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by Grandma Roses - my avatar is my real dog on July 13th, 2006
Among other opinions :
Don Henley: "We were all middle-class kids from the Midwest. Hotel California was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles.
from http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1121
by davoomac on July 17th, 2006
There are so many different opinions on this ranging from:
Satanism, drugs, alcohol, addictions, jail time... the list goes on.
Heres the right answer:
The song really isn't about anything according to Glenn Frey. His quote from a radio interview a few years back was: "we were listening to a lot of Steely Dan records at the time and were impressed with the way that they could make 'junk sculpture' lyrics about nothing and make them work into a song."
The song is a great narrative tale about decadence (pink champagne) and mysticism (a spooky dungeon-like house) and even botany (the smell of colitus!), but it certainly has no realm in fact.
Don Felder brought the rough guitar track to Henley/Frey and asked them if they could do anything with it. This is unusual in that songs by them were typically written the other way around. It serves as an interesting note that further proves that they did some serious ad-libbing and probably got the booze and drugs flowing before they wrote this song.
The album on the whole is all about the southern California lifestyle at that time (Life In The Fast Lane, Last Resort) and shouldn't be looked at in any other way.
Here are some resources on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_California
http://www.inthe70s.com/generated/lyricsmeaning.shtml
http://experts.about.com/q/Eagles-449/Meaning-song-Hotel-California.htm
http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/hotel.htm
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1121
by jangobean on July 17th, 2006
I also thought it was about heroin addiction
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Comments
Excellent answer! :)
by Answers101 on July 15th, 2006
Excellent, I think I read that somewhere on the net.....
by guizmo40 on August 12th, 2006
That was a great link, interesting reading, BR
by Yeahwell... on November 3rd, 2007