The guitar solo Joe Walsh claimed he played better than George Harrison: “I’m the only guy who can play it”
It’s not hard for most guitar heroes to start getting a bit of an ego about themselves. Even though it might be fun to just strum a bunch of chords and get by alright, being able to play so fast that no one else can understand what you’re doing is the kind of god-level skill that usually makes someone’s head inflate. Despite his talent, Joe Walsh still seemed like a loveable guy who was happy to be playing, but he admitted that he could play Beatles solos far better than George Harrison could.
If anyone was going to step to The Beatles and claim they did something better, they were going to be in for an uphill battle. The Fab Four have been categorised as the first and best at nearly everything that rock and roll is built on, so what makes the one guitar legend from the Eagles seem like a contender?
Well, it’s not like Walsh doesn’t have chops. Compared to other guitar heroes like Eric Clapton, he can certainly hold his own, and the fact that he was able to jam with Jimi Hendrix and was praised by Pete Townshend of The Who has put him into rock and roll Valhalla for the rest of his life.
Walsh always turned back to The Beatles for inspiration, though, and why not when they have such great guitar parts? John Lennon and George Harrison were always a great team behind their respective fretboards, but by the time they developed into a studio-only band, they were writing the kind of guitar solos that no one could have reproduced.
Whereas most of Revolver centres on twisting the guitar into different shapes to suit whatever the song needs, good luck finding tabs for half of them. For example, most of the guitar lines from ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ were recorded in reverse, ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ is the closest they came to a traditional rocker, featuring Harrison and Paul McCartney playing in harmony on two guitar tracks — they enjoyed making things complicated.
It’s nearly impossible to put two of those guitar tracks together and make them sound clean, but Walsh admitted that he may have beaten the band at their own game. When speaking with The Chicago Tribune, Walsh remembered Starr telling him that it was two guitars overlaid on top of each other, to which the guitar legend responded, “[Ringo said], ‘Nah, nah, nah — he played it twice. It’s two notes playing together!’ I think I’m the only guy who can play it — including George”.
Considering his history working in the Eagles, Walsh displacing Harrison on this song isn’t exactly him speaking out of turn. For as much as he puts into his country-style licks, Walsh has learned the importance of playing dyads, which are two-note inversions of different chords in a melody.
Those are commonplace in old country tunes, but getting those under his fingers means that Walsh could play both McCartney and Harrison’s melodies at the same time. He might come and go from Starr’s All Starr Band, depending on what he’s up to, but if Starr did decide to break out this old Fab favourite live, Walsh could justifiably do the guitar orchestra all on his own.