Joe Walsh
Ordinary Average Guy

THE REVIEW

Those were tough times for our hero at the beginning of the nineties, in the midst of a long stretch as a single following his third divorce. Parties, cocaine, alcohol, casual women; a wild, unhealthy, and overly indulgent lifestyle that, however, fundamentally failed to undermine his creative spark or subsequent clarity in performance.

This album (1991) holds its own against those that came before, except that without the drive and pull of the Eagles, his band dormant for about a decade, sales fell noticeably. He is still eager to show off his cheekier and livelier side, something you can tell right from the cover, whose title tries to reaffirm the modesty and normality of his persona.

The album’s eponymous song claims to describe his life as an ordinary succession of encounters with friends as boring as, or even more boring than, himself, all with the most normal wives and children. They get together to bowl, have a few beers, and on Saturdays take care of their gardens, picking up their dogs' poop and hoping it’s solid, ha ha (I swear I’m quoting the lyrics here, including the little laugh). And again, they tidy up the garage where they keep their cars, like his friend’s Chrysler or his own Dodge… and so on and so forth.

But Joe is anything but normal. Here is the text of the wildly quirky funky rock rap titled “Alphabetical Order”:

_A A! Triple A! (Triple A?) A! A! A! U can B 1! U can B 1 2! 2 B or not 2 B! C? ABC! REZ! ABC! R fun! A! Alphabetical order!

_Here we go! UFO on LSD! R2D2! C3P0! How 'bout ET? ABC! BBC! CBN! NBC! MTV! VH1! HBO! CNN! SCTV! SAT! Degree? BA! BN! BS! A! How about BAC? A! Alphabetical order!

_A! A! A! Alphabetical order! From A to Z! Alphabetical order! It’s E Z! EWI! MAED! BAR! A! ERA! PMS! IUD! VD! HIV! R U 1 2? R O! DNA! SnM! CLC! ILBT! X! Alphabetical order! From A to Z! Alphabetical Order! It’s EZ!

_A! CIA! KGB! FBI! IRN! TRW! IOU! CPA! SOS! A! 1 W not 2! W 3D! ORH! EIEIO! IOC! PS! NESTLES! ROLAIDS! RESPECT! MICKEY Y? Y? Because we like U! USA! A! Alphabetical order!

Well, that’s Walsh for you, a guy with some bad habits and a love of messing around, but so what—he still sounds great. Besides, once he straightens out his life he’ll probably stop making records, so let’s keep him as he is, inspired by the chaos he gets into, alone or together with all of us. In fact, the contrast between his boutade (also in “The Gamma Goocee” on similarly absurd tones) and the ecological, intense, dramatic “Look at Us Now” is total: “Take Care of the Planet…” Joe shouts to all the children, hoping they’ll at least think about it in a few years.

The best of the eleven is “You Might Need Somebody”: one of the strongest human needs, as stated in the title, described through an electric, enveloping, and musical blues ballad, seasoned with talk box and choral parts.

Nostalgic, then ironic, at times ecological, always frank, sometimes melancholic… The humanity of “a good man, though not too balanced” from the Kansas guitarist comes out in his music, aspect by aspect, making his high-level guitar playing and unique voice even more interesting. This record is another good piece of work, within the consistently high standard of a multi-faceted, long-running rocker who’s seen it all by now.