Joe Walsh
You Can't Argue With a Sick Mind

LA RECENSIONE

The third solo album by Walsh is recorded live and includes only six songs, for a modest thirty-five minutes. As usual, its title proves to be curious and, on reflection, very wise: you can't argue with a sick mind, and this personally brings me back to the pernicious, unaware(?) narcissism of my first wife. I tend to think that Joe, too, is here referring to his current spouse, the second in the series, from whom he would in fact divorce a couple of years later.

It's the end of 1975, Walsh has decided to accept the Eagles' invitation as a replacement for the departed Bernie Leadon and is consequently about to change record labels as well. This (relatively) final effort, the partial chronicle of a concert in Los Angeles at the end of autumn, serves mainly to fulfill his contractual obligations with the old label.

It's a pity the album didn't come out as a double, or at least with a longer duration: for the record, along the way we miss numbers from the set performed that evening such as "Welcome to the Club" and "Mother Says", as well as covers of "Get Back" by the Beatles and "Gimme Some Lovin'" by the Spencer Davis Group. Probably, that night the performance of the aforementioned songs wasn't optimal, hence the choice of a brief album.

As for what actually is present on these grooves: the opener is "Walk Away", the old hit from his youthful James Gang days, followed by "Meadows", which dates back to his first solo album a couple of years earlier. From the same recording also comes the next, unmissable "Rocky Mountain Way".

The second side of the original LP, on the other hand, is entirely drawn from the previous album "So What," via the triptych formed by "Time Out", "Help Me Through the Night", and closing with the excellent "Turn to Stone", which would also appear on stage during his early days with the Eagles.

Some tracks are stretched out considerably to give even more room to the leader's elegant and sparkling guitar, always calibrated and never over the top. The new buddies from the Eagles make a guest appearance on backing vocals, but only on one song, that "Help Me Through the Night" which, after all, had already had the same help in the original studio version.

The record is rock, but always with its own sweetness—a quality that Walsh would never lose sight of, precisely the reason he was chosen to enter that important and talented group on the eve of its ultimate breakthrough. A tough and biting musician, but a moment later romantic and smooth: Joe Walsh.