![]() ![]() "I guess I'd have to say 'Hotel California,' although I feel it important to point out that Glenn contributed some very important lines to that set of lyrics," he said. Henley told Rolling Stone the song's oft-debated lyrics - which feature a nod to Steely Dan ("steely knives") within its winding, symbolic journey through the titular hotel - are his finest work in that arena. It was close enough to the demo to make Don happy.” We had to call my housekeeper in Malibu, who took the cassette, put it in a blaster and played it with the phone held up to the blaster. “I said, ‘What do you mean it’s not right?’ And he said, ‘No, no, you’ve got to play it just like the demo.’ Only problem was, I did that demo a year earlier I couldn’t even remember what was on it. “Joe and I started jamming, and Don said, ‘No, no, stop! It’s not right,'” Felder told MusicRadar in 2012. But Felder's home-recorded demo loomed large over the recording session - almost to a fault. I think I was driving down Benedict Canyon Drive at night, or maybe even North Crescent Drive the first time I heard the piece, and I remember thinking, "This has potential I think we can make something interesting out of this."įelder, Henley and Frey are all credited as writers on the finished track, which the band fleshed out with a reggae-styled guitar pulse, melodic bass, booming roto-tom fills and harmonized guitar leads. There may have been some Latin-style percussion in there too. It was a simple demo – a progression of arpeggiated guitar chords, along with some hornlike sustained note lines, all over a simple 4/4 drum-machine pattern. "None of them moved me until I got to that one. "Felder had submitted a cassette tape containing about half a dozen different pieces of music," Henley told Rolling Stone. And Henley and Frey knew the song had potential to develop from that quirky first draft into something more majestic. The song - which won a Record of the Year Grammy in 1978 - dates back to Felder's instrumental four-track demo, an intriguing 12-string jangle fleshed out with bass and drum machine. ![]() The centerpiece of both the album and the band's entire catalog, Hotel California's title track is six-and-a-half minutes of interwoven guitar riffs, stacked vocal harmonies and mysterious, macabre imagery. ![]() Decades later, the band is still mining the work and playing the album in its entirety. We tell the Story Behind Every Song on Eagles' 'Hotel California' below. In the years since, Hotel California has remained Eagles' signature work. "I think they’d left about a pound of cocaine in the board.")ĭespite the distractions, the quintet (Henley, Walsh, guitarists Glenn Frey and Don Felder and bassist Randy Meisner) wound up reaching a pinnacle, both commercially and creatively: Pieces like the epic title track revealed a more artful side to their collaborative songwriting, and sales continued to swell (eventually carving out another slot on the all-time Top 5). ("Before we could even start recording, we had to scrape all the cocaine out of the mixing board," recalled Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, who were conjuring a much heavier atmosphere at Criteria. Teaming again with producer Bill Szymczyk, who helmed its two previous albums, the band split time between the Record Plant and Miami's Criteria Studios - adhering to its usual level of decadence along the way. And it's fascinating to glance back at how this cultural lightning strike originated from a perfect storm of personnel (swapping out country-minded guitarist Bernie Leadon with blues-rock maven Joe Walsh), technology (the luxurious mid-'70s production, captured in part at Los Angeles' famed Record Plant Studios) and timing (following a steady stream of early hits, up through their 1975 greatest hits compilation, still one of the highest-selling albums ever). Hotel California has become an essential part of that mythology since its release in 1976. "There's a built-in mythology that comes with that word, an American cultural mythology that has been created by both the film and the music industry." "I've learned over the years that one word, 'California,' carries with it all kinds of connotations, powerful imagery, mystique, etc., that fires the imaginations of people in all corners of the globe," singer and drummer Don Henley told Rolling Stone in 2016.
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