Los Angeles, Nov 5 , The Eagles rocker Joe Walsh is enjoying his days with a peaceful, easy feeling as he has a renewed focus on giving back, a happy marriage and a long-awaited Eagles reunion tour.
Though the rocker, known for his shredding guitar chops and wry sense of humour, has been known for his work in various lineups over the years (James Gang, Barnstorm, the Eagles, to name a few) none make him prouder than the one he assembles each year for VetsAid, his annual veterans benefit concert, reports People magazine.
“California has the biggest homeless vet population—what’s up with that? A homeless vet? I can’t do the math on that (sic),” he told People. “I thought, ‘You know what? This is a place where I can make a difference. I can do something about this.’ So we do what we can, and I feel good about it. Everybody comes, and it’s beautiful, because it’s just one big family.”
This year’s VetsAid will feature Jeff Lynne’s ELO, The War on Drugs, The Flaming Lips, Lucius and Walsh himself with special guest Stephen Stills when it hits the North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre in San Diego on Sunday.
As per People, helping veterans is a cause near and dear to Walsh’s heart — when he was just 20 months old, he lost his father Robert, an Air Force flight instructor, in a plane crash in Okinawa. He was raised between Kansas and New Jersey.
Sobriety, which he’s maintained with help from Alcoholics Anonymous, hasn’t been easy. But it’s certainly been worth it for Walsh, who says he learned to replace vodka with God as his higher power.
“When I first got sober, I never thought I’d be funny again,” he said. “I never thought I could play guitar in front of people without a buzz. And one day at a time, you learn how to do it.”
In sobriety, Walsh has also found domestic bliss with wife Marjorie Bach, whom he married in 2008. She, too, is sober, and the musician says that the fact that she can relate to his struggles is a godsend (Marjorie has also given Walsh quite the set of in-laws — her sister Barbara is married to Ringo Starr, whom Walsh jokes is “a lot of work—but he’s pretty cool”).
“That’s a gift of sobriety, is that there was a place in my heart for love instead of, ‘I got to get some more drugs.’ Alcohol ate a hole in me where loving and caring had been. But all of that came back,” he says. “I met Marjorie, and she’s the other half of me that I had always been missing. I have some children, but I wasn’t around for them. I was too busy being a rockstar. But I re-bonded with them. And another part of what I got with Marjorie was this extended family that she’s in—I had never been in a family like that.”
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