Sharing a Memorable Memory: Lucy Walsh Realizes Her Dad’s Fame as Tears Flow

Lucy Walsh Shares the First Time She Grasped Her Dad’s Fame: ‘Tears Were Streaming Down My Face’

In an exclusive excerpt from her new memoir, the daughter of Eagles rocker Joe Walsh emphasizes the importance of sharing memories

Singer-songwriter and actress Lucy Walsh wrote her new book, Remember Me As Human, to remind readers to connect with their loved ones while they still have the chance. It was also informed by the realization that her dad, Eagles rocker Joe Walsh, is only human.

“I’d like to inspire more curiosity with people so that we do pass our stories on while we have each other here,” she told PEOPLE. “Because once we die, our stories and our memories and the world that exists inside of us goes with us. We’ve got to cultivate and pass it down.”
Remember Me As Human is a love letter to Walsh’s maternal grandparents Wanda and Dale Boyer. It draws on handwritten letters Dale wrote to Wanda while serving in World War II, as well as a number of interviews Walsh, 41, conducted with Wanda in 2011, four months before she died.
Below, in an exclusive excerpt shared with PEOPLE, Walsh shares the first time she realized her dad was famous.I had no idea my dad was famous until I was 12 years old. Before then, I saw him play a few club concerts, but nothing to speak of. Then life changed in two major ways — for him, for me, for our whole family. The first change was that my dad entered sobriety for the first time. I remember standing in the kitchen hearing my mom on the phone with my dad’s assistant, Smokey, who was telling her Joe was in a rehab facility and wanted to see me as soon as possible.

“Of course,” she said. She’d always told my dad that as soon as he got straight, she would be there to make sure we had a relationship, and she honored her word. I was taken to his side, and I stayed with him a lot as he healed and reclaimed his life. His hair, which had always been long, brown, and scraggly, was now cut short and dyed platinum, and I remember being in a store with him, catching a glimpse of him from far away, and thinking with happiness, “Who is this strange new person in my life?”

We really enjoyed getting to know each other, and in the years to come, became incredibly close. My dad handled it beautifully, and I never needed to split my love again.

The second life-altering change was that the Eagles, who’d broken up in the seventies, reunited for the Hell Freezes Over tour when I was 12, and I was taken to the VH1 taping of their first show, live on a soundstage at Sony Pictures. I sat between Whoopi Goldberg and Claudia Schiffer, both faces I recognized, and I began to suspect my dad was someone special.

Before my dad went onstage, performing sober for the first time pretty much ever, I wrote him a message on a napkin and put it on his dressing-room mirror: “Dear Dad—I’m so proud of you. And I love you lots!! Hope I see you on Sunday.” Amazingly, a camera person thought to capture it, and my little napkin note was featured in the History of the Eagles Documentary. Check it out!

That was the night I realized he was famous, but there was a second night when I really got it. The Eagles were playing a sold-out Rose Bowl, in Pasadena, and from high up above the crowd in a box seat, I was shocked to tears when my dad came out on stage and a mass of 89,702 fans erupted into the loudest roar I had ever heard. Literally; tears were streaming down my face.

To tie that into these pages, what I’ve learned from having a famous parent deeply influenced me to write about being human. I’ve witnessed a great divide between the flesh-and-blood dad of my heart and the celebrity guy that the public loves to spew dramatized Google facts about. It is truly all smoke-and-mirrors; at the end of the day, we all love and breathe and eat and laugh and cry and defecate the same.

A Google search can tell us what people have achieved, but it can’t tell us who they are. For that, we have to talk. We have to share our stories—all the vivid, messy, living details. Our hearts and lives are fathomless and intricate, no matter how outwardly simple or flashy they may appear.