Eagle Joe Walsh: “We Don’t Care About The Dollars”
(Originally published in the Aquarian Weekly 1981. Posted with permission.)
Joe Walsh is wearing an ace bandage around his right hand. He’s not injured. Far from it. His band, the Eagles, had just finished its second stop on a two-and-a-half-month tour at Giant Stadium in the Meadowlands where tens of thousands of rabid Eagles fans saw and heard him play his ass off. In fact, the last half of the Eagles two-hour+ set was more like the Joe Walsh Show.
He wears the bandage—get this—so he doesn’t have to shake the hands of everyone he’s forced to meet at a posh party in the band’s honor after the show in East Rutherford. It’s a short hop down Route #3 into the Lincoln Tunnel out to Manhattan. We’re drinking champagne and feeling no pain at the Windows of the World restaurant high atop the World Trade Center in New York City.
“Nobody in the Eagles is in it for the money at this point,” the Montclair, New Jersey, native tells me while we both look out the window at the impressive vista laid out before us. “There’s plenty of money, believe me. The thing we’re obsessed with, the thing important to us, for people in our position, as spokesmen for our generation, is to make valid music and a valid artistic statement. That’s much more important than the dollars and cents. We don’t care about the fucking dollars anymore.
“I mean, sure, I did at one point, but that’s part of maturing. There’s a time when you’re into the dollars because it means security. You’re hot for three or four years and then you’re not. And then what? The important thing now is that we say something.”
A short silence ensues while we both think about what he just said. Then he continues with no further prodding.
“The Eagles are a group that have a real chance to make a statement for their generation and I want to go on record as saying that we’re very concerned about this. Whatever that statement is—and it doesn’t have to be political—it’s just so our peers plus people who buy our records, can say, ‘hey, they really nailed it!’”
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If there’s one thing that can be said about Joe Walsh, it’s that he knows his position in the rock community and he takes it seriously. He knows thousands of kids will cling to his every word and take it as the gospel. That’s why he says later, when talking about graduating from Montclair High School and going to college, that “college was very good for me. People should go to college. I went to Kent State. I was there when those students got shot by the National Guard.* I knew those students. It has a lot to do with my view of things in general.”
Walsh had graduated Montclair High in ’65 and was, by his own admission, “not a terribly outstanding student by any means. “But it was a good time to grow up. It was a good time to be in high school. After ’68, it got a lot tougher. Everything got tougher after ’68. I think about the people in my graduating class. It was a good bunch of people. I’ve even located a few of them. Good people, man.”
“Did you ever get into any real trouble in high school?”
“No.”
“So you were cool all the way through?”
“Well, not really, I can’t honestly say that,” he answers, stifling a laugh, “but I was never got in any trouble. In those days, you either went to college or you went to Vietnam. I didn’t want to go to Vietnam. I wouldn’t have gone.”
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Walsh claims he had nothing but “good feelings” when he joined the Eagles. “I knew it would fit just fine,” he claims. “There was a little bit of frustration within the band at the time, I remember. They wanted to rock out, or at least have that avenue to pursue. And I wanted to be in a band with great singers. I’d say it worked out.” And with that, he smiles. “I mean, it wasn’t such a jump for me. I wanted to be in a real band. I had it with the solo thing. That could be very draining and boring after a while. I wanted a good band. It wasn’t scary. I knew what I was doing. And they knew they weren’t getting some guy on an ego trip. In fact, without naming names, that’s one of the things I was trying to get away from.”
There’s a school-of-thought that Walsh was the guy who took a somewhat wimpy L.A.-country-rock band and gave it balls. There may be some truth to that. Walsh responds, “hey, they were a damn good band before I joined. But if you wanna define it further by saying I gave them the balls they never had musically, yeah, I like that, I’ll humbly and respectfully agree.”
Then we both laugh. The champagne is kicking in. Walsh is obviously enjoying himself. In loosening up, he confides, “we get along, man, we get along real good. We have an agreement. I’m not going to tell the other Eagles what to play. If it’s my song, I’ll show it to them, but they’re going to play what they damn well please. There’s a mutual respect. We love each other, man. Most importantly, we want to play together and want to continue to play together for a very long time.
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“All I ever want to be is one-fifth of the Eagles.”
Small wonder. All seven of their albums have gone gold.
“Glenn [Frey] told me something once that really stuck with me,” Walsh says. “It was something I hadn’t thought about until he said it. It was about all the people like Janis and Jimi who died for rock’n’roll. He said, `it’s easy to die. It’s a lot harder to stay alive.’ I totally agree with that and think about it often. It’s so much easier just to fucking die. But to have to deal with things because you have to? Sometimes, that’s the hardest part.”
As for group chemistry, Walsh says, “There’s a minimum of ego. Nobody thinks they’re more important than anybody else. I might have some external projects, some solo stuff I’ll continue to do, but that has nothing to do with the strength of this band. In fact, Don Henley is the best goddamn singer I’ve ever had the privilege of playing guitar for. He’s a hell of a good drummer too.”
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The pre-Eagle Walsh once spearheaded The James Gang. Then the acoustic Barnstorm. But why the early James Gang ’72 split? Practically every bar band in the country played “Funk #49.” Walsh: “hey, it was logical. A band runs its course. You play music, you’re creative for a certain amount of time, and then you’re not. I wasn’t actually the leader of The James Gang. It’s nothing I can explain. It’s the same thing with the Eagles. I don’t know how long we’ll be together. Probably a very long time if the music stays good and everybody feels artistically and creatively valid. When you get to the point where you’re not valid anymore, you stop it. It should stop. Shouldn’t it?”
“But what if the bucks are too great?”
“We won’t be in that position.”
“Are you saying you guys are set for life?”
“If you wanna put me in a corner, then yes. I doubt we’ll ever have anything to worry about financially. None of us have to worry about future income.”
Post-Script
About a decade later, I was traveling with The Kentucky Headhunters down south where one of their tour stops was Farm Aid in Irving, Texas. Upon our entrance, a security person gave me my pass but instead of giving me a press pass, he mistakenly gave me an artist pass. I said nothing. This allowed me to go into the sacred Green Room where the artists congregate prior to going onstage. I sat between Willie Nelson and Neil Young when Willie offered me a hit off the biggest joint I’d ever seen. But my heart was beating so fast knowing I didn’t belong there and I fully expected to get kicked out at any minute so I sat there mute, and actually turned down a hit from Willie’s famous stash.
In walks Kinky Friedman, leader of The Texas Jewboys, whose song “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore” was one of my favorites. But before I could go up to him, in walks Joe Walsh, stoned to the gills. He promptly falls right into the food buffet. He’s wiping shrimps off his clothing when a guy sticks his head into the room and shouts, “JOE WALSH FIVE MINUTES!” I plainly hear John Mellencamp say, “this is gonna be a trainwreck.” We all watch Walsh get ready and exit for the stage. I tiptoe to the lip of the stage and watch Joe Walsh proceed to totally blow away the 70,000+ at Cowboy Stadium with some of the greatest live rock’n’roll I’d ever heard. Upon his return to the Green Room, I wanted to go up to him but he falls face-first into the plush sofa and is snoring within minutes.