I’ve already pointed this out several times during this column, but I had to give plenty of safe choices the axe when writing this list.

I already mentioned Stevie Wonder failing to make the cut for my best list, but he wasn’t even the biggest snub I made when writing this list.  In 1977, Fleetwood Mac, on the verge of breaking up after all five members were involved in breakups or divorces, released their all-time classic album Rumours.  It wasn’t just any classic album, it sold only about 40 million albums and spawned four hit songs, three of which were eligible for today’s countdown.  None of them will be appearing on this list.

Guys, I know… I like Rumours a lot.  I think every song on that album is good.  It’s just… none of them were among my ten favorite songs of the year.  I tried putting “Dreams” at number 10 thinking that there was no way to ignore the album, but couldn’t justify the pick because it simply wasn’t worth it putting a song I didn’t love as much as ten others on this list.  

The list goes on and on.  Steve Miller Band released arguably their signature song, “Fly Like An Eagle,” this year as a single.  I nominated it for the best list, but it was cut before I got to the honorable mentions.  To be truthful, I would have probably given it more points had “Space Intro” been part of the full song.  Also of note was Aerosmith and one of their biggest hits, “Walk This Way.”  That song was one of my first cuts when narrowing down the list of nominees.  I previously mentioned “Somebody To Love” by Queen got the axe, and Kansas didn’t even get nominated for “Carry On Wayward Son.”

And to all of you people who are now screaming at me regarding my lousy and crappy taste in music- GUYS!  GUYS!  Relax.  I may have removed a lot of easy picks from the 1977 best list.  But I wasn’t going to leave out this one.

“Hotel California” – Eagles

#1 peak (May 7, 1977)
#19 year-end, 19 weeks on chart

Guys (and gals), we’ve reached a monument in the annals of popular music.  When I mentioned in the Star Wars entry that another “too big to leave out” song was coming later, this was the song I was referring to.  While there can be debate regarding why the songs I listed earlier in this list shouldn’t be here or how the decision to pass up easier, more famous songs can be justified, there’s no debate on “Hotel California.”  It has gone down as one of the greatest rock songs of all time, regardless of hit status.  And that makes this task infinitely difficult for me, because I don’t know how to put down “‘Hotel California’ is a great song” in a way that hasn’t been explained before.  I’ll try, but I can’t promise you anything.  Deep breath…

By the time we got to 1977, Eagles (after listening to a passage from Steve Martin’s autobiography Born Standing Up as a teenager, I’m adamant: It’s Eagles, not The Eagles) had four consecutive top five singles from their previous albums On The Border and One Of These Nights, including two number ones: “Best Of My Love” and “One Of These Nights.”  However, they were entering a period of uncertainty after lead guitarist Bernie Leadon left the band.  After replacing him with Joe Walsh, they headed to Criteria Studios in Miami to work on a new album that would steer the band away from their country rock roots and towards a more hard rock-leaning direction.  Oh, the days when you could actually challenge your listeners and score a 2x-Diamond selling album.  Needing a big hit to meet expectations after the smashing success of another 3x-Diamond selling album, Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), Eagles stumbled across their next megahit when one day at a rented house in Malibu Beach, Don Felder began playing the chords that became “Hotel California.”

Glenn Frey has stated that both him and Henley wanted “Hotel California” “to open like an episode of The Twilight Zone.”  Which, musically… it doesn’t.  The Twilight Zone theme song opens with its haunting four note guitar riff and ominous clarinet and horns, while the opening to “Hotel California” sounds like it’s straight out of a wind blowing across the desert.  Of course, with it being their biggest song, it backfired beautifully.  I don’t think many songs, if at all, capture the essence of their opening lyric as Don Felder’s 12-string guitar matches the opening “On a dark desert highway…”  The moment the opening Bm-G flat-A-E-G-D-Em-G flat chord progression begins, the first image that comes to mind is a tumbleweed blowing across the road in the middle of Monument Valley.  As with so many moments that will be coming on the song, there is no way the intro could be improved upon.  It has reached its final form.  

I don’t think I need to tell anyone that the guitar on this track is great.  Glenn Frey’s chicken scratch rhythm guitar surprisingly works really well on this track, considering we’re talking rock and not disco.  Joe Walsh’s lead guitar work is melodic and sharp.  Then Felder and Walsh begin playing dueling guitars throughout the track, and the magic happens.  The twin guitar lead on the second verse is just an appetizer of what’s to come, specifically the guitar solo.

