Check Out, Never Leave
The Eagles did not receive the kind of critical recognition they felt they deserved (and, in retrospect, absolutely did deserve) through the 1970s. Somehow, too many critics felt they were a sellout Flying Burrito Brothers, or a too-slick Poco. Gram Parsons slammed them, but then he slammed almost everyone else attempting to fuse country music and rock and roll. The press understood Jackson Browne, who was stylistically very similar and certainly cut from the same denim-and-cheese cloth, but Browne had a political edge that lined him up with the hipper, cooler acts of the day. Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Lowell George, and Harry Nilsson, for example, had street credibility; Bruce Springsteen was blue-collar rock and roll and always a critic’s darling. But Bread, America, and the Eagles were considered lightweight—a huge misconception, in the case of Frey’s band. Then, while Henley, Frey & co. were working on ideas for what would become Hotel California, rock and roll went through a ground-level revolution.
New York, New York
The New York Dolls (whom Frey had famously dissed back in ’72) were breaking down social, gender, and musical barriers, upsetting the rock-and-roll establishment, and creating a movement. In the U.K., the pop world was shocked by the outrageous and anarchistic Sex Pistols as a new music emerged from the streets. Punk was becoming significant in both America and Europe. The minimalist, “anyone can do it” philosophy radically challenged the accepted wisdom of what defines musicianship within the boundaries of rock and roll. Punk was homemade, raw, and spontaneous. It was, on the surface at least, the polar opposite of slick, smooth studio bands like Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan—and, yes, the Eagles.
The Write Stuff
In the shape of Don Henley and Glenn Frey, however, the Eagles had a secret weapon. Their songs were as good as anything in rock and roll in the ’70s, and in Henley they had a writer who was a wry and increasingly experienced observer of his world, and a sharp social commentator. Henley had lived through personal and professional turmoil, and he experienced it on a micro and a macro level. He and the Eagles were America; they had moved quickly from the warm cozy idealism of the 1960s to the chilled, steely self-indulgence, excess, and materialism of the 1970s. The Eagles’ shared experience was vital. They had all migrated from small-town America to the vice capital of the world, Los Angeles.
Not only did this album sell a cool sixteen million copies in America, its three hit singles (“New Kid in Town,” “Hotel California,” and “Life in the Fast Lane”) were all radio classics, all very different, and all showed Henley, Frey, and the rest at the absolute top of their game.
For all Hollywood’s magic and wonder, there was a tangible taste of despair and darkness blowing down Sunset Boulevard. Like novelist and hypocrisy-buster Nathanael West in the 1930s, Henley lived and breathed the dangerous air in Los Angeles, at once drawn to and repelled by the sin, the excess, the hedonism, and the pursuit of pleasure. Henley’s intellect fought against the narcissism of being a rock star in a world where “no” just doesn’t exist. He loved it and he hated it. And it was that conflict, tied to Henley’s gift of expressing astute social observations in three-minute pop songs, that gave the Eagles a chance to stay relevant, despite the revolution happening down on the streets in cities around the globe. Whether 1970s critics would buy into Henley’s concept or savagely pillory him for his pomposity and hypocrisy was never the point. Henley had opinions to air, and as he has proved quite adeptly many times during his long career, he will have his say, one way or another.
On the Record
Fittingly, since the album was going to focus on California and L.A. as a metaphor for the United States, much of the recording was done in Hollywood, at the Record Plant. But the Eagles also agreed to do some sessions in Miami (where Bill Szymczyk made his home) at the legendary Criteria Studios.
With the band hot off a hit album, their record company spared no expense in recording facilities or studio time. This was the era of massive and luxurious recording studios that housed bands and their too-large entourages as they spent hours “creating” in the studio. Just like the world around them, the recording process was indulgent and excessive, especially in contrast to the way “independent” records were being made in the punk and new wave scenes of New York, Los Angeles, and London. The Eagles were products of their environments, and they simply adopted the studio culture of the day.
It was loose—in terms of taking the time to get a riff or a lick correct—and relaxed enough for plenty of substance breaks, but never did any of the band members forget about making music of the highest possible order. That was why they were a band: it was what the Eagles did.
Time was split pretty evenly between Miami and Los Angeles. It was a “bits and pieces” album, as befits a group containing several perfectionists. Someone would come in with a title or a riff; ideas would be kicked around. Melodies would be worked on and finished in the studio, and then words written and vocals added at the next block of sessions. They would work for a month at a time in Miami or Los Angeles, with several weeks in between to perfect lyrics.
Mexican Reggae
It was Felder who invented and developed the original musical idea that became “Hotel California.” Brought into the band for his audacious slide-guitar skills, the other Don was an accomplished all-round musician who felt he could throw different musical textures and ideas into the Eagles mix: a crucial role as they set about finally breaking ties with the country-rock tag that the majority of the band believed had kept them locked into a past that they had never been entirely comfortable with.
