Walk away james gang how to#
Walk away james gang professional#

Townshend regarded Joe as “a fluid and intelligent player” with few peers. Permanently reconfigured as a trio, the James Gang quickly developed a huge following in the Midwest and landed a record deal, leading to a 1969 debut album, Yer’ Album, that became an FM radio staple and drew the ears of guitar aficionados like Pete Townshend-who personally invited Joe and the James Gang to join the Who on tour.

Walk away james gang how to#

Needing the money to pay for gas to get home, the James Gang took the stage as a trio, and Joe was forced to learn on the fly how to carry rhythm and lead duties while now singing lead simultaneously.

One night in May, 1968, on the way to Detroit for a show at the Grande Ballroom opening for Cream, half the band quit. Though Joe had played guitar in a high school cover band and a popular Kent bar band while in college, he really came into his own in 1968, when he joined the Cleveland-based James Gang.

Walk away james gang professional#

In 1965 Joe landed back in Ohio when he attended Kent State University, where his professional music career began in coffee shops and bars. When Joe was still young, he and his family moved to Ohio, Chicago, New York City, and then Montclair, New Jersey. His mother was an avid piano player who brought music into the family’s humble home before Joe was old enough to discover rock n’ roll on the radio. Joe Fidler Walsh was born in Wichita, Kansas, on November 20, 1947. Of course, that was even before Joe joined Eagles and made indelible contributions to the great American pop culture canon on such songs as “Hotel California” and “Life in the Fast Lane,” and, more recently, became an honorary member of the Foo Fighters. “I don’t listen to many records,” Clapton said, “but I listen to his.” Page talked of Joe’s “tremendous feel” for the guitar, adding, “I’ve loved his style since the early James Gang.” By then Joe’s fans already included guitar icons Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. When writer Cameron Crowe profiled Joe Walsh for Rolling Stone magazine in 1975, he wrote that Joe “stands surely among rock and roll’s finest guitarists.” And no wonder.