Joe Walsh
So What

LA RECENSIONE

The loss of his father, an aviation pilot, in a plane crash when he was only two years old undoubtedly left a lifelong mark on the blond Joe, and you can see it on the covers of several of his solo albums. On his first and previous record, there was a biplane depicted, and here instead, for his second solo effort (1974), our protagonist sports glasses and a scarf in the style of the Red Baron, with that half-melancholic, half-ironic look that perfectly defines his character.

This time, it’s a great album, truly consistent. The twenty-six-year-old guitarist is in top form, with musical and rhythmic ideas flowing abundantly. The album contains nine songs, with fillers kept to a minimum—just one or two at most. One could consider his personal “Pavanne” (with two Ns) as a sort of filler: an excerpt from Ravel’s sonata transformed into a divertissement with those new electronic gadgets ready to be experimented with in the studio—synthesizers (Joe studied piano in his youth, and his mother is a pianist).

This electronic/symphonic diversification, however, works well as an effective intro to the following hard rocker, “Time Out”, while a filler in the truest sense is definitely “All Night Laundry Mat Blues”, an inebriated minute of ramshackle, rough country blues.

On the other hand, you find great music right at the start of the album with the cheerful “Welcome to the Club”, a rock’n’roll track full of rhythmic twists that makes the most out of his usual four chords without ever falling into the generic. Walsh’s nasal, slightly raspy, charming, and unmistakable voice pushes the song forward with irony and grit; the strange yet creative drumming style of his old buddy Joe Vitale does the same.

“Falling Down” brings back the 12-string acoustic guitars and electrics processed through the Hendrix-esque Univibe for a nostalgically melodic country rock episode, elevated by a’ la Eagles harmonies from… Frey, Meisner, and Henley (who also wrote the lyrics)! It’s still a year and a half before Walsh joins the Eagles, and this is just the very first hint.

“Time Out” is hard rock in the quintessential Joe Walsh sense: intelligent, grand, lyrical, measured, and decisive… only a hair “softened” by the choices of his producer Bill Whatshisname (oh well: Bill Szymczyk, I’ll write it), a guy fond of mattresses and plaid always stuffed into the drum, not to mention napkins glued to the heads of toms and snares, and finally chorus everywhere—guitars, bass, and vocals: not ideal for rock, which gets stripped of a good part of its sweat this way.

“Help Me Through the Night” is another Eagles-style ballad, also because once again the voices surrounding Walsh are theirs, but the tour de force of the album is the nearly seven minutes of “Country Fair”, brimming with that characteristic lyricism and epicness that are noteworthy musical virtues of the album’s owner. The central interlude is a small masterpiece, with lead guitar breaks preceded by the absolving trails of their own reverb, thanks to the recorder tape played in reverse: a gem that instantly separates Joe from any superficial ‘just a rock guitarist’ label. Here there’s research, commitment, freshness, and a desire to explore new expressive paths.

The end of the record is sweetly, deeply bitter. “Song for Emma”, his little three-year-old daughter who died during these very recording sessions, in a car accident that also involved her mother (at the time, still no safety seats for children…). The piece, for voice, piano, orchestra, and choir (not a note of guitar), is perhaps a bit too grandiose, but a farewell to a daughter deserves respect, and this is what Walsh’s broken heart conceived at that moment.

Perhaps his best record, fighting for the top spot with “Bud Seriously… Folks!” from four years later. It reminds me of my bright green years, when I would listen to albums like this one until I was exhausted: I’ll never grow tired of it.