Hotel California remains the Eagles' greatest mystery. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
"We are all just prisoners here / Of our own device" is a phrase that may come to haunt the three men charged with attempting to sell a stolen first draft of the Eagles masterpiece Hotel California.
Written by Don Henley, Don Felder and Glenn Frey, this seductive and mysterious six-minute epic was recorded by the Eagles as the title track of their 42-million-selling 1976 album Hotel California. As a single, it went to number one in America in February 1977, and over succeeding decades has never faded from public consciousness, heard everywhere from movie soundtracks to ragged performances by bar bands and buskers.
Its enduring popularity surely has as much to do with its sinuous rhythm, singalong melody and sensational twin guitar solo as its poetically ambiguous lyrics, but it is the latter that continue to inspire speculation. What really is the Hotel California? And why can you check out, but never leave?
During an early 80's satanic panic about the pernicious effect of rock music on the nation's youth, Wisconsin Reverend Paul Risley got some mileage from an elaborate interpretation of the song as a literal description of a deal with the devil. In this theory, the title referred to a San Francisco hotel purchased by American author Anton LaVey and converted into his controversial Church of Satan. LaVey's hedonistic cult was established in 1969, a date that appears in the lyric "We haven't had this spirit here / Since 1969" (the Spirit in this reading being a Holy one).
The good Reverend also got worked up about the "steely knives" used for a ritual stabbing of "the beast", although late Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey once admitted this was a jokey reference to contemporaries Steely Dan, as a quid pro quo for mentioning the Eagles in their song Everything You Did.
Not to be outdone, others have theorised that the song is about a drug trip (the initials The Hotel California can be acronymised into THC, a principal component of cannabis) or a cannibalistic orgy ("in the master's chambers / They gathered for the feast"). The titular Hotel has also been (mis)identified as Camarillo State Mental Hospital, which was shut down in 1997.
Don Henley, a former English and American literature student and the primary lyric writer, has dismissed such notions with typical brusqueness. "Some of the wilder interpretations have been amazing. It was really about the excesses of American culture and certain girls we knew." Henley's break up from girlfriend Loree Rodkin may well have inspired the gold-digger phrases "Her mind is Tiffany-twisted / She's got the Mercedes bends."
The track was originally conceived by guitarist Don Felder, who recorded an instrumental demo whilst living in a rented house in Malibu Beach. Its odd Latin rhythm got the attention of singing-drummer Henley, who gave it the working title Mexican Reggae. Felder (who later fell out badly with his bandmates and was fired from the reunited lineup in 2001) has noted that nobody in the Eagles was a native of California. He recalled the band driving into the state one night. "On the horizon, you could see the lights of LA from about 100 miles away as you're approaching for the first time. You have all these images in your mind: palm trees, movies stars, Hollywood boulevard. Henley said it would be a great idea to write this song about the concept of California, the excess of Hollywood and all that stuff."
Henley's principal songwriting partner Frey helped develop the theme of a tired driver pulling in for a rest stop and entering "a weird world of freaky characters" where he becomes "spooked by the claustrophobic feeling of being caught in a web from which he may never escape." Frey likened it to an episode from TV science fiction series The Twilight Zone.
But it was the thoughtful, introspective Henley who completed the lyrics that have beguiled generations of listeners. "We were getting an extensive education, in life, in love, in business. Beverly Hills was still a mythical place to us. In that sense it became something of a symbol, and the 'Hotel' the locus of all that LA had come to mean for us." He has also said "the song deals with traditional or classical themes of conflict: darkness and light, good and evil, youth and age, the spiritual versus the secular. I guess you could say it's a song about loss of innocence".
Presumably, all of this is explored in the original handwritten notes and lyrics at the centre of the latest controversy. The New York District Attorney's office has claimed the manuscripts were stolen from Henley in the 1970s.
"These defendants attempted to keep and sell these unique and valuable manuscripts, despite knowing they had no right to do so," DA Alvin Bragg asserted in a New York state supreme court indictment. The defendants will no doubt be hoping things turn out better for them that the song's unfortunate hero, trapped in a nightmarish vision of heaven and hell where "you can check out any time you like / But you can never leave".