In The City - From "The Warriors" Soundtrack

Joe Walsh wrote this song for the 1979 movie The Warriors, which became a cult classic with the lines, "Warriors, come out to play" and "Can you dig it!" Walsh explained: "In The City" was written for the movie The Warriors. A friend of mine named Barry DeVorzon (he produced The Association) was in charge of the music for the film and asked me to come up with something. I went to junior-high school at P.S. 216 in Queens (NYC). I was in a gang, but we weren't that tough because I had to be in by 7:30 to practice clarinet. Anyway, I came up with 'In The City' out of memories of growing up partly in New York City, which contrasted a lot from where I lived before that, which was Ohio."

Walsh joined the Eagles for their 1976 Hotel California album, but it was three years before they released their next album, The Long Run. "In The City" was included on the album, which was released after the Warriors soundtrack (Songfacts on the Eagles version). The subject matter of the song didn't really suit the Eagles, but in a 1981 BBC interview, Walsh explained why it was released as an Eagles track: "The Warriors was made about gang-type city situations, and I related to that, having grown up in New York City, so again it was a positive statement to go against the desperation of miles and miles of concrete and growing up in a city – that really can affect you, and we thought it was a valid thing to put on The Long Run, and so we chose to do it."