Today Hotel California holds the impressive title of the seventh best
selling album of all time, however success does not always come
easy. Joe Walsh and producer Bill Szymczyk give their recollections
of the path to, and the making of this classic album.
Joe Walsh was born on 20 November
1947 in Wichita, Kansas. Walsh’s
mother was a classically trained pianist
and encouraged her son to play a
variety of musical instruments. Apart
from the guitar, Walsh also dabbled
with piano, clarinet, trombone and
oboe, before joining his first band,
the G-Clefs: ‘That was my high school
band. We had a drummer, a guitar
player and another guitar player. That
was the band, and we played all kinds
of parties and proms and bar mitzvahs,
whatever. I don’t know where the
others are these days – they were high
school friends.’
Next came the Nomads: ‘Actually,
the Nomads were pretty good. We had
Beatle jackets and black ties. I played
bass in that band and I had my little
bass amp with my twelve-inch speaker.
We did all kinds of English things and
Rolling Stones songs and all that. That
was it right to the end of high school.’
After that, Walsh attended Kent State
University in Ohio. Neil Young wrote the
song Ohio about an infamous incident
at Kent State, when in May 1970, troops
from the Ohio National Guard shot and
killed four students and wounded nine
others who were protesting about the
American invasion of Cambodia. Walsh
had attended the university some time
before that, of course.
At the university, he was a member
of a band called the Measles: ‘Yeah, The
Measles was the college band. I lasted
three semesters in college and decided
that was it. I happened to stay through
the summer playing downtown with
the Measles, and two things happened.
My girlfriend stopped talking to me
and for the first time I was on my own,
my parents weren’t supporting me
anymore. So there I was, at eighteen or
nineteen, just totally self-dependent and
made about twenty bucks a night and
all the beer you can drink. That lasted
for a couple of years – we just played
downtown all the time and that way I
got to know everybody in Kent.’ Which
was where he met Jim Fox, a drummer
and vocalist who was the leader of a band
known as The James Gang.
Walsh recalled, ‘There were all these
rival bands. The James Gang was really
the rival band in Cleveland, we were
down around Akron, and Joey Vitalewas in a rival band down in Canton.
You know, we really didn’t talk to each
other very much. I wasn’t friends with
Vitale for a long time because we used
to try to steal each other’s gigs and stuff.
But the Measles fell apart – one of the
guys decided to go in the army for some
reason, and the group just fell apart.
After a while, Jimmy asked me to join
The James Gang up in Cleveland, which
I d id.’
Bill Szymczyk, was working as a
house producer at ABC Records, and had
enjoyed some success working with the
great B.B. King. Szymczyk, who produced
B.B.’s first US Top 20 hit single, The
Thrill Is Gone, reflected, ‘All the time I
was doing those albums with B.B., I was
going out to Cleveland to see some friends
of mine who lived there, and I saw this
band out there, a three piece band that
sounded like a ten piece. I said “Boy, that
guitar player’s good”, and it was Joe Walsh
playing with The James Gang.’
Walsh: ‘I never played lead up till
then. I played rhythm, played organ on
Louie Louie and sang Don’t Let the Sun
Catch You Crying, that was my highlight
of the evening. The James Gang wentJoe Walsh on the Making of Hotel California