Hotel California by the Eagles: What was it actually about?

 

The band has two of the top three selling albums in history / Image: GETTY IMAGES

 

Michael Jackson's Thriller has been overtaken as the all-time best-selling album by the Eagles' greatest hits, and that band's album Hotel California is at number three.

 

What is the spooky title track all about, asks Alan Connor.

 

Rock stars of the 1970s were not kind to hotels.

 

In Life's Been Good, sometime Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh describes the process bluntly. "I live in hotels, tear out the walls," he confesses: "I have accountants pay for it all."

 

Full Story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45274174

The only bit I know is that “ they stab it with their steely knives “ is about their long time rivalry with Steely Dan .
The rest is a pleasant ditty about some mythical Hotel somewhere !

A nice song, let’s not ruin it by dissecting it !!

Agree with AD.

It's art, like all art, what YOU get out of it, and how YOU interpret it, is the key.

If you still really need someone else to figure it out for you, you can have these discussions on various lyrics websites anyway...

 

 

Hotel California is a good song, but if anyone wants to analyse an Eagles song they should look at The Last Resort.

 

"They called it paradise. I dont know why. Call some place paradise: kiss it goodbye."

They had just moved to California and were staying at the Beverley Hills Hotel in LA which inspired the song. I guess they were taking alot of drugs at the time

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2 hours ago, KittenKong said:

Hotel California is a good song, but if anyone wants to analyse an Eagles song they should look at The Last Resort.

 

"They called it paradise. I dont know why. Call some place paradise: kiss it goodbye."

The Last resort,my favourite Eagles song.Does not get any better and still very accurate.

This is what happens when you get a British news outlet trying to explain the underlying meaning of the California-rooted Eagles band and their Hotel California album -- a not very good or apt article.

 

I'd put the answer more succinctly -- the album overall is about, as per the lyrics of one of its songs, "Life in the Fast Lane" Dude!!! -- both for the band members themselves and for the California lifestyle at the time.

 

Here's what Don Henley once said about it using a lot more words of explanation than me, per Wikipedia:

 

Quote

 

Henley said of the themes of the songs in the album:

“

They're the same themes that run through all of our work: loss of innocence, the cost of naiveté, the perils of fame, of excess; exploration of the dark underbelly of the American dream, idealism realized and idealism thwarted, illusion versus reality, the difficulties of balancing loving relationships and work, trying to square the conflicting relationship between business and art; the corruption in politics, the fading away of the Sixties dream of "peace, love and understanding."[1]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_California_(Eagles_album)   In other words, a lot of it relating to what it was like to be a member of the Eagles band during that era. Along with doing a lot of drugs.

Edited August 23, 20187 yr by TallGuyJohninBKK

I had hair just like the guy on the left.

3 minutes ago, NCC1701A said:

I had hair just like the guy on the left.

Now you wish you had hair.

Maybe they went to Paris and stayed at the Hotel california there, i did. 

15 hours ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

The only bit I know is that “ they stab it with their steely knives “ is about their long time rivalry with Steely Dan .
The rest is a pleasant ditty about some mythical Hotel somewhere !

A nice song, let’s not ruin it by dissecting it !!

 

So you dissect it to the best of your knowledge for us then tell us not to dissect it?!?!?  Why would you do something in a public post then tell everyone, "Let's not do what I have just done here."  
 

40 minutes ago, NCC1701A said:

I had hair just like the guy on the left.

You look better with short hair Jack.

Holy crap! I just looked at the picture again - was Frank Zappa in the Eagles?

 
So you dissect it to the best of your knowledge for us then tell us not to dissect it?!?!?  Why would you do something in a public post then tell everyone, "Let's not do what I have just done here."  
 

“ to analyse and interpret minutely “

Please learn to understand what you are actually reading before launching into a unprecedented attack , otherwise it only makes you look a bigger fool than you already are ( probably ) !!

A hotel is not home. In the 60s it seemed as if everyone in California was from someplace else. They were unsettled, passing through. The state was a giant hotel. Was this what they were singing about? Who the hell knows. Just an observation from one who, very slowly, passed through.

On 8/23/2018 at 8:24 AM, KittenKong said:

Hotel California is a good song, but if anyone wants to analyse an Eagles song they should look at The Last Resort.

 

"They called it paradise. I dont know why. Call some place paradise: kiss it goodbye."

The Paradise Hotel in Udon Thani is still long remembered. Very long goodbye.

An interesting turn of events I heard about Hotel California was a change of wording ordered by the record company. Originally, the second line which now says, " Warm smell of colitas " was written by Frey as, "Warm smell of cannabis"  Frey supposedly told the record company colitas was a flower. It was Mexican slang for buds of grass.