“When I was about a 13- or 14-year-old kid in my room in Oklahoma trying to learn how to play the guitar, this song right here was one of the first songs I ever learned by the great Joe Walsh,” Vince Gill once said of the Eagles guitarist.
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It takes a truly special musician to command the respect of their peers in the industry. Clearly, Walsh can count himself among that pack. Check out 10 quotes from the iconic guitarist, below.
[RELATED: Watch Eagles Guitarist Joe Walsh Jam Out on Clarinet with Jimmy Kimmel]
1. “People often ask me if I believe in God, and I kinda have to, because I’m still here. I had not planned on living this long, and here I am.”
2. “The Eagles are four very alpha personalities. We’ve all done solo work, and we’ve all played with very good musicians, but when the four of us get together, it becomes something that’s much bigger than any one of us.”
3. “I looked at Willie Nelson and Farm Aid as a role model; they do it every year, and it draws people together, and drawing people together where they realize they’re not alone, to me, is strategic in healing.”
4. “We’re sober now, and we all have families and obligations of being senior citizens. Oh, that’s hard to say. We have grown-up responsibilities. We used to all live in the same car.”
5. “I have some fond memories – a couple of the nights on the town … a couple of songs I wrote when I was messed up that I’m sure wouldn’t have come out of me unless I was messed up. It’s kind of happy-sad about those days – I could do anything I wanted to. I did. And now I don’t want to do any of that.”
6. “I love being in a small club where everybody has a good seat, and we don’t look like ants. And you can feel the audience, which makes it kind of magical, and I miss that. I guess I have the best of both worlds.”
7. “In my early twenties, I got the basics covered. In retrospect, one of the great things about success is that I never really had to work in a factory full-time. So that’s a blessing.”
8. “I’ve always written observations on the world, and now there’s two of them. The virtual world is a new thing, and it doesn’t really exist, but people are in it a lot.”
9. “I used to throw stuff out of the window and trash hotel rooms – and superglue all the drawers shut and superglue the toilet seat down and superglue the phone to the nightstand – and all kinds of stuff. I had a chain saw for a while. I didn’t really use it but once or twice.”
10. “There’s a different feeling when you’ve played with musicians for 30 years. A lot of stuff doesn’t even need to be said, especially onstage. We just read each other so well.”
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