For instance the last line – “ You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave! ” – …tells me that the artist are working for a label and they have contractual obligations so they can’t have their freedom.įurthermore, the chorus – “ Welcome to the Hotel California, Such a lovely place, Such a lovely face” is obviously a well-written sarcasm. I think Eagles did a brilliant job with the lyrics, exposing how evil, shallow and wrong this whole industry was at that time. Music started to be seen as a serious money-making business when the Beatles conquered the world so it was natural for the corporate side of music to keep on expanding and finding ways to get more and more money. By 1977, big companies were already investing millions of dollars and fighting for music domination.
We have to think about the time period too. Los Angeles was and still is the mecca of the music scene. Not that things have changed much since the mid-70s – music is a business and will always been seen that way. To me this song was always about the greed and depravity of the music industry and the wicked businessmen who ruthlessly control everyone and everything in the scene. The track tells us the exact opposite – LA is not a paradise and what happens underneath the lights is highly disturbing and definitely sinful. However, that may not be necessarily the case.
LA has always been seen as this beautiful, gorgeous place, full of opportunities, happy people and fulfilled desires. “Hotel California” is a cynical piece of art, telling us that the integrity of people and consequently the American dream are long gone and all we fight for nowadays is simply…money and fame. Everyone was simply obsessed with finding out what was the deal with that hotel (some people even thought it was all about drugs).īasically, what we have to understand is that every little word is a giant metaphor for losing sacred things in life like youth, humility, innocence and goodness and falling for corruption, immorality and selfishness. There have been many “wild interpretations” of the song, especially when it was first released back in 1977. Hotel California was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles.” – “We were all middle-class kids from the Midwest. – “It’s a song about a journey from innocence to experience.” – “It’s a song about the dark underbelly of the American Dream, and about excess in America which was something we knew about.” But it was also about the uneasy balance between art and commerce.” – “It was really about the excesses of American culture and certain girls we knew. Let’s trace back some of the things, officially stated about this track. The hotel itself could be taken as a metaphor not only for the myth-making of Southern California, but for the myth-making that is the American Dream, because it is a fine line between the American Dream, and the American nightmare,” said Don Henley in a 2013 documentary.ĭon Henley has actually given a lot of interpretations of this song, all of them somehow connected and adding to each other, following a similar theme. “On just about every album we made, there was some kind of commentary on the music business, and on American culture in general. For those of you who already know, you can just sit back and listen to the song!
I will briefly talk about the lyrics and how to correctly interpret them. I grew up with Eagles and even as a kid with quite limited English language skills, I could somehow sense that there’s so much more behind that generic title.
Of course, that is somehow understandable because the true meaning of the song is very well-disguised in clever words and genius metaphors. In a recent conversation I had, I was once again reminded that even though the popularity of the track is immensely high – on a worldwide level, the lyrics continue to remain misinterpreted, even from people who claim they are fans. This informative publication is for all the people who still, after all those years, believe that Eagles’ biggest hit single “Hotel California” (1977) is a song about a hotel…in California.