Track #22 - “Hotel California” by Eagles (1977)

From the album Hotel California

Music by Don Felder; lyrics by Glenn Frey and Don Henley

Performed by:

Don Henley – lead vocals, drums, percussion

Don Felder – 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, backing vocals

Glenn Frey – 12-string acoustic guitar, backing vocals

Joe Walsh – electric guitar, backing vocals

Randy Meisner – bass, backing vocals

US Billboard Hot 100 - #1; US Billboard Adult Contemporary - #10

Rolling Stone Greatest 500 Songs of All Time - #49

1978 Grammys – Record of the Year

Last thing I remember, I was

Running for the door

I had to find the passage back to the place I was before

“Relax,” said the night man

“We are programmed to receive

You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave!”

On our previous stop on this musical time machine, we talked about Fleetwood Mac’s hit “Gypsy”, and about how all songs have a story behind them, and how wonderful it is to be able to hear songwriters tell the stories behind their songs. But what about when the song is a story? Of course, all songs tell stories somehow, the lyrics laced with veiled symbolism about the songwriter’s life experiences or maybe an issue they want to make a statement about. But some songs actually tell stories. Like a novel or short story, some songs have a beginning, middle and end, a chronology to follow as you’re humming along. Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”, which we talked about a few tracks ago, is a great example. Chapman’s lyrics tell a story about a woman who just wants a better life for her and her children and her struggles with the man she loves who doesn’t want the same things she does; “You got a fast car, I got a job that pays all our bills, You stay out drinking late at the bar, See more of your friends than you do of your kids, I’d always hoped for better…” Chapman says so much with few words, and we’re able to see the story unfolding, to its inevitable conclusion, when our protagonist tells her man, “Take your fast car and keep on driving.” There are so many other examples: “The Boxer” by Simon & Garfunkel; “A Day In the Life” by the Beatles; “Luka” by Suzanne Vega; “The Ballad of Billy the Kid” by Billy Joel; “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam. These are amazing examples of songwriting at its apex, in my opinion. As I’ve said, getting the right words to fit into the right music is a feat; to tell a real story with those words is something greater. When I was growing up, I thought all songs did this, and with Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy as the 1st real musical influence of my life could you blame me for thinking that? The title track relates the story of John and songwriting partner Bernie Taupin leaving their childhood homes to pursue their musical dreams and of their fateful meeting and subsequent success. And in what is considered the album’s opus, John tells the story of how he managed to avoid what would have been a disastrous marriage in “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”. I listened to these songs and just figured this is what all songs do; it was like reading a passage or short tale in one of those primer books they gave us in elementary school, except they were set to music, and the stories were more “adult.” As I heard more and more music played in our apartment growing up, I also began to realize that song lyrics were more often than not, indecipherable. Discovering Captain Fantastic in 1975 spoiled me; all the lyrics were right there in front of me so I could read along as Elton John sang. Alot of his other songs had me guessing; “Bennie and the Jets” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” are perfect examples. But I also remember having had a hard time hearing exactly what Stevie Nick was singing about in “Dreams”; the Doobie Brothers sounded great when they harmonized, but I barely understood the first verse of “Listen to the Music”; and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack’s disco beats shook the floor in our apartment every weekend, but were the Bee Gees just making up the words as they went along? To a grade-schooler with a limited vocabulary, it just seemed like this was an adult thing; there were real words there, but it was your problem if you couldn’t make them out. I figured the bands were doing it on purpose to make it mysterious, and not all the albums had lyrics sheets specifically for this reason. I’d just have to wait until I was older to figure out what I could only imagine were grown-up lyrics. But in 1977, when I was just six years old, there was one song whose lyrics were unmistakable and told the most vivid story I had ever heard. It fascinated, delighted, and scared me all at the same time, and set my very young imagination off in all sorts of directions. It conjured up spectral images of ghostly caretakers and dusty hallways, and of people trapped and held against their will. When I heard the song, it allowed me for the first time to imagine an adult being in trouble, and in a situation they might not be able to get out of. The story it told had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I understood every single word, even if I didn’t know what some of the words meant. But the lyrics were clear, and the images were very real to me. I didn’t need a lyric book; I knew exactly what Don Henley and the Eagles were singing about.

