Joe Walsh: from the James Gang to Hotel California | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

JOE WALSH has written some of the best-known guitar riffs in rock, from Funk #49 with the James Gang to Rocky Mountain Way and Life in the Fast Lane.

He’s also the funny one. His biggest solo hit, Life’s Been Good, sends up the rock star life, and in 1980 he ran a joke campaign for president.

He has five Grammys, a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Eagles, and a veterans’ charity he started himself.

Early life and training

He was born on 20 November 1947 in Wichita, Kansas. His father, Robert Fidler, was a US Air Force pilot who died in 1949. Joe later took his stepfather’s surname, Walsh, and kept Fidler as his middle name.

In 1965 he went to Kent State University in Ohio, and he started playing in coffee shops and bars around the campus.

Career chapters

1. 1968Joins the James Gang
2. 1973Rocky Mountain Way
3. 1974So What
4. 1975Joins the Eagles
5. 1978Grammy for Record of the Year, Hotel California
6. 1998Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with the Eagles
7. 2017Founds VetsAid
8. 2026The Eagles at the Sphere

The James Gang 1968 to 1971

He joined the James Gang in 1968. When they were cut to a trio before a show in Detroit, Walsh took over as lead guitarist and singer. Funk #49 and Walk Away came out of those years, and his site says Rides Again and Thirds both went gold.

The James Gang supported the Who, and Pete Townshend, Who’s Who number 8 became a friend. “Pete’s a very melodic player, and so am I,” Walsh said in 1975.

Barnstorm and solo 1972 to 1975

The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, in 1973, gave him Rocky Mountain Way.

So What followed in December 1974 and went gold. It came after his daughter Emma died following a car crash in Boulder, Colorado, in April 1974. He has said the album came out of that grief and anger. Don Henley, Who’s Who number 21 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon), Glenn Frey, Who’s Who number 22 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) and Randy Meisner, Who’s Who number 9 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) sang backing vocals on two of its songs.

The Eagles 1975 to 1980

In December 1975 Walsh replaced Bernie Leadon, Who’s Who number 8 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) in the Eagles. His first album with them was Hotel California, and the title song won the Grammy for Record of the Year. On it he trades the closing guitar parts with Don Felder, Who’s Who number 12 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon). He also co-wrote the riff to Life in the Fast Lane.

The band split in 1980.

Back with the Eagles 1994 to 2026

The Eagles got back together in 1994, and he has been with them since. They went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and he added two more Grammys with them in 2008 and 2009.

On 24 January 2026 he missed an Eagles show at the Sphere in Las Vegas with what the band called a bad case of the flu. It was the first show he’d missed in more than 50 years.

Craft, sound and style

Pete Townshend, Who’s Who number 8 called him “a fluid and intelligent player”. Walsh gave Townshend, Who’s Who number 8 a Gretsch 6120 that ended up on Who’s Next.

Two 1959 Gibson Les Pauls

Around 1969 he had two 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standards. He kept the one he liked more and sold the other to Jimmy Page, Who’s Who number 32 for “about 1,200 bucks”, and it became Page’s Number One. Walsh had Virgil Lay of Lay’s Guitars in Akron, Ohio, shave down its fat neck, and he thinks that’s what Page liked about it. Page says he played it on Whole Lotta Love and What Is and What Should Never Be. With the Gretsch 6120 for Pete Townshend, Who’s Who number 8 went a Fender amp. Walsh calls it a Bandmaster and Far Out says a Bassman, so that one is open. From 1968 he was hot rodding amps and pickups. He’d take the pickup covers off and screw the poles down to get them as close to the strings as he could.

Another 1959 Gibson Les Paul, serial 9 1081, is in a Houston photo from November 1976. He sold it through a broker in 2003, for between $250,000 and $275,000, and got it back in April 2022.

Small amps and a Telecaster

He likes small amps. Funk #49 was an old blackface Fender Champ with a Telecaster. Rocky Mountain Way was chrome slide on a Les Paul in an open tuning, through a tweed Champ. On Hotel California, as best he remembers, he played a Telecaster and Don Felder, Who’s Who number 12 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon) a Les Paul. Their rule was one single coil guitar and one humbucker, because two Les Paul guitars blurred and two single coils sounded thin. The two worked out the harmonies together, then took their own solos. The Life in the Fast Lane riff started as a warm up exercise for his fingers.

The talk box

The first talk box he had was homemade. Bill West, the pedal steel player married to Dottie West, gave it to him at their home in Nashville, and Pete Drake had used it before him. Bob Heil recalls he and Walsh later built a louder one, and Walsh took a talk box on the 1972 Barnstorm tour. Heil went on to sell it as the Heil Talk Box. Which unit is on the Rocky Mountain Way record isn’t settled, as the magazines tell it differently. Walsh says he explained the talk box to Peter Frampton, Who’s Who number 11. Frampton’s account is that he first saw one when Pete Drake used it at Abbey Road in 1970, on George Harrison’s, Who’s Who number 44 All Things Must Pass sessions.

Slide in open E

Duane Allman showed him open E for slide and gave him his first slide, a glass Coricidin bottle. He practised for about a year before Rocky Mountain Way. Barnstorm drummer Joe Vitale remembers it as “When Duane died, Joe started playing slide”, and the two accounts fit. He uses glass for a sweet tone and a big metal slide to cut through alongside a second Les Paul guitar. He calls Pete Townshend, Who’s Who number 8 his “guru” for playing lead and rhythm together.

Stories people still tell

1. Walsh for president.

   In 1980 he ran a mock campaign for president, promising to make Life’s Been Good the national anthem. He was too young to serve anyway.

2. The Maserati.

   Life’s Been Good mentions a Maserati. Walsh says he really did own one, and that when he drove it flat out he “chickened out at 140”.

3. Ōtātara Pā.

   In 1989, touring New Zealand with the band Herbs, he had what he calls a spiritual awakening at Ōtātara Pā. “The spirit of this place talked to me,” he said. He went back to play there on 21 April 2024, and said he was 30 years sober.

4. Family ties.

   He’s married to Marjorie Bach, which makes Ringo Starr, Who’s Who number 5 in · Ultimate Beatles Reunion (story coming soon) his brother-in-law.

Legacy

In 2017 he set up VetsAid, a charity for American veterans, with a first concert that September in Fairfax, Virginia. The 2018 show filled the Tacoma Dome.

Kent State gave him an honorary doctorate in 2001.