GAYLE KING: Very nice. Joe Walsh`s first solo album in twenty years is called Analog Man. He joins us in Studio 57 live and in color. Hello, Joe Walsh.JOE WALSH (Musician/Analog Man): Good morning.
JEFF GLOR: Hey, Joe.
GAYLE KING: So your first one in twenty years. Was it scary to do this after all this time?
JOE WALSH: It was kind of scary, yeah, but it`s a really good feeling.
GAYLE KING: Because?
JOE WALSH: Well, I`ve been sober eighteen years. And I-- I really opened up and let people see the real Joe--
GAYLE KING: Joe.
JOE WALSH: --now that I know who he is.
GAYLE KING: Yeah. Were you convinced, Joe, that because after being sober for eighteen years, that when you first get into sobriety, were you thinking I can`t do it without the drugs?
JOE WALSH: I didn`t-- I didn`t think I could do anything. I didn`t think I`d ever be funny again. I didn`t think I could play live in front of people, everything-- I-- I didn`t know how to do it. And I had to learn and you-- you measure that amount of time in years.
GAYLE KING: Mm-Hm.
JOE WALSH: But Analog Man is kind of, I am, back--
GAYLE KING: Mm-Hm. I`m back.
JOE WALSH: I`m not done yet. And it won`t be twenty years till the next one.
GAYLE KING: Next one.
JEFF GLOR: That is good to hear. As-- as Gayle was-- was jamming out this morning--
GAYLE KING: I`m back.
JEFF GLOR: --to the new disc.
GAYLE KING: Yes.
JEFF GLOR: Some of the lyrics are poignant, though, I mean in Analog Man, the whole-- the whole world is living in a digital dream. It`s not really there. It`s all on the screen. You`ve been thinking about these concepts for a while.
JOE WALSH: I have. I have. And what I am trying to do with Analog Man, it`s-- it`s a reality check. Through music I`m trying to say that we live on an analog planet, which we`re systematically trashing while we`re spending more and more time in the virtual world which doesn`t exist.
GAYLE KING: Yes.
JOE WALSH: It`s an illusion made by computers.
GAYLE KING: Yes.
JOE WALSH: What`s really happening is that we`re sitting in chairs while our bodies are waiting for our minds to come back.
GAYLE KING: Yes. You do say, Joe, that there`s nothing that beats a feeling of being in the room with a group of people, really talented people just doing what you love to do and that`s play music. That nothing replaces that.
JOE WALSH: Yeah. With the new digital technology, you can fix anything.
GAYLE KING: Anything.
JOE WALSH: And you can make everything perfect.
GAYLE KING: Is perfection bad in music?
JOE WALSH: It doesn`t sound good to me.
GAYLE KING: Uh-Huh. Uh-Huh.
JOE WALSH: All the mojo is gone. You get a human performance of guys playing together in a room and there`s magic in that. And it`s such a temptation to fix stuff that doesn`t need fixing because you can you know.
GAYLE KING: Yeah.
JOE WALSH: And every time you do that you lose a little bit of the magic that was there and that`s what we love about all the old records--
GAYLE KING: Yeah.
JOE WALSH: --that we all love.
GAYLE KING: Yeah.
GAYLE KING: I did a piece a while back on vinyl records. You talk about Vinyl as well in this disc.
JOE WALSH: Yeah.
JEFF GLOR: There are things you just don`t hear when you go down to CD or MP3.
JOE WALSH: Yeah.
JEFF GLOR: And-- and that-- and that that`s great. I mean you still listen to vinyl, I assume, quite a bit.
JOE WALSH: Every chance I get.
JEFF GLOR: Good.
― peace, man, Wednesday, 22 September 2021 18:31 (two years ago) link