Joe Walsh - The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get [20]

Title: Joe Walsh - The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get
Year/Genre/Sub-Genre/City: 1973, Classic Rock, Hard Rock, Wichita, Kansas 10/26
Matrix #: DSX-50140 (Dunhill/ABC, US, gray label; side label DSX 50140 B); runout not legible in photo
Condition: EX (LM) | Members: Joe W (47' - ), Joe V (49' - ), Kenny P (49' - ), Rocke G (N/A) | Producer: Joe Walsh, Bill Szymczyk
Cultural Facts: [20]

1. He Kept His Father's Name: Joe Walsh was born Joseph Fidler in Wichita, Kansas. His father, Air Force Lt. Robert Fidler, was killed in July 1949 when his F-80 Shooting Star went down during maneuvers over Okinawa, when Joe was 20 months old. Adopted by his stepfather at five, he took the Walsh name but kept Fidler as his middle name, and decades later he started the veterans charity VetsAid in his dad's memory.
2. Out of Dottie West's Garage: The talk box on Rocky Mountain Way traces back to a Nashville house party at country star Dottie West's place, where her husband, steel player Bill West, came back from the garage with a taped-up cardboard box and a piece of surgical tubing. He told Walsh to put it in his mouth; Walsh says it smelled terrible. Walsh and sound man Bob Heil, both ham radio operators, then spent a Sunday afternoon building a louder road version, and Heil later mailed one to Peter Frampton as a Christmas present his girlfriend ordered.
3. Free Gas for Everyone: Walsh got his ham radio license, call sign WB6ACU, in 1961, around the time he first picked up a guitar, and says the radio theory taught him to rewire and soup up amps back when bands had no roadies. In 1980 he ran a joke campaign for President on a Free Gas for Everyone platform, promising to make Life's Been Good the national anthem, even though at 32 he was too young to serve.