Hotel California (1976)
Hands up anyone over thirty who does not recognise that album cover? It's about as iconic really as
Dark Side of the Moon,
Nevermind or
Thriller: you simply can't mistake it. And in 1976 the Eagles made this album one of the biggest selling of not only that year, but all time, cracking off another three hit singles from it, two of which went to number one. It's an album that has really no flaws; every track on it is perfect and I never tire of listening to it all the way through. It's also the first Eagles album made without Bernie Leadon and the last to feature Randy Meisner. Leadon is replaced by Joe Walsh, who would figure in the rest of the Eagles' short-lived career. Let's face it, when your album is nominated for album of the year and you can only be pipped to the post by the classic
Rumours, well, that says it all really, doesn't it?
A concept album (their second) about generally the excesses of living
la vida loca in hedonistic California, and by extension to the rest of America and the world, the album is full of songs that could easily have been hits had they been released, and there is not one moment of filler as far as I'm concerned. We open on the title track, as dour, lonely acoustic guitar takes us in and the sound of wind blowing over the desert is the backdrop to the allegorical tale of a wanderer in the desert, who, unable to go any further that night, spots the enigmatic Hotel California in the distance, and goes up to the door. There he meets a beautiful woman, who welcomes him in, but soon he discovers that things are not as they seem. In a sort of pastiche of drugs trip and horror story, the narrator comes across crazy characters - “She's got a lot of pretty pretty boys that she calls friends” - odd practices - “In the master's chamber they gather for the feast. They stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast - and eventually,
Hammer-style horror as he is told, as he tries to escape, “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave!”
Henley sings this, and his voice is perfectly suited to its laidback style developing into a sort of lazy panic as the full story unfolds and the horror of what he has stumbled into reveals itself. It's a song too that showcases the talents of all three guitarists - Frey, Walsh and Felder - and of course the by-now familiar vocal harmonies. Perhaps the best part about it though is the long guitar fadeout which is a duet between Felder and Walsh, one of the most famous fadeouts on any song I believe. In total it runs for more than two minutes and is instantly recognisable from the first note.
Another hit single is “New Kid in Town”, which I've never understood but it appears to refer to a town who lavish attention on each new arrival and pair him up with their local beauty. Seems a bit
Twilight Zone-ish to me, but is probably a metaphor for the transient nature of fame and the fickle attitude of fans, or some damn thing. It's driven on a really nice organ line and moves along at a breezy pace, and again I'm sure you know it as it was a hit single, so no need to describe it to you. It's Frey's turn to take the vocal, and it will be seen that on this album this is in fact the only song he sings, Henley taking the lion's share, with just the one farewell performance from Meisner and one effort from Walsh. It's Henley though for the next track, yet another hit, the rocky “Life in the Fast Lane”, where the Eagles return to the harder style of songs like “Midnight Flyer”, “James Dean” and “Earlybird” and show they can rock out when required. A song obviously about succumbing to the many temptations of being rich and famous, the drugs, the women, the fast cars, I suppose it could be seen as a cautionary tale. At its heart though it's just a great rock song, and was probably interpreted backwards by many who lived, or wished to live, this lifestyle.
These are all great songs, but by the time the album was out a while we had all heard them on the radio, and for me,
Hotel California really only begins to shine properly from here on out. Any other album, you have three hit singles and you can expect to hit a nosedive, the comedown after the party. Not so with this album. “Wasted Time” is a beautiful, aching ballad about two friends who realise they must separate for the good of each other, as Henley sings “You can get on with your search baby, and I can get on with mine”. Lovely piano opens the song, and there's a sumptuous orchestral accompaniment to the chunky guitars, while it slips into an orchestral instrumental continuation of the song in “Wasted Time (reprise)”, the last instrumental the Eagles would ever record until their reunion twenty years later.
Then we kick up for “Victim of Love”, where sharp, snapping guitars drive the song in an unsympathetic song about a woman who uses men (what a surprise) and Henley arches an eyebrow and asks “You say he's a liar, and he put out your fire. How come you still got his gun in your hand?” Certainly a heavy slice of misogyny in the line “Victim of love, it's such an easy part, and you know how to play it so well.” Walsh's guitar comes into its own here, smashing and punching and delivering some true almost hard rock to the usually laidback Eagles style, but after that it's down the gears to the end of the album, as “Pretty Maids All in a Row” comes in slowly and gently on a fading in piano line and gives Walsh his only vocal on the album. It stomps along on a powerful, dour drumbeat from Henley, with some beautiful close harmony backing vocals again and a lush little synth line closing it out. Meisner then gets to bow out on “Try and Love Again”. Whether he's saying something here about leaving the Eagles or not I don't know, but it's one of his best songs and runs on a great ringing guitar, with a jumping solo and perhaps an indication of his feelings prior to leaving the band when he sings “It might take years to see through all these tears”.
The finale would have to be something special, and it is. “The Last Resort” would have to go down as the Eagles' first real eco-song, bewailing the using up of natural resources and the greed of businessmen and developers. “Built a bunch of ugly boxes” sings Henley in disgust, “and Jesus! People bought 'em!” Another soft little piano introduction precedes Henley's vocal, the music building up in layers line by line, and we hear pedal steel for the first and only time on the album (a backhanded compliment to Leadon?) with the orchestra coming into full flower about halfway through. Then it all drops away to the simple piano line that began the song, the strings slowly swirling in and meeting the keys, as we head into the finale of one of the longest songs the Eagles had, to that point, recorded. It ends, and pretty much is, a depressing and sad song as Henley asks “Who will provide the grand design? What is yours and what is mine? There is no more new frontier; we have got to make it here. We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds in the name of destiny and in the name of God.”
The song finishes on a muted, powerful, mournful strings outro that fades away, as if to rob us of any hope that there might be a solution, that the destruction of our planet and by extension ourselves is avoidable. A dark, bitter ending, it kind of bookends the album with the title and opening track, showing how twisted and warped ambition, greed and self-absorption can be. It leaves you with a sour taste in your mouth, a feeling of guilt, but at least in my case anyway, a feeling of having participated in something that is almost a spiritual experience.
TRACK LISTING
Hotel California
New Kid in Town
Life in the Fast Lane
Wasted Time
Wasted Time (reprise)
Victim of Love
Pretty Maids All in a Row
Try and Love Again
The Last Resort
This was the album everyone had, even if you weren't an Eagles fan or even into rock or Country music. Like Meat Loaf's
Bat Out of Hell, it was just one of those albums. You
had to have it in your collection. It was, as I said earlier, both the peak and the beginning of the end for the Eagles' career. Where did you go from here? There was only one way. And as infighting began to tear the band apart, they would release one more album, garner a few more hit singles before they split, as we thought, forever.
Rating:10/10