Do I even need to discuss the guitar solo to this song?  I mean, everyone’s put it down as one of the greatest guitar solos of all time.  The only real perspective I can discuss with this solo is discussing the melodic guitar solo versus the fast guitar solo and how the former may actually be better.  So many rock guitar solos, especially in the rare instances they happen these days, seem to go for speed, without realizing there’s nothing truly memorable about the solo.  They are technically impressive, yes, but does any part of it stick?  Think about some of the greatest guitar solos of all time.  David Gilmour’s guitar solo on “Comfortably Numb,” quite possibly my pick for the greatest solo of all time, isn’t that complicated once you break it down.  It’s just so massive, so powerful in its execution and how it works with the song.  And that’s what we’re getting on “Hotel California.”  I can’t think of a guitar solo with so many quotable guitar parts, possibly ever.  Don Felder’s opening slurs and bent notes in the first frame of the solo.  The way Joe Walsh’s second frame just slowly expands and reaches for the sky.  Felder and Walsh’s downward slides and Walsh’s sped up F#/E notes on the third frame.  And of course, Felder and Walsh’s twin lead on the final segment.  It isn’t overly complicated what they’re doing, it’s several pentatonic scales and the final segment consists of the arpeggiated chords we’ve been going through for most of the song, on the first three strings.  But it’s so melodic, so tight, so wonderfully played that… would you rather have anything else?

The problem with analyzing the music and guitar to this song is I’m not providing you with any new information.  “Hotel California” has great guitar work… but everyone knows that.  Today, we need to dig deeper.  Personally, I need to avoid taking the easy way out and just discussing how the record sounds.  In other words, we need to discuss the lyrics.

“Hotel California” is probably one of the ultimate examples of a popular song not being about what’s being stated at face value.  Just like how “Born In The USA” isn’t about American pride and much like how “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” actually isn’t about LSD, “Hotel California” is using its metaphor of the titular hotel to discuss quite a myriad of subjects, most notably, the growth of excess and greed in the music industry.  But that’s just one part of the song.  Glenn Frey claimed that the genesis of “Hotel California” was “We decided to create something strange, just to see if we could do it,” while Don Henley has stated that the song is about the “loss of innocence.”  There are even individual lines in the songs that don’t really relate to the song’s thesis, they’re just about random parts of Eagles and their daily lives: the opening line of the second verse is about Don Henley’s recent breakup with Loree Redkin, while the “they stab it with their steely knives” lyric is a favor to Steely Dan, who gave Eagles a shoutout on “Everything You Did.”  

To this day, I don’t have a clear picture specifically what this song’s going for, but I do have a few ideas.  The “loss of innocence” appears to be based on the opening verse to the song.

There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
“This could be Heaven or this could be Hell”

From what I’m gathering, this lyric seems to justify that Eagles joined the music industry as a necessary price to become successful.  The preceding lyric of “my head grew heavy and my sight grew dim,” implies that they wouldn’t be able to survive without this exchange, with the choice being to be placed under someone’s thumb or suffer.  The music industry presented Eagles with a wide range of opportunities they would never have had had they not signed, but also exposed them to a world of decadence they would partially succumb to.  During the making of Hotel California, Eagles decamped at Criteria Studios in Miami, among the most famous studios of the day (not only was Hotel California recorded here, but also The Bee Gees’ trilogy of smash hit albums Main Course, Children Of The World, and Spirits Having Flown, as well as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours).  When they complained that Black Sabbath were too loud rehearsing for their own album next door, they countered by dousing their recording studio with cocaine (dang it, Eagles!  I was trying to lay off the crack references!).  Not to mention the excess of their recording sessions.  “Hotel California” took 33 separate edits on the master tape to complete, and sessions for their follow-up album The Long Run took so long that it was jokingly referred to as “The Long One.”  Eagles were succumbing to the world of excess and temptation that was occurring around them, and “Hotel California” is self-aware of it.  The message of “Hotel California” is simple: take part in the excess or fail.  Well, that explains to me what the closing lyric is about after all these years:

You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!

Sure as heck isn’t about trying to get out of a hotel.

But the more I thought about “Hotel California” in preparation for this entry, the more I thought of it as a criticism not just about the music industry, but where it was at the time and what it was promoting.  Not sure if you’ve heard of it (if you haven’t, where have you been during the past 80+ pages?) but in 1977 there was this genre called disco.  I’ve mentioned that 1977 isn’t really the best disco year, as while there were numerous classic disco songs that got big this year, the genre wasn’t at its peak yet.  Then Saturday Night Fever happened, and overnight The Bee Gees became the biggest act in the business and everyone was trying to join in on the party at Studio 54.  Eagles were staunchly anti-disco, as even though the band had a number one hit with disco elements (1975’s “One Of These Nights”), no one in the band liked it.  Their next album would feature “The Disco Strangler,” a song that was mocking disco and its popularity.  Lucky them it was released at the end of 1979, when disco’s plane was rapidly spiraling downward after the explosion caused by Steve Dahl and his Coho army.  But to get back on topic, “Hotel California” is straight-up a takedown of the culture it was promoting and the overexposure it was about to receive.

