So, let us get the information from the “horse’s mouth”
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The Eagles Hotel California and Its Mystery
So what does the song Hotel California really represent or what is it about, you may ask? Besides the speculation of it being about Satanism there has been guesses at the theme representing insanity, drug addiction, temptation, and shallow relationships. **Members of the band won’t break the song out line by line to explain its meaning but overall say it is about the hedonism of the United States and the destruction of the Southern California music industry. **Don Henley, band member who wrote most of the song adds, “it’s basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about.”
In an interview with ZigZag magazine before the album’s release, Henley added “This is a concept album, there’s not way to hide it, but it’s not set in the old West, the cowboy thing, you know. It’s more urban this time…it’s our bicentennial year, you know, the country is 200 years old, so we figured since we are the Eagles and the Eagle is our national symbol, that we were obliged to make some kind of little bicentennial statement using California as a microcosm of the whole United States or the whole world, if you will, and try to wake people up and say, “we’ve been okay so far, for 200 years, but we’re gonna have to change if we’re gonna continue to be around.”
