With some sounds that start from silence, music can get our feet tapping or send tears rolling down our cheeks. But it takes something special to take the listener by the hand and bring them on an exhilarating, nostalgic journey from start to finish. But if anything’s up to the task, it’s “Hotel California” by the Eagles.
The sales and streaming numbers paint a pretty picture for the beloved “Hotel California,” with the band performing the track live no less than 1,000 times, plus a nice spot at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. But it also pushed the envelope with instrumentation, and that 2-minute, 12-second guitar riff earned its place as the best guitar solo of all time by readers of Guitarist back in ‘98. But a shocking amount of stars had to align for this perfect storm that could have been heaven or hell if anything had gone differently.
Eagles reverse-engineered “Hotel California”
There’s no one right way to write the perfect “journey from innocence to experience,” as Don Henley described “Hotel California,” and of course, for this exceptional piece, they took an exceptional approach. Lead guitarist Don Felder came up with a medley demo before they had anything else, but even at that early stage of the creation process, Henley and Glenn Frey loved what they heard.
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Felder credited the other two with lyrical composition. “Don Henley and Glenn wrote most of the words,” he recounted.
But the feelings came from a very real experience all of them could relate to. He went on, “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.”
The song mixes the best of everything, whether the band knew it or not
Indeed, the band’s roots can be traced everywhere, from Florida to Michigan to Texas. However, their outside perspective was just the right lens to capture that transformative feel only the City of Angels can give someone, which makes it all the more surprising that the Eagles nearly called it “Mexican Reggae.” Even so, remnants of its origins remain, and Record World was right to insist that “a mild reggae flavor pervades the tune.”
Some of that reggae flavor might have been further influenced by some Black Sabbath tracks; the rock band was recording right next door, and the noise disrupted the Eagles while they worked on “Hotel California.”
When it came time for the Hotel California tour, though, Henley trusted only his own bed to keep him comfortable, so he brought his own mattress to each hotel throughout the tour. Better bring that elusive wine, too; that spirit’s been out since 1969.
Of course, “Hotel California’ would also come with a lot of legal baggage. The cover image is captured by the same man who did the Beatles’ Abbey Road and the Who’s Who’s Next, John Kosh, and ended up nearly getting the Eagles sued. More recently, “Hotel California” fell into the center of a case of stolen lyrics, with new updates still cropping up. But once a track is declared one of the very best rock songs of all time, there’s no way it’s going away any time soon, and it feels almost poetically fitting that instead of attending the Grammys in 1978, the band simply watched their own victory afar while they attending practice, notes Rolling Stone.
