“I’ve been around the world in concerts, and people say, ‘What was Japan like?’, but I don’t know. “It is a strange lifestyle,” Walsh told the BBC. “And I’m tired of them.” Funnily enough, his feelings reflect sentiments expressed in the song: “I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do.” “Most questions I ever get asked are about Life’s Been Good,” he told the audience. However, during a show at Los Angeles’ Troubadour Bar in 2012, Walsh admitted that Life’s Been Good had become a bit of an albatross. Though he was still a member of the group at the time of its release, the song’s runaway success captured the public’s imagination, puncturing the balloon of hubris that can surround rock stardom. Upon its release in 1978, Life’s Been Good became Joe Walsh’s biggest solo hit, peaking at No.12 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and momentarily allowing him to step out of Eagles’ shadow. “Most questions I ever get asked are about Life’s Been Good” Nevertheless, Life’s Been Good gleefully exposes the flip side of the rock’n’roll lifestyle: a world that can grant its denizens great riches, but also rob them of the satisfaction of enjoying them. Like the very best satire, there’s a touch of exaggeration here – Walsh never owned a Maserati, but he did lose his driving licence, and was prohibited from getting behind the wheel. “I lost my licence, now I don’t drive.” In its place, he pays to be driven around in a limo, to protect him from the screaming fans trying to tear him limb from limb. “My Maserati does one-eighty-five,” he sings. With fame comes money, and Walsh doesn’t shy away from singing of being rich enough to own a sports car, even though this might well be short-lived. It was a real challenge just to stay alive.” In Life’s Been Good, Walsh sings of being crazy but having a good time (“I’m just looking for clues at the scene of the crime”), before wryly admitting that “life’s been good to me… so far”. Me and a lot of the guys I ran with, we were party monsters. “I started believing I was who everybody thought I was, which was a crazy rock star,” Walsh told Rolling Stone in 2017. Naturally, Life’s Been Good is sung from the perspective of a hardened rock’n’roller who has seen and done it all. “During those days he taught me a lot about the finer arts of anarchy, chaos, damage, destruction,” Walsh said of the hijinks he got up to with Moon. The experience he often refers to was when he was touring with his pre-Eagles band The James Gang in support of The Who, and the infamously wild-spirited drummer Keith Moon took a shine to the singer. “I have accountants pay for it all.” When he later reflected on the typical rock’n’roll tabloid stories of trashing hotel rooms and throwing televisions out of windows, Walsh accepted that there was some truth to them. “I live in hotels, tear out the walls,” Walsh sings on Life’s Been Good. “I do have a really nice house,” Walsh admitted to the BBC, “but I’m on the road so much that when I come home from a tour, it’s really hard to feel that I even live here.” “I started believing I was who everybody thought I was, which was a crazy rock star” “I wanted to make a statement involving satire and humour, kind of poking fun at the incredibly silly lifestyle that someone in my position is faced with,” he told the BBC in a 1981 interview.īy reminding listeners of how the time-consuming obligations of touring with a successful rock band essentially turn musicians into nomads, Life’s Been Good is a savage acknowledgement of being careful what you wish for. That’s not the only surprise in store: as Life’s Been Good reaches its first verse, Walsh launches into a cod-reggae groove inspired by Bob Marley, before dabbling with a synthesiser towards the song’s closure, going well beyond the musical airspace Eagles dared fly in.Īs Walsh begins barking out his lyrics, he nonchalantly reflects on the pitfalls of his supposed success as a musician (“I have a mansion, forget the price/Ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice”). After settling into a lackadaisical groove with some bluesy piano accompaniment, the song is knocked sideways by some acoustic strumming and stabs of electric guitar. As an eight-minute-long classic-rock jam, the song contained all the lyrical wit and musical prodigiousness expected from Walsh, kicking off with a loping guitar riff that sucks listeners into a vortex of bliss from its very first note.įrom the start, there’s an Eagles flavour to Life’s Been Good, easing the listener in with a steady beat and some down-at-home country-rock guitar. Released as a single in May 1978, Life’s Been Good had first appeared on the soundtrack to the dramady movie FM, and quickly gained radio play due to its irreverent takedown of headline-grabbing rock’n’roll tropes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |