Eagles icon Joe Walsh performed a short set for 300 people in heavy rain during a return to the place where he’d had his drink and drugs “epiphany.”
On Sunday he performed alongside a band of students at Otatara Pa, a Maori fort near Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, where he told the audience about his experience there in 1989.
“I’m so grateful I could come back,” the 76-year-old said (via the New Zealand Herald). “I’m kind of home in a way.” His set included a local song, Eagles classic “Desperado” and a cover of the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues,” with accompaniment by pupils of nearby Taradale High School.
Classic Rock reported that Walsh also said: “What happened to me was kind of a spiritual awakening. The spirit of this place talked to me and told me who I had become was not me.”
He continued: “The spirit that was here gave me power over all that. I took [that power] back to the United States and I stopped drinking and doing drugs, and I tried to help people who were doing that… I paid a lot less attention to being famous and having fun spending money.”
Admitting he’d lost his perspective in the ‘80s, Walsh said: “I came here and I got it back. I’ve been 30 years sober now and that’s because I came here… where we are right now has so much good energy and spirit.”
In 2018 Walsh said he’d found his way into drink and drugs as a result of suffering stage fright and finding that “a couple of beers” helped deal with it, which “planted the seed.”
He added: “And later on, when I did an album that didn’t do so good, I thought, ‘Well obviously I’m not drinking nearly as much as I need to.’… my higher power became vodka and cocaine.”
It only got worse from there. “I burned all the bridges. Nobody wanted to work with me. I was angry. … I turned into this godless, hateful thing.”