The origins of the Eagles date back to 1970, when four musicians from four different parts of the US arrived in Los Angeles to pursue their musical careers: bassist Randy Meisner (Scottsbluff, Nebraska); multi-instrumentalist Bernie Leadon (Minneapolis, Minnesota); singer/guitarist Glenn Frey (Detroit, Michigan); and singer/drummer Don Henley (Gilmer, Texas). All four played separately at first in various bands around Los Angeles, and Frey and Henley would become friends through their bands’ record label, Amos Records. In spring of 1971, Frey and Henley were hired to be part of Linda Ronstadt’s backup band. Meisner and Leadon were also part of Ronstadt’s summer backup band, but the four only played one gig together, at a Disneyland show that July; they would all appear on Ronstadt’s self-titled third album. Frey and Henley wanted to start their own band after the tour, and after telling Ronstadt, she suggested they pair with Meisner and Leadon. The four were signed to the new Asylum Records in late 1971, the new label started by music manager David Geffen. They adopted the name Eagles after a peyote-fueled trip to the desert, and Frey supposedly saw eagles flying above. Over the years in interviews, Frey insisted the name of the band is simply “Eagles” and not “The Eagles”. They released their eponymous debut in June of 1972; the album would yield three Top 40 singles: “Take It Easy”, “Witchy Woman”, and “Peaceful Easy Feeling”. They were marketed as a country-rock band early on, and when you hear those first few Eagles records the country influences and trademark Eagles harmonies are front and center. It wasn’t until their third album, On the Border, that Henley and Frey decided they wanted to move away from this sound into the direction of hard and edgier rock. Guitarist Don Felder was brought in to play slide guitar on one of the tracks, “Good Day in Hell”, and was hired as a permanent member shortly after. Felder would become a major contributor not only to the Eagles’ sound in subsequent years, but also contribute to the songwriting as well. On the Border features the #1 single “Best of My Love”, and the hit “Already Gone”. Their next album, One of These Nights, released in 1975 would make them international superstars, and be the last album to feature founding member Bernie Leadon. The title track, “One of These Nights” would reach #1, “Lyin’ Eyes” would reach #2, and the final single, “Take It to the Limit” would become a staple of Eagles live shows. This is the only song on which bassist Randy Meisner would perform lead vocals but would also become part of the reason for him eventually leaving the Eagles. One of These Nights was nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys, cementing their status as one of the biggest music acts in the world. In 1976, the Eagles would release their first compilation album, Their Greatest Hits (1971 -1975). It went to #1 within a week of its release and was the fourth-highest selling album that year; we’ll talk more about the staggering sales achievements of this album in a few minutes. Greatest Hits would set the stage for what would be the most important release of the band’s career, and the song that would define them. This would also be the first album to feature Bernie Leadon’s replacement, guitarist and singer Joe Walsh, whose guitar work would be a major contribution to the album.

