Analog Man

Hey there, Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew just spun up "Analog Man" by Joe Walsh off that same-titled album, and if you haven't dug into the stories behind this one, you're missing some real rock and roll gold. This track is the title cut from Joe's first solo record in a full twenty years, since way back with Songs for a Dying Planet in 1992. He co-produced it with Jeff Lynne from ELO, and the whole thing feels like a guy finally clearing his throat after a long stretch of Eagles tours and getting his life sorted. Joe has talked in interviews about how the song came from noticing this whole new digital world that didn't exist when he was cutting records with knobs and tape. He told folks it's not a judgment, just an observation: there's the real world he has always written about, and then this computer-generated illusion where people disappear for days playing games and come out with beards, not knowing what happened. Our bodies sit in chairs waiting for our minds to come back, he said, and that stuck with him while he was figuring out Pro Tools for the first time.

In chats around the album's release, Joe explained he is an analog man in a digital world, and he is not claiming the old ways are better, just that those of us who did most of our work in the analog days had to make some adjustments. Technology ate the record business and intellectual property, and he hoped it wouldn't eat him too. He laughed about it, but he meant it. When something goes wrong with the gear, some ten-year-old smart ass has to show him what to do. He likes vinyl, LPs, 45s, even 78s, and he still thinks it sounds great. In one interview he pointed out that if they had Pro Tools back when the Eagles were working on Hotel California, they would still be working on Hotel California. The temptation is to fix everything and make it perfect, but that takes the mojo and the soul out of a human performance. He tried to think analog, keep the magic of guys in a room playing together, and only use the digital tools where they helped without overdoing it. The album was cut digitally, hard drive and mouse instead of tape and knobs, and he had to learn it all while he was at it.

His wife Marjorie, who is the sister of Ringo Starr's wife Barbara, was a big part of getting this record finished. She told him he ought to get off his rear end and wrap up the songs he had been tinkering with during Eagles downtime, and by the way here is Jeff Lynne's number. Jeff took the tracks in a direction Joe never would have gone on his own, put his stamp on it, and helped close the deal. Ringo plays drums on a couple of tracks, including one that ended up as a sort of sequel to Life's Been Good called Lucky That Way. There are contributions from old James Gang and Barnstorm mates, David Crosby and Graham Nash, even a duet with Little Richard on the deluxe version. Joe has said the album is the first one he made fully sober, after getting clean in 1994 around the time the Eagles got back together for Hell Freezes Over. He had to relearn how to do everything without the party atmosphere, and it took a while, but he got a lot more done that way. He wrote about sobriety in One Day at a Time, making an exception to the usual AA quiet approach because he thought somebody should talk about it.

Joe has always mixed a little social commentary into his songs without getting too heavy-handed. On Analog Man he is commenting on how we spend more and more time in that virtual place while the real world has its own problems, the economy and the government and all that, like ostriches with our heads in the sand. He didn't want a radical protest song, just embedded the idea in a good tune. In another conversation he talked about the Titanic orchestra playing on as the ship went down, and how that image stuck with him for another track on the album. He is still the same guy who can turn observations into something funny and catchy, the ordinary average guy who somehow ended up with one of the greatest jobs on earth.

Speaking of how he got started, Joe was born Joseph Fidler Walsh on November 20, 1947, in Wichita, Kansas. His mother was a classical pianist, so music was always around the house. His father, a flight instructor, died in a plane crash when Joe was young, and he kept his dad's name as his middle name after his mother remarried. The family moved around a fair bit, landing in places like Columbus, Ohio, New York City, and Montclair, New Jersey. In high school he played bass in a local band called the Nomads, inspired by the Beatles, and he even took up the oboe for a stretch in band class. After high school he headed to Kent State University for a bit, played in a group called the Measles, and some of those early tracks ended up on an Ohio Express record. Around Christmas 1967 he knocked on the door of James Gang drummer Jim Fox looking to try out after their guitarist left for California. He got the gig, the band settled into a power trio with Dale Peters on bass, and suddenly Joe was handling lead and rhythm and singing because somebody had to. They opened for Cream at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, caught the ear of the right people, and signed with ABC. Hits like Funk 49 and Walk Away put them on the map, and Pete Townshend took notice enough that they got to tour Europe with the Who. Joe left the James Gang in 1971 feeling the trio format was too confining, headed to Colorado, formed Barnstorm with Kenny Passarelli and Joe Vitale, and scored with Rocky Mountain Way. From there it was more solo records, then joining the Eagles in the mid-seventies and bringing that harder edge to Hotel California and beyond. He has been a licensed ham radio operator since 1961, so digital circuitry was not completely foreign when the internet age arrived, but the virtual world still took some getting used to.

You can check out more from the man himself on his official site at Joe Walsh, where they still have Analog Man listed in the music section and even some old tour merch from that era. His official Facebook is over at Joe Walsh Official, Instagram at joewalshofficial, and on X he goes by @JoeWalsh with that Analog Man line right in the bio. Fans keep an active Facebook group going called Joe Walsh Fans! where people share stories and photos and keep the conversation rolling. And of course you can always catch more of this kind of deep cut rock and roll right here on THE ZOO, where the Zoo Crew keeps the freeform album rock spinning for all you Zoo Freaks out there. Joe still seems like that kid from Wichita by way of Columbus who can't quite believe he stumbled into this life, and songs like Analog Man remind us he is still writing about the world the way he sees it, analog heart and all.