There’s a story Joe Walsh used to tell about how after leaving the James Gang, he holed up in the mountains in Colorado in January 1972, where he was eventually joined by multi-instrumentalist and drummer Joe Vitale. According to Walsh, the pair talked about the kind of new music they envisaged. Vitale left his drums in the car and they stayed there for three weeks. The reason for this delay wasn’t due to their laid-back approach but because, in Walsh’s words, it was “too darn cold to go outside to bring them in.”
The resulting album, Barnstorm, with bassist Kenny Passarelli on board, was released in 1972 under Walsh’s name. Tired of the gritty blues rock certainties that characterised his time with the James Gang, Walsh branched out musically, extending his reach to a sound that’s broader in scope and more speculative in nature while still being rooted in rock.
