Life's Been Good

Joe Walsh bought a house in Santa Barbara, California, shortly before he joined the Eagles, and then barely lived in it. For the next two years he was touring or recording. That meant hotels. He liked a suite, and when a hotel had none free he rented two adjoining rooms and tore out a wall to make one. At a 2012 concert at the Troubadour in West Hollywood he told the crowd that the lyrics of "Life's Been Good" were largely true.

The Maserati was real, and so were the limousines. The lost license was less dramatic than the lyric suggests. It was never confiscated. He lost his wallet with the license inside. He kept an office he never visited, with gold records on the wall and an answering machine. After one late party he went looking for the front door in the early morning and walked into a closet instead.

The song first appeared on the soundtrack to the film FM in 1978, and the original eight-minute version went on his fourth studio album, But Seriously, Folks..., that year. An edited four-minute single peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, still his biggest solo hit. His ARP Odyssey synthesizer riff runs alongside the lead guitar in the middle, and after the music fades into silence, ten seconds pass before a studio in-joke about a flock of wah wahs.