That summer, Felder had found himself a beach house in Malibu, and one fine California day, while enjoying the weather and spectacular ocean view, he picked up a twelve-string acoustic guitar and began expressing his relaxed contentment with some chiming chords. Liking what he heard, he recorded the chord progression on the small TEAC four-track recorder that he kept set up and ready for inspiration. With the basic chords down, he added bass and a drum-machine beat before layering more twelve-string guitar on the top, bouncing tracks around on the recorder. “When I came up with the ‘Hotel California’ progression,” he told Gibson.com in 2010, “I knew it was unique but didn’t know if it was appropriate for the Eagles. It was kind of reggae, almost an abstract guitar part for what was on the radio back then.”
Felder made some cassettes of the song and gave a copy to each of his bandmates. Some time later, Henley made a phone call to Felder to let him know that he really liked the “Mexican bolero” tune. “I knew what track he meant,” Felder told me. Then Henley set about writing the lyrics that would cause quite a stir, both positively and negatively, as the “Hotel California” saga played out in America.
If any track proved that the Eagles had been wise to bring in both Felder and Walsh (and that’s not to say that Bernie Leadon could not have played at the same level, had he stayed around longer), it was “Hotel California.” With its breezy acoustic intro, cod-reggae beat, and atmospheric, cinematic imagery, the song is a departure from their country/bluegrass past. And when Felder and Walsh launch into the twin–lead guitar passage, it’s immediately obvious that the Eagles had morphed into a more intense, more dynamic, but still multi-layered musical machine. And magically, all of them, despite the intensity of nine months in the studio, are playing at a creative peak that few would be able to reach again. It really is the Eagles’ finest moment.
The lobby of the Lido Hotel in Hollywood, as featured on the back cover of Hotel California.
Twin Peaks
To record the twin-guitar outro, producer Bill Szymczyk had Felder and Walsh set up to play in the control room, so they could hear everything that came out of each other’s guitars. They improvised and created on the spot, a technique Szymczyk refers to as “search and destroy.”
It was a career highlight for the producer, as he told Sound on Sound magazine in November 2004. “Just overdubbing all those leads was a basic two-day process, and man, what a ball that was. They’re both great, great players, and the two of them were on fire.”
Don Felder discussed his interplay with Joe Walsh in an interview with Gibson.com in August 2010: “Joe and I had great respect for each other to step back and have the courtesy to allow the other player to play and that’s really something you learn over the years. It’s something that you do between two guitarists and also with the keyboard player, so everyone has an area where they shine and then step back and take a supporting role. Both guitarists have to dance together and have the grace to allow each other the space. Joe and I did it from the start; it was very easy to play with Joe.”
Felder was surprised when Henley told him at the record’s playback party that his bolero song was going to be the first single from the album. It was hardly formatted for AM radio, where hit singles lived and breathed. It was more of an FM, album-track sound. After all, the song was antithesis of a commercial radio hit. It had challenging lyrics, an unusual tropical sound, and, with its brilliant but extended guitar solo, was way too long for radio. Felder was happy to be wrong, of course. “It had a two-minute guitar solo on the end, it wasn’t really rock and roll and the drums stopped in the middle,” he told me. “I was really happy to lose that argument and be proven wrong. But Don’s instincts on that track were just brilliant.”
There was no hiding the serious intent behind the Eagles’ new album as it launched at the end of 1976. “Hotel California” was a culmination of everything Henley and Frey had been cooking up for the past couple of years, and it was a great representative of the whole album. “We figured it was time for another concept album,” Frey told radio presenter Redbeard, in a 1992 episode of In the Studio. “Not a ‘cowboy’ concept album, but the dark side of success, the underbelly of Hollywood and L.A. Someone described it as dark songs from paradise.”
Henley also talked about Hotel California being a concept album when interviewed by ZigZag magazine in 1976. The motive, he said, was looking at America as it celebrated 200 years as a nation: “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 a little bicentennial statement using California as a microcosm of the whole United States, or the whole world, if you will, and to 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.’”
But while many marveled at the song’s sound and message, others whispered that it was too close for comfort to “We Used to Know,” an old tune by Jethro Tull. This was the band the novice Eagles had supported on several road dates on their first tour as a band, as Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull later told Songfacts.com: “We didn’t interact with them very much because they were countrified laid-back polite rock, and we were a bit wacky and English . . . [but] they probably heard us play the song, because that would have featured in the sets back then, and maybe it was just something they kind of picked up on subconsciously, and introduced that chord sequence into their famous song ‘Hotel California’ sometime later. But, you know, it’s not plagiarism.”
