Uploaded July 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"Rocky Mountain Way" is a 1973 song by rock guitarist Joe Walsh and his band Barnstorm, with writing credits given to all four band members: Walsh, Rocke Grace, Kenny Passarelli, and Joe Vitale. The song was originally released on the album The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get.
Walsh appeared in studio on The Howard Stern Show on June 12, 2012, and talked about how the lyrics to the song came to him in 1972 shortly after releasing his first solo effort, Barnstorm.
"I'm living in Colorado and I'm mowing the lawn. I look up and there's the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains and there's snow on them in the summer. And it knocked me back because it was just beautiful. And I thought, 'Well I have committed. I'm already in Colorado and it's too late to regret the James Gang. The Rocky Mountain way is better than the way I had, because the music was better.' I got the words. Bam!"
Walsh has varied that story over the years, however, telling the Rocky Mountain News that he wrote the lyrics while recording the album at Caribou Ranch Recording Studio. The song features Walsh using a guitar talk box manufactured by sound engineer Bob Heil, inventor of the Heil high-powered talk box. The distinct tone "... gives Walsh's blues stomp a futuristic wave, as if a hulking mechanical beast was looming just over those rocky mountains."
The song was used as the title to Walsh's 1985 compilation album, which featured previously released singles and tracks from his albums Barnstorm, The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get and So What.
In Jake Brown's 2014 book Behind the Boards II, producer Bill Szymczyk writes about how Walsh first came up with an instrumental "blues-shuffle" recorded at the Criteria studio, then stripped down to drums alone at the Caribou studio and rebuilt from there, adding lyrics to make the final version. Walsh is described as having layered about "six or seven" guitars on the recording, playing through a small amp with one Shure SM57 microphone aimed at it. Szymczyk says the thick guitar sound is from Walsh himself, not from studio trickery.
"Rocky Mountain Way" is a 1973 song by rock guitarist Joe Walsh and his band Barnstorm, with writing credits given to all four band members: Walsh, Rocke Grace, Kenny Passarelli, and Joe Vitale. The song was originally released on the album The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get.
Walsh appeared in studio on The Howard Stern Show on June 12, 2012, and talked about how the lyrics to the song came to him in 1972 shortly after releasing his first solo effort, Barnstorm.
"I'm living in Colorado and I'm mowing the lawn. I look up and there's the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains and there's snow on them in the summer. And it knocked me back because it was just beautiful. And I thought, 'Well I have committed. I'm already in Colorado and it's too late to regret the James Gang. The Rocky Mountain way is better than the way I had, because the music was better.' I got the words. Bam!"
Walsh has varied that story over the years, however, telling the Rocky Mountain News that he wrote the lyrics while recording the album at Caribou Ranch Recording Studio. The song features Walsh using a guitar talk box manufactured by sound engineer Bob Heil, inventor of the Heil high-powered talk box. The distinct tone "... gives Walsh's blues stomp a futuristic wave, as if a hulking mechanical beast was looming just over those rocky mountains."
The song was used as the title to Walsh's 1985 compilation album, which featured previously released singles and tracks from his albums Barnstorm, The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get and So What.
In Jake Brown's 2014 book Behind the Boards II, producer Bill Szymczyk writes about how Walsh first came up with an instrumental "blues-shuffle" recorded at the Criteria studio, then stripped down to drums alone at the Caribou studio and rebuilt from there, adding lyrics to make the final version. Walsh is described as having layered about "six or seven" guitars on the recording, playing through a small amp with one Shure SM57 microphone aimed at it. Szymczyk says the thick guitar sound is from Walsh himself, not from studio trickery.
