While digging around for tasty extras to include in the deluxe edition of the forthcoming 2012 release Analog Man, Joe Walsh came across an amazing find: A tape of his former band the James Gang jamming with Little Richard.
Co-produced by Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra fame, Analog Man also features brother-in-law Ringo Starr, just a few months after the two collaborated on the former Beatle drummer’s Ringo 2012. (A link to preorder the album is included below.) Already, Walsh has released the title track — a hilariously cranky diatribe on technology — as the project’s lead single. Now, this seven-minute jam promises to provide another high point for Analog Man, due June 5, 2012.
“It’s just a classic,” Walsh told Matt Wardlaw of Ultimate Classic Rock. “It’s a real treasure to have found, and I thought I’d just throw that on there.”
Walsh goes on to reveal that the jam actually stretched to 15 minutes (“because he wouldn’t stop,” Walsh says), before editing. “(It’s) about seven minutes of Little Richard at his best with the James Gang backing him up.”
He called the famously flamboyant Rock and Hall of Famer for permission, before including it on Analog Man — with suitably hilarious results: “I told him, and he remembered and I said: ‘Is it OK?’ He said: ‘It makes me want to go out in the yard and yell ‘Lordy, Lordy!’ I guess that meant ‘OK!’” Walsh tells Wardlaw, laughing.
Walsh was a member of the James Gang from 1968-71, before joining the Eagles in 1975. He reached the Top 40 with 1973′s “Rocky Mountain Way,” 1978′s “Life’s Been Good” and 1981′s “A Life of Illusion” as a solo artist. Among his most notable moments with the Eagles are “Life in the Fast Lane” and “Pretty Maids All in a Row,” both from 1976′s Hotel California, and “In the City” — originally included on “The Warriors” soundtrack, and later rerecorded by for The Long Run.
This is Walsh’s first solo album since 1992′s Songs for a Dying Planet.