Joe Walsh Says the Eagles Were ‘Lucky’ to Break Up Before Their Relationships Were ‘Irreparably Damaged’
The release of the landmark ‘Hotel California’ album was a heady time for the Eagles, who were in a transitional phase, welcoming new guitarist Joe Walsh to their lineup.
While the album would sell a stupendous number of units (no doubt building new houses and swimming pools for all who were involved in the process), the success brought more than peaceful easy feelings for the group – it was flat out overwhelming to comprehend.
Walsh tells The Quietus in a new interview that with ‘Hotel California,’ “we achieved an amount of success we never dreamed of.” Dealing with that success would prove to be an almost insurmountable challenge for the Eagles to navigate.“It went way beyond being successful. It became a big thing and it became such a financial thing.”
He goes on to explain, “To the record company it was a whole corporate corridor whenever an Eagles album came out. We started playing for a lot of money and between touring and trying to deliver another record and wondering how we were ever going to top ‘Hotel California’ – knowing that we never really could – the emphasis kinda came off the music and that affected our creative output. It got going really fast and we started getting really tired and we started going crazy.
Eventually, the group would go their separate ways, because as Walsh explains, “we just plain had to stop because it stopped making sense. We were all in bad moods all the time. It just felt yucky.”
Despite what might have seemed like a messy disintegration when they put the group on hold, Walsh says that the reason they were able to eventually get back together, was because they stopped before relationships were irreparably damaged. He says that they were “lucky” that they stopped before they “destroyed all that.”
“We just plain couldn’t do it anymore and if we kept on pretending that we could then we wouldn’t have been able to get back together.”
‘Hotel California’’s spellbinding title track, which earned a high spot on our list of the Top 100 Classic Rock Songs, features the well known guitar interplay between Eagles guitarist Don Felder and Walsh.