitars play the stylish figure in the intro at 0:09: Gtr. II harmonizing Gtr. It's melody an octave higher. Notice the interesting rhythmic device employed in the riff wherein the second pattern of the two-pattern theme is moved over one eighth note (shifted rhythm) when repeated in bars 3 and 4. This produces an element of rhythmic surpass and a funky, lopsided feel which is very effective in this simple pentatonic-minor riff context. Walsh's solo at 2:12 is a mini-masterpiece of guitar orchestration. Here, he juxtaposes two lead guitars (Gtr. I, standard-tuned, and Gtr. IV, an E-tuned slide) against a background of slide-guitar chords and straight rhythm guitar. Familiar aspects of the Walsh approach include the held bends in bar 1 and country/western swing-flavored chromaticism in bar 5 as well as the overall pentatonic-major modality. Joe Walsh stayed with the Eagles for their follow-up record, The Long Run (1979), another major success. He continued releasing solo albums, and scored high with 1978's But Seriously Folks featuring the self-mocking hit (#12 on the charts) "Life's Been Good"--arguably the most significant commentary on rock stardom made in the late '70s. He also continued working recording sessions into the '80s, gracing records by B.B. King, Steve Winwood, Stevie Nicks, Jon Entwistle, Rick Derringer, Rod Stewart, Richard Marx, and countless others. He ran for President of the U.S. in 1980, campaigning with the promise of "Free gasoline for everyone" and declaring that he never lied to the American public. After the formal dissolution of the Eagles in 1980, the next two decades found Walsh issuing a series of entertaining and musically satisfying records, including Thee Goes The Neighborhood (1981), Got Any Gum (1987), Songs For a Dying Planet (1993), as well as contributing to movie soundtracks like Warriors (1979 which yielded the hit "In The City", also heard on the Eagles' The Long Run), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Great Outdoors (1988), and a duet Walsh did with Lita Ford for the RoboCop TV series. A James Gang reunion took place in 1992 with the classic lineup of Joe Walsh, Jim Fox and Dale Peters (bass). And the Eagles with Walsh reformed in 1994 for their Hell Freezes Over record and tour, producing the popular MTV acoustic performance of "Hotel California" which as saturated the airwaves over the past year. his newest record, the two CD Look What I Did! anthology (1995), is a significant retrospective of this madcap's enduring and memorable career.
Wolf Marshall |