Life’s Been Good

The Fort

In the late 70’s, my friends and I thought it would be really cool if we built ourselves a fort in the upper rafters of our garage. My family had moved into a newly constructed neighborhood in 1975, and houses were continuously being built for the next eight years. This left us with an endless supply of lumber scraps – as well as an awesome “playground” for adventurous boys – once the construction workers left work for the day.

The first summer we collected enough lumber and nails to build a basic fort about 8 feet wide and 12 feet long, including a ladder and door that only kids (or small, flexible adults) could fit into. We considered this our “secret hideout,” although everyone knew exactly where to find us.

The main club members consisted of me and my closest friends, Brian and Todd. But there were a few extended members, including: Kumar, who only lived in the neighborhood for the first year of the fort; Tony, who had recently moved but still came around occasionally; my cousin Tim, who lived with us for a while; and then there were the Axell twins, Derek and Drake, who made random appearances.

We continued to improve and remodel our fort over the next few summers, including a four-foot “addition” in the summer of ’79. Some of the finishing touches consisted of whatever each of us could convince our parents to part with, including carpet and wallpaper scraps. It wasn’t luxurious by any means, but we thought it was pretty cool. We even had the prior year’s phone books (not that we had a phone) along with some old newspapers and magazines to make it feel more homey.

Every once in a while, we somehow persuaded our parents to let us sleep overnight in the fort. However, it was tough to sleep because even on cool summer nights it was still a good 90 degrees up in the rafters. There wasn’t any ventilation, other than the big old box fan we rigged up to keep the hot, sticky air moving around a little.

We added a few more things, including a really cool fluorescent “Drink Root Beer” light my grandparents gave me. But if there was one thing we couldn’t live without, it was our old, beat up radio alarm clock. It was a digital clock, with the numbers that flipped over as each minute passed. And every single minute we worked on the fort or hung out in the garage over those years, we had that radio on. It was always tuned to the Twin Cities’ best classic rock station – KQ92.

The Music

So here we were, somewhere between 10 and 14 years old, spending our days hanging out in the garage, filling our heads with classic rock music from the late 70’s. There was no disco or pop on this station – no Bee Gees, Village People or Debby Boone, like we heard everywhere else. This was just plain old rock ‘n’ roll.

We heard a lot from the newest generation of rock bands – ones that would become FM radio mainstays over the next decade, like Van Halen, Foreigner, Styx and REO Speedwagon. We heard a lot of the older 70’s classics: Zeppelin, Clapton, Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Stones. And there were some other current bands as well: The Little River Band, Steely Dan, Peter Frampton, Bob Seger, Steve Miller and The Doobie Brothers…to mention a few. To this day, many of those songs bring back great memories of our time spent in the fort.

There was one song, however, that stood out. It was the song we most looked forward to hearing: Life’s Been Good by Joe Walsh. We always stopped whatever we were doing (which was most likely nothing) just to listen and enjoy this one. Besides being a great song, musically, we thought the words were HILARIOUS.

“I go to parties, sometimes until four
It’s hard to leave when you can’t find the door…”

How funny is that, when you’re 12 years old? We were at the age where we could easily entertain ourselves for hours by imitating drunks, even though we really had no idea what that was all about.

The song lyrics provided a constant source of amusement and wondering:

“I have a mansion, forget the price
Ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice
I live in hotels, tear out the walls
I have accountants pay for it all

My Maserati does 185
I lost my license, now I don’t drive
I have a limo, ride in the back
I lock the doors in case I’m attacked

I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do
Life’s been good to me so far…”

Wow! How wild could the life of a rock star be, we wondered?!

You take those crazy lyrics and throw in some wicked guitar licks, add some silly sound effects along with a funky beat, and you have yourself an instant classic. We loved it.

Years Later

Fast forward more than three decades to the fall of 2013, where the Eagles were playing live in Minneapolis. Michelle and I had tickets in the 4^th row, right in front of Joe Walsh. We were less than 20 feet away from Joe. And wouldn’t you know it – they included this classic song in their set list!

After watching him perform this song for a minute or so, I closed my eyes and let my memories take me away – right back to my days in the fort. I almost broke out in a sweat, remembering how HOT it was up in those garage rafters. I could smell the hot and humid air, which was constantly blended with the scent of freshly cut wood. I could picture the funky 70’s red, white and blue wallpaper we stapled to the angled garage ceiling, above the spot where the radio alarm clock sat on top of the phone books. I could so clearly recall what summertime was like at that age, when I was so full of energy and without a worry in the world.

Reflecting back

My parents sold that house in 2004. I wonder if our fort is still there? Maybe all that stuff is just sitting there, like a time capsule of the late 70’s?

It’s amazing to me that my buddies and I survived all those years as daring and adventurous boys. Just building our fort alone, there were a few falls out of the rafters, down to the concrete floor below. We worked with painful fingers as we learned (the hard way) how to pound in a nail. And there were definitely a few bumps on the old noggin as we misjudged the distance between the rafters that supported the garage roof…made worse by the fact that we might have sprouted several inches in height in a single summer during those awkward years. Away from the fort, we had accidents while playing sports and riding skateboards – it seemed like someone was always bandaged, in a cast, or using crutches. And we could have easily been killed or at least severely injured while trying to imitate our hero, the great Evel Knievel, on our bicycles.

But what’s EVEN MORE amazing….is that Joe Walsh survived all those wild years of partying like a true rock star.

So party on, Joe. And I hope that you, too, have a few sweet memories from those crazy 70’s.

Here’s the full-length album version of this song. Enjoy!