Eagles Hotel California

[Hideyplace]

I’m a big fan of Pandora as well.

Hotel California is one of my favorite songs. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know that the song is about drug addiction.

Thank you for the clarification. Someone recently asked me if it was about an asylum, and I didn’t know what to tell her.

 

[msammiem]

Always loved that song especially the acoustic version.

 

[z_0101]

Thank you for the clarification. Someone recently asked me if it was about an asylum, and I didn’t know what to tell her.

Don Henley has often said that it’s *not *a song specifically about drug addiction.

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I’m a big fan of Pandora as well.

Hotel California is one of my favorite songs. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know that the song is about drug addiction.

Hideyplace… which clarification?
Do you mean the non-drug, or the drug addiction version?
Perhaps you missed my post? Post#16

 

[DakiniArtist]

The 80’s had some great music in Miami Vice, Back to the Future, & Beverly Hills Cop.

Seek and Ye shall find.

Oh man. I so agree!

 

[Midwest88]

I like the song, but I find a few verses depressing.

My enthusiasm for The Beatles “In My Life”, though melodically beautiful and entrancing, has become more of a turn off. (So how many so-called lovers came before me, the supposed “true love”?) The lyrics of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” … Uber depressing. I do not see it as some motivational anthem.

 

[Hideyplace]

Hideyplace… which clarification?
Do you mean the non-drug, or the drug addiction version?
Perhaps you missed my post? Post#16

I was responding to Irish Cabbie’s post.

 

[Midwest88]

I posted a question but it was never put on the Forum & I never got an explanation.

I’ll ask it here :

On the Grammys, I heard a song called “Take Me to Church”…I was shocked to hear the words which were sexual and sacrilegious!

Any thoughts about this song ?

Yea, I brought it up a few months ago but received no response. Better yet, did you see the music video?

I think it’s one of those things if, that if you don’t listen a Top 40 station, or watch the Grammy’s, you’ll miss it despite it being rather mainstream with those under 30. I’ll make a thread about it - hopefully it’ll get some discussion going on.

 

[Muzhik]

Whenever I hear “Hotel California” I think of it as a Twilight Zone episode, where the person doesn’t know he is dead and in hell until he looks out the window and sees the police and the ambulance gathered around the wreckage of his car. “My eyes grew heavy and my sight grew dim…”

 

[retire_early]

I’m from the baby boomer generation and always found this song evil-ish and depressing-sounding. But sort of catchy music. Since I’ve always had trouble hearing the words to songs, I only caught some of the lyrics. Sounded spooky and creepy and dangerous. Not my lullaby tune, for sure.

 

[truetofaith]

I’m from the baby boomer generation and always found this song evil-ish and depressing-sounding. But sort of catchy music. Since I’ve always had trouble hearing the words to songs, I only caught some of the lyrics. Sounded spooky and creepy and dangerous. Not my lullaby tune, for sure.

I repeat what I wrote in an earlier post :

“I’m a musician and I like the arrangement & melody but the words bother me. A born again Christian told me the hotel was a satanic church.
I would like to play the song but I would only sing the words to the main theme.”

 

[2CaBeach]

Always loved that song especially the acoustic version.

Probably tied for my favorite concert of all time - Eagles at the amphitheater in San Diego.

 

[carmelitenovice]

@Midwest88, who wrote: “The lyrics of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” … Uber depressing. I do not see it as some motivational anthem.”

Never really thought of it, but you’re right, except for the catchy tune and the “Don’t Stop Believing, Hold on to that feeling…” (I apologize for the thread jack but also had to point out as a Michigan native that Steve Perry only found out in recent years that there is no “South Detroit” despite this song. South Detroit is really…

Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

Those of us who have attended their shows in Michigan would occasionally mutter (or, okay, shout) “Windsor!” at that point, though I don’t think the band ever noticed.

There, I feel better! Back to Hotel California!

 

[Lost_Sheep]

Some critics have suggested that Hotel California was about Devil Worship, though I never understood how someone could come to that conclusion.

