Fabulous Friday: "Walk Away"

Today I'm starting a short series for the Fabulous Friday - - I'll call it Great Song, Wrong Title. A song I love but has the wrong title. I would love suggestions, I always love suggestions!

The first is a song I first heard at Glorious Home, an upscale department store on the Upper West Side (it’s since closed). I was there one evening after work, maybe around 2018, and I was on the escalator going down two levels to where they sold the cleaning solution for my humidifier (the only reason I ever went to Glorious Home). They were playing an amazing song on the radio, a song with the drive and grit of a rock song yet the catchy structure of a pop song. I didn’t think I’d ever heard a song that checked both those boxes in such a strong way. I thought about writing down a few key words so I could look it up when I got home but why bother? How could I possibly forget the refrain in the chorus?

Of course I got home and had forgotten it. It frustrated me for a couple of days. Then I decided to go at it from another angle: I knew there was a key phrase in the refrain, two or three words, that repeated a lot. Probably also the title, right? I opened my mind and just let it float. Then it magically appeared to me. Seems To Me.

I did a search on YouTube and found nothing. So what else was I gonna do, I called up my brother Howard. I told him the whole story (not leaving out the humidifier) and said I was sure the title of the song was “Seems To Me.” He said the song was actually called “Walk Away.” By The James Gang.

https://youtu.be/ynCjCLxy8h4?si=nahSyF1S4t1ISk4i

Here’s a live performance that I know I’ve used as a Fabulous Friday at least once before. One YouTuber said this is the comments: “drummer is tearing up those skins.” Yeah baby, that’s what he’s paid for!

I just listened to the studio version and this live version back to back. I knew that the studio version had vocal harmonies by Joe Walsh, harmonizing with himself, which would not be in the live version. But the surprise is that there are a few super sexy harmonic changes in the instrumental breaks that are not in the studio version.

Hm, YouTube isn’t letting me embed this video. Hopefully you’ll be able to bring it up with this link:

https://youtu.be/zo0vBdlWQs0?si=FPaBX8DtWxKAAuu2