Hotel California, the Eagles fifth studio album, was released on December 8, 1976. The whole album is considered a rock masterpiece for its time, and contains other memorable songs, but the title track is considered the Eagles’ signature piece of music. Don Henley has said over the years that the themes of the album are much the same as other Eagles albums: “…loss of innocence, cost of naivete, the perils of fame, of excess; exploration of the dark underbelly of the American dream…” The use of “California” in the album and title track is an embodiment “of the whole United States, or the whole world…”, and many feel this is the Eagles definitively saying that the 1960’s were over, and that we were smack in the middle of the very unchartered territory of the 1970s. Guitarist Don Felder developed the main instrumental, and took it to Don Henley and Glenn Frey, who wrote the lyrics. Felder and new addition Joe Walsh played alternating guitar solos at the end of the song, and Walsh came up with the dual guitar arpeggio as the song fades out (despite this, Walsh did not receive a songwriting credit). At the time, the band was heavily influenced by the west coast and California lifestyle, especially the excesses of Beverly Hills. Henley’s lyrics reflect some of the price of indulging in those excesses, and the price of fame. The lyrics also contain a lighthearted mention of the band Steely Dan: “They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast.” Steely Dan had mentioned the Eagles on their 1976 track, “Everything You Did”: “Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening.” Of course, that all meant nothing to me when I was six years old, and the song “Hotel California” was first played on the radio, and I began to hear it all the time. I didn’t hear any symbolism about excess or the American dream. All I heard was a horror story, unfolding in real time. There was a “dark desert highway”, and what seemed like a regular guy who “had to stop for the night.” There was a mysterious woman, who “lit up a candle”, and shows our regular guy down what I could only imagine was a dark place, accompanied by “voices down the corridor,” who say, “welcome to the Hotel California.” Later, the same woman would tell him, “…we are just prisoners here of our own device”; this is when I knew our regular guy is really in trouble, and then when he’s “running for the door”, and told “you can never leave!”, his fate is sealed, trapped at the hotel with the other unfortunate souls. And the song still doesn’t end; there’s that beautifully layered double guitar solo, which gives you more time to contemplate what just happened. I’m sure Don Henley and Glenn Frey didn’t intend to set the imaginations of six-year-olds on fire when they wrote “Hotel California”, but that is exactly what happened to me when I first heard it in 1977. To a child with an already over-active imagination and an ear for things that went bump in the night, this may as well have been my first horror film. Maybe it was because I watched reruns of The Munsters and The Addams Family when I was little or maybe it was because the apartment down the block had not been lived in for years and had English ivy growing on the outer brick walls and I thought it was haunted, or maybe it was because I was reading passages from my aunt’s horror novels while no one was looking; to this day if it’s scary or sinister, I’m in. And “Hotel California” is what I believe pulled it all together at such an impressionable age, and put my imagination on the path to the dark and mysterious. Funny enough, there were never any Eagles records in the house growing up, at least that I remember. But it’s hard to overstate how popular the Eagles were in the early to mid-1970s; their music was on the radio a lot, so I got to hear “Hotel California” probably more than I needed to. The song made such an impression on me that I asked about it on a first-grade field trip to the zoo. My mother was chaperoning, and we were sharing a seat on the bus. As the bus was pulling away, I asked her, “Are we going to the ‘Hotel California’?” She turned to me and said, very matter-of-factly, “No, Johnny, we’re going to the zoo.” “Oh,” I replied, and stared out the window, maybe disappointed, or maybe relieved we weren’t heading to the haunted hotel of my musical dreams. When I think about it now, it’s almost silly what my mind made up when I heard “Hotel California”; the sad girl with the candle, the man asking for wine and a tall faceless butler with a moth-eaten tuxedo bringing it on a silver tray, and then the man running down a hallway that just keeps going and going and never seems to end. When I saw Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining many years later in 1981, and Wendy is running through the hallways of the Overlook Hotel and sees the elevator spewing blood and then Grady in the tuxedo with the bloody face offering a toast, it brought back memories of when I first heard “Hotel California”. Even though I had my face covered and watched a lot of The Shining through my fingers, I loved how it scared me and got inside my head. A year later, I would watch the matriarch of the Freeling family in the Tobe Hooper-directed movie Poltergeist run down a never-ending hallway to get to her daughter who’s being held by the spirits haunting their home, and once again I thought of the hero in “Hotel California”, probably running down a haunted hallway of his own, unable to reach the exit. Maybe my six-year-old imagination wasn’t that far off; seems like Kubrick and Hooper had nightmares of their own like I did. As I got older, and I read through Stephen King’s entire library, and just borrowed the books from my aunt so I could read them through, and then watched the Halloween and Friday the 13th movies, sometimes burying my face in the couch cushions, I grew to appreciate “Hotel California” more for the actual music than for the images it conjured, and it became one of those songs permanently grooved in my musical memory. Do I still gravitate towards the stories and movies that scare the living shit out of me? Oh yeah. But do I wish I could go back and be six years old again, before the Eagles got in my head and ignited my imagination? Sometimes I do…but it’s just so much fun being scared, don’t you think? Here’s a live performance video of the Eagles performing “Hotel California” in 1977, in Largo, Maryland:

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Next time…the time I almost stood up for myself and admitted I was a fan of this slick 80s band from the UK.

P.S.

