Life's been good to Joe Walsh, but what's it all about? Sometimes it seems like life is just an illusion, and just when you start to comprehend it, it hits you right between the eyes. Many musicians of his era looked to gurus or other zen masters to figure it all out, but Walsh seems to have sorted it out in this song, where he concludes that letting it all get to you is a waste of your day.
This song began as an instrumental track written by Kenny Passarelli when he was the bass player in Walsh's band Barnstorm, which was active from 1972-1974. Barnstorm never released it, but Walsh and Passarelli worked it up for Walsh's first solo album, The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, in 1973, with Walsh adding the lyrics. It didn't make it to vinyl, so Passarelli shopped it around, pitching it to Elton John and Hall & Oates. When Walsh was working on his 1981 solo album, There Goes The Neighborhood, he and Passarelli finished the song, which finally got its release.
The Mariachi trumpets, played by the song's co-writer Kenny Passarelli in what Walsh described as "a drunken stupor," are nonsensical in a way that suits the song perfectly. Why are they there? Well, why are any of us here?
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