Joe Walsh once joined a reggae band in New Zealand: They saved his life

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Joe Walsh in 1989. | Credit: Paul Natkin/Getty Images | Warrior / Warner

By the end of the 1980s, Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh was running on empty. Years of stadium tours, heavy drinking, and rock'n'roll excess had pushed him to the brink.

"I was pretty pitiful," he told Classic Rock in 2012 . "I had lost myself. I always thought: 'Well, if I need to, I can stop.' And then I realised that wasn't the case, and I did not know what to do."

Walsh needed an exit, and he found it over 6000 miles away in New Zealand with Herbs, an Auckland-based band who'd released the country's first reggae album, the politically charged What's Be Happen?, in 1980.

The Eagles man first encountered Herbs while on tour with The Party Boys, a long-running Australian supergroup whose membership over time included Eric Burdon and Angels guitarist John Brewster, and was soon approached to produce what would become Herbs' fifth studio album, Homegrown .

Herbs were already stars at home. Formed in Auckland in the mid-1970s, they changed their name from Back...