The Internet is filled with intellectual and pseudointellectual analysis of the musical basis for the Eagles lifting the song from the British prog-rock pioneers. It would have been totally innocent and so very easy for Felder to have heard Tull play the song so many times on those shows back in the early 1970s, and for it then to have filtered into his musical memory. Except that Felder would have had to have been in the audience, or backstage, since he didn’t join the Eagles until 1974. He was of course friends with Bernie Leadon, and perhaps he was with the band when they all heard Tull play that distinctive chord progression. Asked whether he was familiar with the song during promo interviews for his 2012 album Road to Forever, Felder said he did not know the song but did recall that Jethro Tull was the band that had a guy with a flute. Or maybe, as many musicians will attest, there are only so many chord progressions, and sometimes several songs will have the same chords. Check out Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory,” Pink’s “F**kin’ Perfect,” and Rihanna’s “California King Bed.” Same four chords for all four songs.
There is no filler on Hotel California. If the title track was an eerie warning about America’s social issues, “Last Resort” was the beginning of Henley’s lifelong fight for environmentalism and ecology. As Frey told Redbeard, “It was the first time that Don took it upon himself to write an epic story and we were already starting to worry about the environment . . . we’re constantly screwing up paradise and that was the point of the song and that at some point there is going to be no more new frontiers. I mean we’re putting junk, er, garbage into space now.”
Frey’s vocals on his and J. D. Souther’s “New Kid in Town” recall the early, classic Eagles country sound, but the production is miles away from Glyn Johns’ more delicate treatment. This time around, the country-rock feel is tough and focused, allowing Felder’s fiery guitar to impress and Frey to steal the show. Similarly, new boy Joe Walsh shines on his “Life in the Fast Lane.” The track features a heavy guitar riff by Walsh, with lyrics that are a bit on the edgy side. Frey explained the song’s genesis in the 2013 film History of the Eagles: The Story of an American Band. “I was riding shotgun in a Corvette with a drug dealer on the way to a poker game. The next thing I know we’re doing ninety. Holding! Big-Time! I say, ‘Hey man!’ He grins and goes, ‘Life in the fast lane!’ I thought, ‘Now there’s a song title.’”
Felder and Walsh combine powerfully again on “Victim of Love,” a track that began with guitar from Felder before Souther, Henley, and Frey worked on lyrics. It’s a feisty song, but more than its sonic boom, it’s an early indicator that cracks were beginning to appear within the Eagles camp. Felder wanted to sing lead on the tracks, and was allowed to cut several versions. He was unhappy—from a democratic, “team player” point of view—that Henley later cut a new vocal that was used on the final record. But while it is understandable that Felder would feel passed over, Henley was the superior vocalist, and was 100 percent committed to Hotel California’s sound. Quality control outweighed any notions of fair play or sensitivity to Felder’s ego.
Talking of vocals, Henley’s work on “Wasted Time” is proof indeed that he had developed into one of the finest interpreters of lyrics in the business. The song is a low-key drinking ballad, somewhat akin to “Desperado” but tinged with a world-weary sadness that only experience could have delivered with such integrity.
“Try and Love Again,” written and sung by bassist Randy Meisner, is another heart-wrenching ballad from a man who had proved himself capable of consistently high-quality musicianship via bass and backing vocals, and who could chip in with songs of his own that were as good as anything on any album. He had reached the top with his performance on “Take It to the Limit,” but this song is almost as moving, and almost as memorable. In fact, it may be more memorable, since “Try and Love Again” was Meisner’s last contribution to the Eagles catalogue. He rode off into the Nebraska sunset after the Hotel California project, worn down by the pressures of fame and success and exhausted by the internal personal politics.
Hotel California is the seminal Eagles album. The band had learned their craft well, developed as players and musicians and writers, and knew their way around the recording studio. Aware that they had a lot to live up to, after One of These Nights, they were inspired rather than daunted by the pressures of the challenge. According to Frey, he and Henley were supremely confident in their songwriting and musical abilities at that point. They were on a roll.
The album was released in December 1976, and was at #1 by January 15, 1977. It kept hold of the top spot for eight weeks and went on to sell more than sixteen million copies. “Hotel California” is one of the most recognizable songs in America—and almost every other country in the world. The first measure of a classic is whether other artists cover it, and in this case, hundreds have given it a go, from Nancy Sinatra, the Killers, and Rascal Flatts to the Gypsy Kings, Wilson Phillips, and Marilyn Manson.
Nielsen SoundScan has recorded that the Eagles’ Mexican reggae tune is played on the radio somewhere in America once every eleven minutes. And that’s almost forty years since its release. And the album continues to make headlines. To celebrate the Eagles’ six-night residency at the refurbished L.A. Forum in 2014, a large rendering of the Hotel California LP was constructed to sit atop the venue. The rotating structure was made of vinyl, with a 470-foot diameter, and turned at a rate of seventeen miles per hour.