My Ten Favorite Crazy Album Titles: You Can't Argue With a Sick Mind (#5)

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When it comes to albums, there are a number of ways to title them. Name them after a song on the album (giving that song the moniker of being the "title song" of an album [like "Hotel California"]), give it a title significant to the act somehow (e.g., Hell Freezes Over, so named because Don Henley once famously said the Eagles would reunite "when hell freezes over")...or just go out there and be nuts. Today's album is by the king of "nuts." #5: You Can't Argue With a Sick Mind - Joe Walsh Half of this list could be Walsh album titles. The "clown prince of rock and roll," he was almost the US version of Keith Moon, in more ways than one: like Moon, Walsh was notorious for trashing hotels (there's a video of one of his songs that shows him checking in at a hotel lobby with a chainsaw in his hand, and in the video he proceeds to trash the hotel room while trying to kill a fly with the chainsaw); and, like Moon, he had more than his fair share of "things." After the Eagles broke up, Walsh seemed determined to follow in the footsteps of the legendary Who drummer, who died of a prescription drug overdose in 1978 at the age of 32. When the Eagles reunited he hired a bodyguard -- not to protect him from his fans, but to protect him from himself. The bodyguard's job was simple: keep Joe away from booze, pills, and drugs. Walsh, as a friend said in a 1979 article on the Eagles in Rolling Stone, has had considerable tragedy in his life. His father died in a plane crash when Joe was five. He's been married five times (he's currently married to Barbara Bach's sister, making him and Ringo Starr brothers-in-law), and in 1974 his three-year-old daughter was killed in a car wreck. The humor Walsh projects publicly, the friend said, helped him conceal his pain as well as deal with it. Case in point: his album titles. There's The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get (which featured the classic "Rocky Mountain Way"), You Bought It, You Name It, and There Goes the Neighborhood (which featured Walsh sitting in an Army surplus tank on the cover). Just before he became an "official" member of the Eagles, following the departure of Bernie Leadon, Walsh appeared on the old ABC concert series Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, where the live album You Can't Argue With a Sick Mind was recorded. The Eagles backed him on his great ballad "Help Me Through the Night" (as they had on the studio recording -- he'd also worked with them on Dan Fogelberg's Souvenirs album), and things proved to fit so well he became an Eagle. Walsh had a great solo career, highlighted by some great albums...with really goofy names. But what else would you expect out of him? You Can't Argue With a Sick Mind Recorded by Joe Walsh Released in 1976 Here's Walsh singing the live version of "Help Me Through the Night" with his future band mates, the Eagles: