Life Of Illusion Joe Walsh

A Life of Illusion Album: There Goes the Neighborhood (1981)
by Joe Walsh

Featured early in an Apple TV 2023 documentary about Michael J. Fox...

"A Life of Illusion" is a song written by Joe Walsh and guitarist Kenny Passarelli, which became a hit and one of Walsh's most recognizable songs. It appears as the fifth track on Walsh's fifth solo studio album, There Goes the Neighborhood (1981). The majority of the track was originally recorded in 1973 as part of The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get sessions.

The song was a hit in the United States, peaking at #34 on the Billboard Hot 100, and also reaching #1 on the magazine's Top Tracks chart, where his former bandmates Don Henley and Glenn Frey would also score #1 hits.

In 2002, the Foo Fighters recorded a cover of the song as a B-side, which later appeared on their covers album Medium Rare in 2011

The song is used as the musical background to the opening scene in the film The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), and appears as the first track on the soundtrack album. It is also featured early in an Apple TV 2023 documentary about Michael J. Fox. The song is likewise referenced in author Rick Riordan's The Burning Maze (2018), the third book in The Trials of Apollo series.

Life's been good to Joe Walsh, but what's it all about? Sometimes it seems like life is just an illusion, and just when you start to comprehend it, it hits you right between the eyes.

Many musicians of his era looked to gurus or other zen masters to figure it all out, but Walsh seems to have sorted it out in this song, where he concludes that letting it all get to you is a waste of your day.

This song began as an instrumental track written by Kenny Passarelli when he was the bass player in Walsh's band Barnstorm, which was active from 1972-1974. Barnstorm never released it, but Walsh and Passarelli worked it up for Walsh's first solo album, The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, in 1973, with Walsh adding the lyrics. It didn't make it to vinyl, so Passarelli shopped it around, pitching it to Elton John and Hall & Oates. When Walsh was working on his 1981 solo album, There Goes The Neighborhood, he and Passarelli finished the song, which finally got its release.

The Mariachi trumpets, played by the song's co-writer Kenny Passarelli in what Walsh described as "a drunken stupor," are nonsensical in a way that suits the song perfectly. Why are they there? Well, why are any of us here?

The phrase "a life of illusion" was used three years earlier in the title track to the film Grease, where Frankie Valli sings:

This is the life of illusion
Wrapped up in trouble
Laced with confusion

That song was written by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.

This was featured in the opening credits of the 2005 movie The 40 Year Old Virgin. It also appears in the 2010 movie Grown Ups and in the 2010 CSI: Miami episode "L.A."