Before listening:
Eagles:
The band was founded in 1971 by Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. It has its roots in the American Folk- and Country music. From the beginning on their singles and LPs were very successful. Some of the famous singles at that time were ‘Desperado’, ‘Tequila sunrise’ and ‘Best of my love’. The LP ‘Hotel California’ with the identically named single was published in 1976. Both of them, single and album, reached the first position in the US-charts.
The LP stayed in the US-charts for 107 weeks and has been sold more than eleven million times. And also after that the eagles had a lot of success. In spite of that the band was dissolved for over ten years, until, in 1994, the LP with the title ‘hell freezes over’ appeared. Since the foundation of the band some of the members had left it; there came Don Felder, Joe Walsh and Tim B.Schmitt for Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner.
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Structure:
As you can see, the song consists of six verses and to refrains with some little variations.
Two verses are followed by one refrain.
The structure of the song is unusual; there’s a very long intro (about one minute) and also a quite long outro with a solo.
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Music:
The music is influenced by harmony elements of the Spanish guitar music, the so called ‘Andalusian cadenza’ (which is also used in the Flamenco)
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Text:
At first, the text may seem to be quite simple. But when you take a closer look at it you can find many hints for a deeper sense.
The plot of the text:
A husband and his wife is driving on a desert road in California. The man falls asleep for a short moment and an accident happens in which his wife is killed (stanza 1)
The man is between life and death for some days.
In this time he sees the images that are described in the sequel of the song.
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deeper meaning of the text:
The text expresses doubts of a society that is addicted to pleasure. According to the text, this obsession may lead to a psychical addiction many people can’t free from.
The songwriter also uses at least one word play. ‘Mercedes bends’ may sound like the car type, but ‘bend’ stands for some state of intoxication, that can arise when someone is diving very deeply.
And maybe there are some more word plays.
For example, in ‘We haven’t had that spirit here…’ the word spirit may change the sense of this passage, because it may mean some kind of alcohol as well as something like mood or soul
There are for example some phrases which give a hint that this Hotel California is a meeting place of a occult sect.
Mainly in the last second verses there are mentioned some typical characteristics:
mirrors on the ceiling
the ritual killing of an animal in the master’s room
The psychical addiction the man and the other guests can’t escape from
The text still leaves a lot of space for interpretations.
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I think no matter if one likes the type of music or not, it’s a very interesting song. For me, the thing I like most is the uncommon text. It gives you the feeling that the more you work at it, the more puzzles and hints appear to you, so you can be sure you haven’t found everything out, yet.
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