![]() The first James Gang LP cover with the photos taken in downtown Kent. There were a few parts of this story I was interested in. There's a lot of complicated layers to this Joe Walsh story and if I could put another chapter and maybe his strongest chapter on what he did here in Kent I would have to say it's his time in The James Gang. It's like he must have had a ton of friends who had a lot of different experiences with him but each person only has a very small part of the full story. Someone who legitimately had a whole slew of experiences with him in 1966 was by 1968 completely off his radar. I have in more recent years been able to track down people who did have a legitimate connection to Joe while he was in town but even with them I was only able to get a sliver of the full story. What is the timeline? What's the history? Where specifically did he live and when did he live there? Who did he live with? Did he write any music here in town? And if he did, what was it and when and where was it written? But in between those years I've always been trying to figure out what happened when and where. From what I can tell Joe was legitimately a resident of Kent from the fall of 1965 to somewhere in 1970 or 1971. In the years since, I have gotten closer to finding out the truth about Joe Walsh in Kent but there are still a lot things that I have never been able to figure out. I'd heard everything from "he was my neighbor" to "my Dad was actually his best friend" to "we used to see him play downtown all the time." It was like the guy must have been everywhere - but for me, he existed in this other Kent. Everyone around here in Kent had a story about him. By the 1980s when I was coming of age the guy existed somewhere between myth and legend. And a real shame the James Gang never got all the fame they deserved-they were the equals of any of the other good hard-rock groups of the early seventies, and I include the Who, the Stones and Zep in that comparison.I can't tell you how many times throughout my life that the name Joe Walsh has come up. ![]() They briefly had a fourth member singing lead after Rides Again but as Jim Fox said, "his 15 minutes of fame came and went." Can't remember the guy's name, but if you get the OST to the "electric western" Zachariah you'll get two or three songs by the JG two of them are on the 2000 CD compilation James Gang Greatest Hits it also features "Ashes, The Rain and I" which has about a minute-and-a-half of a demo of Walsh playing Jimmy Page's "White Summer" tacked on at the end.Īfter Dom Troiano left the group and they got Tommy Bolin in, they retouched the photo they had taken for their new album Bang to include Bolin in place of Troiano I thought he did a really good job with the group. ![]() The only time you heard Fox or bassist Dale Peters "sing" was when they did "Lost Woman" live (the version on JG Live In Concert is hilarious) I know they sang on Thirds but that's an album I like to forget, save for Walsh's songs on it. I think Walsh left partly because he had to do so much-guitar and the vocals and most of the songwriting (same problem as John Fogerty would have). I didn't buy Rides Again until '76 but it did have Bolero included I always told friends get the version of the album where "The Bomber" is seven-minutes-plus and you'll thank me for it. ![]() And the run-out messages were funny ("Turn me over!" b/w "Play me again!"). I enjoyed the black-and-white drawing in the middle of the gatefold of Yer Album as originally released (on ABC-Bluesway Records) spent months coloring it in with felt pens, don't think I ever finished doing it. ![]()
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