Rock legend set to return to scene of life-saving epiphany

Joe Walsh in 2004, during his second visit to Otatara Pa where he says he had a life-changing, addiction-breaking epiphany five years earlier. He will return to the the historic site near Taradale on Tuesday. Photo File

Rock music legend Joe Walsh will retrace some powerful and emotional steps by coming to Napier next week during a stop in the Eagles' world tour.

An early member of the Eagles and reunited for a tour that includes two concerts in Auckland this weekend, the 67-year-old will arrive in Hawke's Bay late on Tuesday morning for a pilgrimage to the historic Otatara Pa site, near Taradale.

He first visited in 1989 and returned 15 years later to pay homage to a moment on the pa and the hill alongside known as Hikurangi. From there he looked across Hawke's Bay and the waters beyond and had an "epiphany" he has since said that saved him from the grip of drug addiction and what he called " a journey to hell".

He told the story early on the afternoon of October 7, 2004, at a unique gathering rallying against the widening use of methamphetamine, or "P" as it had become known.

Leaders from rival gangs, the Mongrel Mob and Black Power, sat alongside each other and Walsh in a visit recorded by Hawke's Bay Today.

"This is a special place," he said, "and it is very special to me."

"It was here on a visit many years ago, up on the hills, that I had a moment of clarity," he said. "I don't understand it, but I reconnected with my soul and I remembered who I used to be.

"I admitted I had problems and I had to do something about it. It was the beginning of my recovery from my addiction to alcohol and drugs and when I got back to America it gave me the courage to seek help."

"Methamphetamine is evil," he continued. "If you are involved in bringing it into the country, or selling it, or manufacturing it, your ancestors are not at peace with you. You will eventually be responsible for people's deaths and when you go to meet your God it will be a burden on your shoulders."

"I have tried it. It is a dead end. It goes nowhere. It's a demon and it eats your soul from inside you. If you are doing meth I say to you, no matter how awful things are they will get worse beyond your wildest imagination."

"But you can come back, as hopeless as it will look," he said. "It was the hardest thing that I have ever had to do, but it can be done"

He ended his 20-minute stint on stage with two guitar and vocal pieces, before taking to the keyboard for the same hit he had performed in Parliament in Wellington a day earlier, the 1993 release Desperado.

The mini-concert featured in a book Live Gigs That Rocked New Zealand, published in 2010.

Denis O'Reilly, who took Walsh up the hill the first time, fielded the telephoned request to come back again in 2004, said Walsh arrives on a flight at 11.40am on Tuesday, accompanied by new wife Marjorie, the sister-in-law of Ringo Starr, and heads straight to Otatara for a powhiri from the people of Ngati Parau and Ngati Kahungunu, and his "celebration" of the site as a place of healing.

People are welcome to see and hear Walsh.