 The album Hotel California is certified 26X platinum in the US by the RIAA and has sold 32 million copies worldwide. It was nominated for Album of the Year at the 1978 Grammys, but lost to Rumours by Fleetwood Mac (imagine having to choose between those two albums?!?). The song “Hotel California” ended up winning Record of the Year, and is ranked #49 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. At the end of the 1977 tour supporting the album, bassist and founding member Randy Meisner would leave the band; Meisner refused to sing the hit he co-wrote, “Take It to the Limit”, during an encore at a show in Knoxville due to the flu and other health issues, causing him to have a heated argument with Glenn Frey. The incident became the catalyst for him quitting the Eagles. Bassist Timothy B. Schmit replaced Meisner and was with the Eagles when they recorded and released The Long Run in September 1979. The album features the hits “Heartache Tonight”, the amazing “I Can’t Tell You Why”, (written and performed by Schmit), and the title track; it also contains “In the City”, a live favorite performed by Joe Walsh. The Eagles would break up by the end of 1980, after the release of Eagles Live. All five members would have successful solo careers in the 1980s, most notably Henley and Frey. Henley released three solo albums, performed a duet with Stevie Nicks, “Leather and Lace”, and recorded one of the best songs of the 80s, “The Boys of Summer”. Frey contributed songs to the Beverly Hills Cop (“The Heat Is On”) and Miami Vice (“You Belong to the City” and “Smuggler’s Blues”) soundtracks; he also appeared in an episode of Miami Vice. In 1994, the Eagles reunited for a tour and released a live album, Hell Freezes Over, which contained two new tracks and debuted at #1. There would be more reunion tours and a new album in 2007, Long Road Out of Eden, their first album of new songs since 1979. In 2013, they released History of the Eagles, a two-part career spanning documentary, which I highly recommend; you can find it on Amazon Prime. They were planning a new album and tour when founding member Glenn Frey died on January 18, 2016, after intestinal surgery.

On July 29, 2017, I finally had the opportunity to see the Eagles perform live, as part of the Classic East concert at CitiField. The Eagles headlined the first day of the two-day concert; Glenn Frey’s son Deacon and guitarist/singer Vince Gill stepped in to perform Frey’s parts and sing his vocals. I clearly remember the show opening with “Seven Bridges Road”, as the band sang a cappella at the front of the stage, and then Don Henley taking his place behind the drums, and Deacon Frey launching into “Take It Easy”, his hair swept back and sunglasses perched atop his head, just like his father. And when they played “Hotel California” during the first encore, it felt totally surreal to be there, watching this band I listened to for over 40 years play their signature song live. I will never forget that performance and I’m so grateful I was there that day.

So about Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)…first off, I don’t think I had a friend in high school or college who did not own this album, either on CD or cassette. It was just one of those records everyone had and that you put on because you knew pretty much everyone would like it. Everyone knew those songs, mostly because they were always on the radio. It’s the first album to ever be certified platinum for selling 1 million copies, when the RIAA began awarding gold and platinum certifications in 1976. In 1999, it would be certified the best-selling album of the century, at 26 million copies, surpassing Michael Jackson’s Thriller; Thriller would regain the top spot after Jackson’s death in 2009. In August 2018, Greatest Hits would be certified 38X platinum, to 34X for Thriller making it the best-selling album ever, for now. The rest of the Top 5? Hotel California, Back in Black, and Led Zeppelin IV. The Eagles released Eagles Greatest Hits Volume 2 in 1982, which includes “Hotel California” and their hits up until 1979. As of 2023, it has “only” sold 11 million copies; I guess people really prefer their early stuff. I have both on vinyl; you can actually purchase both as a box set, but I miss my beat up cassette copies.

It's true that I read everything Stephen King had written by the time I was thirteen, and I’ve read just about everything else since. I’m not sure if my parents realized what I was reading back then, or if they were just glad I was reading in the first place, but they never stopped me from reading horror books, watching horror movies, or listening to heavy metal music which was peppered with scary images and even scarier themes. I’m grateful for that, and I think I turned out OK!  Of course, maybe they had the last laugh because anytime I watched a slasher flick or movie about demonic possession, I’d lay awake for nights at a time, unable to sleep and my imagination running away with thoughts of an axe murderer outside my window, or the devil in the attic. But that never stopped me, and it still doesn’t. Whenever there’s a new show about people in peril or a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies, you can bet I will watch it, and then lay awake listening for noises in the house while my wife sleeps peacefully beside me. Do I blame “Hotel California” for my interest in the dark and macabre? Not entirely…but those ghostly images I created in my own head while listening to that song certainly helped. 😊 Here’s a Spotify playlist of my favorite songs that tell stories. I’ve been going with 20 songs when I make playlists to go along with the blog posts, but there were so many great story songs I included 25 on this one; my wife made some great suggestions and I had to put them on…are any of your favorites on there? Did I miss any? Leave it in the Comments!

See you next time…

 JS

2/5/2023