Joe Walsh

Five of his planets sit in fire signs and not one sits in earth, with three in air and two in water. Fire acts and air assesses, and there is nothing at all here that grounds either or slows anything down. Walsh played guitar in two bands, one of them among the largest acts of its era, which is a trade conducted almost entirely in front of other people.

The Sun sits on the twenty eighth degree of Scorpio, near the end of the sign that gives nothing away, with Mercury further back in it. Against that, Mars, Saturn and Pluto group across eleven degrees of Leo, the sign that performs and expects the room. A lead guitarist is both of those at once: the showman out front, and the person who will not explain what any of it cost.

The Moon sits directly opposite Mars three hundredths of a degree from the exact angle, which is about as near exact as a pair gets, and the two are braced in a T-square with the Sun. Private feeling facing drive head on, with the identity at the apex and no outlet in the configuration, is the heaviest structure in the chart and it sits on the three most personal points in it. In a guitarist whose public register is loose and whose playing is not, that structure sitting on the three most personal points is where the discipline actually hides.

Jupiter was back on its Sagittarius starting degree on 5 December 2018, at seventy one. That is the planet of reach returning to the sign it governs, the clearest run the arithmetic allows, and Sagittarius counts distance covered rather than depth. Six circuits precede it, a great many for one chart, and both bands the record names sit inside the third and fourth. With no earth anywhere in the chart, none of that was a career plan; it was a sequence of rooms he happened to be in. Mercury makes a quintile to Mars at under a third of a degree, which is an easy skill rather than a struggle, and for a guitarist that is the hands rather than the temperament.