The Secrets Behind “Hotel California” by The Eagles
“Last thing I remember, I was running for the door…”
The title track from the Eagles’ 1976 album of the same name, “Hotel California” was released as a single in February 1977. Over the years, the song has drawn a lot of theories about what it’s actually about: For example, in the 1980s, a reverend in Wisconsin claimed that “Hotel California” referred to a San Francisco hotel that had been converted into a Church of Satan. Others suggested that the Hotel California was the Camarillo State Mental Hospital (which shut down in 1997), while other theories include an allegory about the hedonistic lifestyle musicians enjoyed in the 1970s, or references to drug addiction and cannibalism.
“Everybody wants to know what that song was about, and we don’t know,” Glenn Frey remarked in a BBC interview. In an earlier interview with NBC’s Bob Costas, Frey noted that he and Henley wanted to write a song “that was sort of like an episode of the Twilight Zone.”
Frey listed as an influence the 1965 John Fowles novel The Magus. “All of our songs were cinematic, but we wanted to open up with [a montage],” he said. “It was 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. 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 decided to create something strange, just to see if we could do it. And then a lot was read into it—a lot more than probably exists. I think we achieved perfect ambiguity.”
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Click the video below to listen to the Eagles perform Hotel California (2013 Remaster).
The writing is credited to Don Felder, Don Henley, and Glenn Frey—although Joe Walsh came up with the dual-guitar descending arpeggio at the ends of the song, he did not get writing credits. The song was awarded the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1978. The Eagles have performed “Hotel California” on stage more than a thousand times.
Find out more background details about the song from the Professor of Rock. Click the video below…