“One of The Worst Periods of My Life”: Kenny Chesney Explains How Joe Walsh's Friendship Gave Him Hope During a Dark Time

You don't get to earn the coveted status of being a certified country legend without experiencing some peaks and troughs in life - as Kenny Chesney can certainly attest.

Although the ‘I Go Back’ hitmaker has been delivering timeless anthems and chart-topping hits throughout his 30-year career, and has never really experienced a slump in terms of his professional output or success, he has inevitably been through a multitude of personal challenges, such as grief, heartbreak and more.

In a new conversation with Lee Cowan for CBS Sunday Morning, Chesney has reflected on some of the friends he has made along the way that have helped him deal with these difficult spells, such as Bruce Springsteen, Sammy Hagar and Joe Walsh.

When asked by Cowan about whether he views his life as as a tapestry of fate that has been woven by God or the universe, Chesney underlines, “I think [there's a sense of destiny]. There's a sense of that, for sure. I mean, if you look at the pages of this book and you zoom in on all of it, and read all the chapters...But if you zoom in and look at it from a fisheye lens, the whole thing is a big dream”.

The Knoxville native muses, “I really feel like...for whatever reason - I was supposed to meet my friends and heroes now in the music world...I was supposed to get advice from Bruce Springsteen. Why? I don't know. I was supposed to become friends with Sammy Hagar and Eddie Van Halen, and share the stage with them”.

He goes on to cite Eagles icon, Joe Walsh, as a particularly influential peer in the industry. Walsh features on Chesney's much-loved deep-cut, ‘Wild Ride’, from his 2007 album, Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates. Walsh later joined Chesney on tour.

The ‘Just To Say We Did’ singer-songwriter pays homage to Walsh's friendship, “And Joe Walsh. I was going through one of the worst periods of my life, and Joe Walsh just appeared in my life, and he went out on the road with us. He was on-stage with us. There's this rock icon that we listened to in David Farmer's garage, and all of a sudden...I mean, do you know how many times I listened to ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ in my life? A lot. And all of a sudden, there was this person that created that next to me. And I was going through a terrible...time in my life”.

Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates was the first studio album Chesney released after his high-profile divorce from Renée Zellweger, which sparked a disappointing array of headlines speculating about their brief marriage and the nature of its conclusion. As a result, inevitably, when Walsh joined Chesney for ‘Wild Ride’ and the subsequent tour, it must have been a tremendously trying period for the latter.

Chesney expands on his view that we often end up crossing paths with the exact person best-placed to offer us some comfort at the exact time we need them, “I believe that people are pushed into our lives for different reasons, and when I read this book, when we were done with it, and I read through it again, there's a lot of those moments in this book. There is. And I believe it's all in the universe and all written down, and I think we're all connected in ways that we don't see coming”.

The country trailblazer concludes, “Especially at this point in my life, you know, and you see so many faces out there. And you see all these people on-stage and backstage, and we all come from different places. We all have different political beliefs, different religious beliefs...All of us grew up very differently. But we have this one thing in common that binds us all. We're all broken, and we all love music”.

We're glad Chesney that received the divinely ordained guidance and nudges in the right direction when he was struggling, and that the ‘Somewhere With You’ crooner is in a better place now as he gears up to release his first book, HEART*LIFE*MUSIC.

Chesney has evolved into a beacon of light for so many listeners, and stands as a unique source of joyful, sun-soaked escapism and optimism for his loyal No Shoes Nation fanbase. HEART*LIFE*MUSIC, which he has penned alongside his longstanding friend, Holly Gleason, will serve as a blueprint of sorts for those looking to learn how to embody Chesney's joie de vivre and glass-half-full outlook on life.

Watch the full CBS Sunday Morning interview with Kenny Chesney below:

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