Lifes Been Good (by Joe Walsh)
Before returning to Dartmouth, I had the privilege of seeing Eagles perform at Madison Square Garden. Vince Gill, Don Henley, Deacon Frey (original member Glenn Frey’s son), Randy Meisner, Timothy Schmit, and Joe Walsh rivaled a choir of angels. It would not be an overstatement to describe the concert as transcendental.
Vince Gill’s rendition of “Take It To The Limit” had me in tears—along with half of the audience.
But not all Eagles songs are so poignant; some of their songs convey weighty messages in playful, almost childlike fashion. One such song is “Life’s Been Good” by Joe Walsh, which he performed live. (I know this isn’t technically an Eagles tune because it was written by Walsh independently. Like Eagles themselves, I won’t honor this distinction—deal with it.)
The entire song—all eight minutes and fifty-six seconds of it—is worth listening to. And doing so repeatedly. I think I’ve listened to “Life’s Been Good” about thirty times since I arrived on campus last Monday. (I don’t know the exact number; the bastards at Spotify won’t tell me.) The tune is pleasant, but I really listen to it for the tongue-in-cheek verses in which Walsh acknowledges his good fortune while simultaneously recognizing its futility.
One needn’t perform a rigorous exegesis of each lyric to realize that the seemingly upbeat, optimistic song is a melancholic lamentation an alienated Joe Walsh: Despite his “fortune and fame,” Walsh is left with an empty mansion, a Maserati he can’t drive, a lonely limo—he’s even become inured to pride of his “gold records on the wall” and impatient, doting fans. The final two lines summarize his ambivalent outlook on life and insincere gratitude: “I keep on goin' guess I'll never know why; Life's been good to me so far.”
My favorite line: “I can't complain but sometimes I still do.”
The coexistence of gratitude and deep dissatisfaction is seemingly paradoxical; one cannot be grateful and ungrateful at the same time, right? Right! . . . sorta.
One violates the Law of Noncontradiction by being A and ¬A at the same time and in the same respect. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself: dissatisfaction is not the same as ingratitude, i.e., dissatisfaction is not equal to not grateful. One can be genuinely grateful for what one has and still be disappointed by the lack of something else.
I think Joe Walsh captures the melancholy of this uncomfortable, ubiquitous state that might fairly be summed up as the human experience.
If you haven’t listened to it yet, do yourself a favor and listen to it. . . twenty times in a row.
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