I used to throw stuff out of the window and trash hotel rooms - and superglue all the drawers shut and superglue the toilet seat down and superglue the phone to the nightstand - and all kinds of stuff. I had a chain saw for a while. I didn't really use it but once or twice.
I had seen my buddies crash and burn. Keith Moon died, and I always thought that was the way he wanted to go. John Belushi was a dear friend. A lot of the guys that I ran with were ending up dead, and I saw myself right on schedule to do that. I had some moments of clarity - once in a while.
I have watched music go from an art form into an industry. And I have watched it stop dead in its tracks because of the digital age.
I woke up one time coming out of a blackout, and I was on an airplane, descending to land in Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. And all I can think is I must have decided it was a good idea to go to France, and got my passport, and got on a plane.
People often ask me if I believe in God, and I kinda have to, because I'm still here. I had not planned on living this long, and here I am.
I was 20, and my reality was that people either went to college full-time, or they were draftable. The dear friends that I went to high school with that didn't go to college eventually wound up in Vietnam, and I noticed that they came home different. I was in Ohio during the Vietnam War era.
My wife one time got a fishbone stuck in her throat and had to fly back to L.A. from Monte Carlo to have it taken out. I thought, 'Wow, what a great blues song!'
Ricky Washington is from a Baptist church in Miami, Florida, and he can pretty much sing anything. We just started working it up at soundcheck, and holy smokes, it's just great! The audience gets to singing. So there's that stuff to do - find some old obscure R&B stuff - because we can do it justice.
The big stadiums get totally packed, and everyone knows the words, and it's screaming young girls. I met a whole bunch of great Nashville musicians, and they accepted me in their community. Classic rock and country music go well together.
I was a fan of the group. I thought they were great - loved The Eagles - but I thought that their beautiful harmonies would sound amazing with some rock guitar behind them.
I had left the James Gang, left Cleveland, and gone to Colorado because Bill Szymczyk was there, and so were a whole bunch of other people I knew.
'Hell Freezes Over' happened, and the Eagles decided to get back to work. We've toured pretty much since then, and I've been around the world a couple times. I had never really gotten any momentum going in a solo project during that period of time - Eagles was pretty much a full time job.
We are at war, and it's ongoing, and there's no end in sight. More and more guys are coming back from it, and the transition back to civilian life is almost too big a mountain to climb.
There's a total separation between the federal government and the people. So running for president was an attempt on my part to get people to care enough to go vote. But people just don't bother. And that's why it's not working.
It was pretty radical to go from the Eagles to being the only melodic instrument. You have to play a certain way. It's like the Who. It was a great kick in the pants for me to get my chops up and to improvise a little more.
The Eagles are four very alpha personalities. We've all done solo work, and we've all played with very good musicians, but when the four of us get together, it becomes something that's much bigger than any one of us.
You used to make records, record companies sold them, and people went to record stores and bought them. That's all gone now.
In the Eagles, you have specific assignments. You have vocal parts and musical parts that need to be exactly in place at the right time. And if all of us do our job, it becomes something bigger than any of us.
We're sober now, and we all have families and obligations of being senior citizens. Oh, that's hard to say. We have grown-up responsibilities. We used to all live in the same car.
Before we really started writing our own songs in the James Gang, we'd play covers, and then, in the middle of them, we'd go for a jam for four or five minutes. At some point, we had six or seven of those sections, and we didn't need to cover other people's songs anymore.