 

[Muzhik]

@Midwest88, who wrote: “The lyrics of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” … Uber depressing. I do not see it as some motivational anthem.”

Never really thought of it, but you’re right, except for the catchy tune and the “Don’t Stop Believing, Hold on to that feeling…” (I apologize for the thread jack but also had to point out as a Michigan native that Steve Perry only found out in recent years that there is no “South Detroit” despite this song. South Detroit is really…

Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

Those of us who have attended their shows in Michigan would occasionally mutter (or, okay, shout) “Windsor!” at that point, though I don’t think the band ever noticed.

There, I feel better! Back to Hotel California!

Wait a minute … so if you grew up in the southern part of the Detroit metropolitan area, you magically become a Canadian? If you grow up in the northern part of the Detroit metropolitan area does that make you a Mexican, or a Floridian?

 

[StSentry83]

I repeat what I wrote in an earlier post :

“I’m a musician and I like the arrangement & melody but the words bother me. A born again Christian told me the hotel was a satanic church.
I would like to play the song but I would only sing the words to the main theme.”

There’s really no evidence of that. I think that rumor started right around the time you had that nonsense about reverse engineering where evangelicals were imagining messages that weren’t there. In this case, someone came up with the idea that Anton LaVey (founder of the Church of Satan) is depicted on the album cover or something, taking up barely a speck in some window in the background. There’s no reason to think that’s true.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

I find those songs soooo depressing,too.
I think they capture a sort of mid-late Seventies no man’s land…post-Sixties, the innocence is gone, Kennedy is shot and Watergate’s happened…Viet Nam…the Seventies were almost like a coming down from the high of the Sixties.
A weird, slow-motion, aftermath that is grey and undefined.
And, depending on how old you are…for me, these songs capture my teenage years which were like most teens-- full of angst and yearning.
When I hear the songs, I remember that angst and feel the yearning. It’s almost a sick feeling. And yet…and yet…I can’t not listen to the songs.

For me it’s the opposite. The Eagles and similar bands are who I listened to all through high school and college. With few exceptions, they invariably have positive associations. Oddly enough, I rarely listen to classic rock anymore.

As far as Hotel California goes, I wrote a paper on it for a literature class my freshman year of college, then “recycled” it into a much longer paper for a poetry class my senior year of college. I got an A for both papers which helped endear the song to me a bit.

 

[roseproject]

I’m a big fan of Pandora as well.

Hotel California is one of my favorite songs. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know that the song is about drug addiction.

I certainly didn’t know that Thanks for the info!

Also, the entire lyric for that song sounds like it would make for an interesting horror film ;3

 

[z_0101]

I’m a big fan of Pandora as well.

Hotel California is one of my favorite songs. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know that the song is about drug addiction.

So, let us get the information from the “horse’s mouth”

(click on the link for full context)
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.”

And here’s some more, from a recent '13 documentary:

Says Henley:
“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. Coming into L.A…”

Says Felder:

With Hotel California, I wrote all the music underneath it, and Don, Glenn and I would talk about concepts for the lyrics.
"Nobody in the band was from California. Bernie was originally from San Diego, but he wasn’t in the band ant that point.
So everybody had driven into Los Angeles on what used to be Route 66. And as you drive in through the desert at night, you can see the glow of Los Angeles from a hundred miles away. The closer and closer you get, you start seeing all of these images, and these things pounded into our heads: the stars on Hollywood Boulevard, movie stars, palm trees, beaches and girls in bikinis.
“Don came up with the concept for Hotel California, and once we had that foundation for the album, a lot of other songs came about. When you get into the Hotel California and you have a hit, you’re the new kid in town, and then once you have a great deal of success in the business, you start living life in the fast lane. Every once in a while, you start to go, ‘Is this all a bunch of wasted time, all the years we’ve sat in bars and turned into parties?’ So the concept came out of that framework.”

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I certainly didn’t know that Thanks for the info!

Also, the entire lyric for that song sounds like it would make for an interesting horror film ;3

Rose Project… it’s not about drugs… please follow the links above.