Unfortunately, there is no hotel in California that goes under the name of Hotel California. It turns out there’s a real hotel in California! A few of them, actually. “Hotel California” reached 20th on the Billboard Top 100 in 1977.
The album isn’t exactly a rock opera, but it does seem to follow a common theme: it starts with “Hotel California” and comes to a culmination with “The Last Resort,” a song that narrates the demise of society as the conclusive warning to the theme of the album.Īfter its release, Hotel California received a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1978, the song has been considered by Rolling Stone to be the 49th greatest song of all time, and Guitar World Magazine ranked the guitar solo as the 8th greatest of all time. The theme of the whole album is essentially that of Manifest Destiny and the American Dream and the rise and falls in-thereof. “Hotel California” is a song by the Eagles on the rock album of the same name, Hotel California, released in 1976. The band has five number-one singles and six number-one albums so far. It’s also worth mentioning the former member Don Felder (singer, guitarist, songwriter), as he helped write “Hotel California” and performed part of the guitar solo. The Eagles were founded in the early 70s in Los Angeles, California, by Glenn Frey (singer, guitarist, songwriter), Don Henley (singer, guitarist, drummer, songwriter), Randy Meisner (singer, bassist, songwriter), and Bernie Leadon (singer, guitarist). The Eagles are one of the most successful American rock bands of the 1970s. For your convenience, you can find the lyrics to the song here and you can listen to the song here. Let’s lay out the most popular rumors and look at why they aren’t true. I’m going to have to go ahead and debunk all the most popular rumors, as none of them are even remotely close to being true (except possibly the drug use one, though indirectly).
The interpretations of this song range from the drug use, cannibalism, Hotel California being another name for the Camarillo State Hospital (a psychiatric hospital), to devil worship and the Church of Satan. Musical melodies aside, the lyrics of the song span quite a bit of controversies. It is an amazing piece for guitar, and I never tire of listening to it. Still, this should give you some measure of the caliber of this song. In the original studio mix, only five were used. On the Hell Freezes Over album, the Eagles used eight guitars to perform this song. Though you can play “Hotel California” on Guitar Hero by yourself and sound surprisingly similar to the original track, there’s nothing realistic about that. Unfortunately, neither of us knew for sure, but I promised Joe I would investigate the song as soon as I had time. This spawned a discussion as to the meaning of the song. At some point during the drive we ended up listening to “Hotel California,” probably the best song the Eagles ever wrote and performed. Joe Kmetz and I were on our way to Krista’s house over Turkey Break and I had designated Joe as the DJ for the trip.