How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

This line has to be a reference to a disco.  All it’s doing is moving the setting from a dance club to a courtyard to match the hotel theme.  And the “some dance to forget” line is being used to illustrate that America wasn’t in the best place in the 1970s.  In the seventies alone, we lost a war, underwent multiple gas shortages, went through several economic recessions, and saw one of our presidents resign in disgrace after wiretapping his political opponent.  Eagles saw disco and the current pop trends as nothing more than hollow distractions, used to prevent people from understanding reality.

So I called up the Captain,
“Please bring me my wine”
He said, “We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969”

Aside from the error that wine is fermented and not a spirit, this line to me demonstrates the true point of “Hotel California.”  The song is a state of where Eagles were by 1977.  While Eagles were based on the tried and true formula of writing their own songs and playing their own instruments, they had seemingly become the only sane men in an increasingly pop-oriented world.  The 70s may have been the decade that laid out the road map for classic rock radio for decades to come, but the decade marked a changing of the guard from rock to R&B and disco.  And in the 80s – the first decade where image really played a role in determining music superstars – it was only going to get harder for Eagles from there.

But in making a tripped-out excursion cursing out the era of excess they were living in, Eagles made their masterpiece.  “Hotel California” has endured, and while not all disco was bad, the disco songs that were formulaic and based on selling records over quality have faded into the background.  And there are so many reasons why Eagles slayed their nemesis and marked a rare victory for rock over disco during the time frame.  But the fact they went for a completely cryptic and meaningful storytelling experience shows a testament to effort and a drive for quality that still stands today.  “Hotel California” is so thought-provoking, so powerful with how it sucks in the listener for a 6 minute journey.  It may be overplayed to death with over 1 billion Spotify streams to its name, but there’s a reason for it.  No song from 1977 has a better solo, of any instrument, than Felder and Walsh’s guitar solo.  No song has as many quotable lyrics.  When people go back in time and try to understand what makes rock music so great, “Hotel California” remains one of the titans of the genre.  

UP NEXT: And it still isn’t even the best rock song of the year.  What could be better?  Umm…

BONUS: William Hung with a cover of “Hotel California.” It is… something.

SOURCES

McLaughlin, Katie. “Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ At 35: Still The ‘Perfect Album.’” CNN 27 June 2012. Web. 7 August 2022 https://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/26/showbiz/fleetwood-mac-rumours/index.html.

“RIAA: Eagles’ Greatest Hits Certified 38x Platinum, Passing ‘Thriller.’” Associated Press 20 August 2018. Billboard. Web. 7 August 2022 https://www.billboard.com/pro/riaa-eagles-greatest-hits-certified-38x-platinum-passing-thriller/.

Runtagh, Jordan. “The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know.” Rolling Stone 8 December 2016. Web. 7 August 2022 https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-eagles-hotel-california-10-things-you-didnt-know-111526/.

Crowe, Cameron. “Conversations With Don Henley and Glenn Frey.” The Uncool August 2003. Web. 7 August 2022 http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/the-very-best-of-the-eagles/.

Chords From: Tillekens, Ger. “Locked Into The Hotel California: Or, Expanding the Spanish Progression.” Soundscapes.Info October 2006. Web. 7 August 2022 https://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME09/Locked_into_the_Hotel_California.shtml.

“Hotel California By The Eagles: What Was It Actually About?” BBC 22 August 2018. Web. 7 August 2022 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45274174?SThisFB.

Sullivan, Steve. Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volume 2. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. Pg. 135-37. 7 August 2022. Information gathered from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_California#cite_note-sullivan-14.

Iommi, Tony. Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven And Hell With Black Sabbath. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2011. Print. 7 August 2022. Information gathered from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_Ecstasy.

Buskin, Richard. “The Eagles ‘Hotel California’ Classic Tracks.” Sound On Sound September 2010. Web. 7 August 2022 http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep10/articles/classic-tracks-0910.htm.

Felder, Don. Heaven And Hell: My Life In The Eagles (1974-2001). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. Print. Pg. 199. 7 August 2022. Information gathered from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Run_(album).

Soeder, John. “Don Henley Gets Into The Spirit Talking About ‘Hotel California.’” The Plain Dealer 2009. Print. Pg. T14. 7 August 2022. Information gathered from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_California#Themes_and_interpretations.

IMAGE SOURCES

Booing crowd GIF from Tenor

Album cover from The 13th Floor

Photos of Eagles from Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone