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Andree Vandestreek
"Hotel California" is a song by American rock band Eagles, released as the second single of their album of the same name on February 22, 1977.[6] Songwriting credits go to Don Felder (music), Don Henley, and Glenn Frey (lyrics). The Eagles' original recording of the song features Henley singing lead vocals and concludes with an iconic 2 minute and 12 seconds long electric guitar solo performed by Felder with a Gibson Les Paul Gibson EDS-1275 double neck and Joe Walsh with a Fender Telecaster, in which they take turns playing the lead before harmonizing and playing arpeggios together towards the fade-out.[7]
The song is one of the best-known recordings by the band, and in 1998 its long guitar coda was voted the best guitar solo of all time by readers of Guitarist.[2][8] The song was awarded the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1978.[9] The meaning of the lyrics of the song has been discussed by fans and critics ever since its release, the Eagles themselves described the song as their "interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles."[10] In the 2013 documentary History of the Eagles, Henley said that the song was about "a journey from innocence to experience ... that's all."[11]
Since its release, "Hotel California" has been widely regarded as one of the greatest rock songs of all time, and has been covered by many artists. Julia Phillips proposed adapting the song into a film, but the members of the Eagles disliked the idea and it never came to fruition. Commercially, "Hotel California" reached the number one position on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached the top ten of several international charts. The Eagles have performed "Hotel California" well over 1,000 times live, and is the third most performed of all their songs, after "Desperado" and "Take It Easy".[12]
A demo of the instrumental was developed by Don Felder[13][14] in a rented house on Malibu Beach. He recorded the basic tracks with a Rhythm Ace drum machine and added a 12 string guitar on a four-track recording deck in his spare bedroom, then mixed in a bassline, and gave Don Henley and Glenn Frey each a copy of the recording.[15] Felder, who met the Eagles through his high school bandmate Bernie Leadon, said that Leadon advised him to make tapes of songs he wrote for the band so that other band members like Henley, whose forte is in writing lyrics, might work with him on finishing the songs they liked.[16] The demos he made were always instrumental, and on every album project he would submit 15 or 16 ideas. The demo he made for "Hotel California" showed influences from Latin and reggae music, and it grabbed the attention of Henley who said he liked the song that "sounds like a Mexican reggae or Bolero",[16] which gave the song its first working title, "Mexican Reggae".[17] Record World said that "a mild reggae flavor pervades the tune."[18]
Don Henley and Glenn wrote most of the words. All of us kind of drove into L.A. at night. Nobody was from California, and if you drive into L.A. at night [...] you can just see this glow on the horizon of lights, and the images that start running through your head of Hollywood and all the dreams that you have, and so it was kind of about that [...] what we started writing the song about.[19]
Henley decided on the theme of "Hotel California", noting how The Beverly Hills Hotel had become a literal and symbolic focal point of their lives at that time.[20] Henley said of their personal and professional experience in LA: "We were getting an extensive education, in life, in love, in business. Beverly Hills was still a mythical place to us. In that sense it became something of a symbol, and the 'Hotel' the locus of all that LA had come to mean for us. In a sentence, I'd sum it up as the end of the innocence, round one."[21]
Frey came up with a cinematic scenario of a person who, tired from driving a long distance in a desert, saw a place for a rest and pulled in for the night, but entered "a weird world peopled by freaky characters", and became "quickly spooked by the claustrophobic feeling of being caught in a disturbing web from which he may never escape".[15] In an interview with Cameron Crowe, Frey said that he and Henley wanted the song "to open like an episode of the Twilight Zone", and added: "We take this guy and make him like a character in The Magus, where every time he walks through a door there's a new version of reality. We wanted to write a song just like it was a movie."[20] Frey described the song in an interview with NBC's Bob Costas as a cinematic montage "just one shot to the next [...] a picture of a guy on the highway, a picture of the hotel, the guy walks in, the door opens, strange people". Frey continued: "We decided to create something strange, just to see if we could do it."[2][22] Henley then wrote most of the lyrics based on Frey's idea, and sought inspiration for the writing by driving out into the desert as well as from films and theater.[20]
Part of the lyrics, such as "Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends / She got a lot of pretty pretty boys she calls friends", are based on Henley's break-up with his girlfriend Loree Rodkin.[15][21] According to Frey's liner notes for The Very Best Of, the use of the word steely in the lyric "They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast" was a playful nod to the band Steely Dan, who had included the lyric "Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening" in their song "Everything You Did".[23] Frey had also said that the writing of the song was inspired by the boldness of Steely Dan's lyrics and its willingness to go "out there",[20] and thought that the song they wrote had "achieved perfect ambiguity."[22]
Henley decided that the song should be a single, although Felder had doubts and the record company was reluctant to release it because, at over six minutes, its duration far exceeded that of the songs generally played by radio stations.[16][24] The band took a stand and refused the label's request to shorten the song.[25] The song was released as the second single from the album after "New Kid in Town". The front cover art for some overseas editions of the 45rpm single released was a reworked version of the Hotel California LP cover art, which used a photograph of the Beverly Hills Hotel by David Alexander, with design and art direction by Kosh.[26]
As "Hotel California" became one of the group's most popular songs and a concert staple for the band,[27] live recordings of the song have therefore also been released. The first live recording of the song appeared on the Eagles' 1980 live album, and an acoustic version with an extended intro is a track on the 1994 Hell Freezes Over reunion concert CD and video release.[28] The Hell Freezes Over version is performed using eight guitars and has a decidedly Spanish sound, with Felder's flamenco-inspired arrangement and intro.[29]
A music video for the song, filmed at the Capital Centre in March 1977, was first aired on the USA Network as part of the Night Flight program in August 1985.[30] This video would continue to air on VH1.[31] In 2013, a re-edited version of the video, as well as other footage from the Capital Centre concerts, was released as part of the History of the Eagles documentary set.
"Hotel California" first entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated February 26, 1977,[32] and topped the Hot 100 singles chart for one week in May 1977,[33] the band's fourth song to reach No. 1 on that chart.[9] It peaked at number 10 on the Easy Listening chart in April 1977.[34] Billboard ranked it number 19 on its 1977 Pop Singles year-end chart.[35] Three months after its first release, the single was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing one million copies shipped. In 2009, the song was further certified Platinum (Digital Sales Award) by the RIAA for sales of one million digital downloads,[36] and has since sold over 3 million downloads.[37]
The Eagles won the 1977 Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Hotel California" at the 20th Grammy Awards in 1978.[38] Cash Box said that "the luxuriant harmonies are here, of course, along with muted rhythm guitars and vocal inflections that add a West Indian flavor" and "the multi-tracked guitar harmonies...end the cut with melodrama".[39] In 2003, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[40]
The song is rated highly in many rock music lists and polls. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it number 49 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".[41] It was named one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.[42] At the induction of the Eagles into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, all seven former and present members of the band reunited to perform "Hotel California"[43] and "Take It Easy."
The song's guitar solo was voted the best solo of all time by readers of Guitarist magazine in 1998,[8] and was ranked 8th on Guitar Magazine's Top 100 Guitar Solos.[8] The song was also included in the music video game Guitar Hero World Tour. It was ranked number 1 in the list of the best 12-string guitar songs of all times by Guitar World magazine in 2015.[44]
Glenn Frey said that originally "We decided to create something strange, just to see if we could do it," and that the song was meant to mimic the imagery of the 1965 novel The Magus by John Fowles, about a man in an unfamiliar rural setting who is unsure about what he is experiencing.[45]
Don Henley has given a number of explanations about the song, ranging from "a journey from innocence to experience"[11] to "a sociopolitical statement."[46] In an interview with Rolling Stone, Henley said that the song was meant to be "more of a symbolic piece about America in general," and added, "Lyrically, the song deals with traditional or classical themes of conflict: darkness and light, good and evil, youth and age, the spiritual versus the secular. I guess you could say it's a song about loss of innocence."[15]
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