Joe Walsh
Analog Man

This eleventh album in the career of the blonde veteran of rock guitar came out last year almost by surprise, as there were exactly twenty years between this and the previous "Songs For A Dying Planet". In between, there has been the continuation of the story with the Eagles (still ongoing) and, above all, the harsh and painful battle against the bottle and cocaine, two bad habits which, according to him, have played a primary inspirational and energetic role in his music. Taking care of himself apparently had the unpleasant side effect of almost completely nullifying his creativity. 

It seems then that Joe has overcome this last difficulty (professional, this time...) so much so that the main inspiration for "Analog Man" is punctually enunciating and describing the current, positive phase of his life filled with serenity, emotional fulfillment, new fatherhood, self-confidence, and in a few well-chosen people, acceptance of his own... advanced maturity (hence the title of the work and the lyrics of the opening eponymous song, as well).

Of course, the album sounds more or less like his previous ones: Walsh wants to let us know that he has stopped roaming the night through all the parties in Los Angeles and that proper sleep, the family environment, and renewed pleasure of watching a child grow have become part of his daily life. These are entirely new concepts in his lyrics, which maintain the usual quality of being sincere, simple, and brutally direct... meanwhile, the guitar in action is fortunately the same as always, penetrating and at the same time measured, like a true rocker who has always cared to do things with class, without overindulging in excessive technicism and soloing.

Since the days of the James Gang, his first successful band from the late sixties to seventies, the setlists of his albums have combined a few select, scorching rock blues with a whole array of funky digressions, romantic ballads with accompanying orchestra, acoustic interludes, and outright jovial antics (I remember in particular a remarkable "I Like Big Tits!" on an album from the eighties), always with that tendency not to take himself too seriously. This attitude generates sympathy and joy, but certainly has barred his entry into the collective imagination of many enthusiasts, those who need characters full of fire and torment, totally pervaded by their music, the message they need to propagate with it, the problems of the world, and the complexity of human interactions.

Joe deeply loves music and the guitar, but many other things too (he is an avid radio amateur, has also been an actor, ran for President of the United States...). His spectrum of interests has been wide, the time spent fooling around and cultivating fleeting friendships and relationships equally so, and thus the primary perception that the casual listener has of him is that of a light-hearted, superficial, and ordinary musician. This judgment is certainly aided by the tone of his voice, high-pitched and raspy, loaded with irony.

From the point of view of the insiders, however, he has never had any issues: for musicians and guitarists in particular, he is one of the greats in the world (according to the decisive and terse colleague Pete Townshend, Joe is "the greatest rock guitarist in the northern hemisphere!"), naturally excluding the ghetto of so-called shredders, i.e., the disciples and adorers of Petrucci/Vai/Malmsteen and company. This is with special regard to the slide technique, or more precisely bottleneck, since Walsh likes to slip the famous glass medicine bottle onto the middle finger of his left hand, similar to Duane Allman, Rory Gallagher, and Gary Rossington, to produce less metallic sounds by sliding it over the strings. A few notes at a time from this true master are enough to characterize the passage of a song, to create a cordial and penetrating riff, to harmonize a chord.

Joe Walsh has seen it all in his more than sixty years: the rejection of his natural parents (he was adopted, bears his stepfather's last name), a daughter who died in a car accident at just three years old (her name was Emma, there's a song with her name in the title and that mourns her, on an album from the seventies), chronic alcoholism, cocaine addiction, the absolute stress of having/wanting to play in an ambitious and arrogant band like the Eagles were in the past.

Now he's doing well, he's eager to let us know in his own way, which is by playing as beautifully as always, and with some (not many, one every now and then) great melodic, timbral, harmonic, guitaristic ideas. We'll take it.