Personal Life
Walsh holds an Amateur Extra Class Amateur Radio License. His station callsign is WB6ACU. In 2006 he donated an autographed guitar to the ARRL in Newington, Connecticut for its charity auction. He has also been involved with the group's "Big Project," which brings amateur radio into schools. Walsh has included Morse Code messages in his albums on two occasions: once on the album Barnstorm ("Register and Vote"), and later on Songs for a Dying Planet ("Register and Vote for Me").
Walsh is best known as a guitarist, but has also played keyboards, bass guitar, harmonica, bagpipes, oboe, and clarinet.
Walsh married Marjorie Bach (sister of Barbara Bach) in Los Angeles on December 13, 2008, making him a brother-in-law of Ringo Starr.
Walsh's daughter, Lucy Walsh, is also a musician; she has worked with Ashlee Simpson and others, and released her debut album, Lost in the Lights, in spring 2008.
Walsh's eldest daughter, Emma Kristen, was born in 1971 and died in 1974 at the age of only 3 as a result of injuries suffered in an automobile accident on her way to nursery school. Her story inspired the track "Song For Emma" on his album So What released later that year. In her memory, he had a fountain and memorial plaque placed in a park in which she played; North Boulder Park in Boulder, Colorado. While touring with singer Stevie Nicks in 1984, Walsh took Nicks to the park's fountain; Nicks subsequently immortalized this story in her song "Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You" on her 1985 album Rock A Little. Nicks stated in a 2007 interview with the UK's The Daily Telegraph that Walsh had been "the great love of her life."
In October 2004, Walsh undertook speaking engagements in New Zealand to warn against the dangers of substance abuse. He said the visit was a "thank you" to people who took him to Otatara Pa when he toured New Zealand with reggae band Herbs while under heavy alcohol and cocaine addictions in 1989, an experience he has cited as the beginning of a long journey back to health.
At Otatara Pa in 2004 Walsh said, "This is a special place, and it is very special to me. It was here on a visit many years ago, up on the hills, that I had a moment of clarity. I don't understand it, but I reconnected with my soul, and I remembered who I used to be. I admitted I had problems and I had to do something about it. It was the beginning of my recovery from my addiction to alcohol and drugs, and when I got back to America it gave me the courage to seek help."
Jimmy Page's sunburst 1959 Gibson Les Paul, better known as his "Number 1" was originally owned by Joe Walsh and was sold to Page in 1969.
Kent State University awarded Walsh an honorary degree in music in December 2001.
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