EAGLES: Hotel California (ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

In 1976, the United States celebrated its bicentennial but the American dream took a serious blow in the wing with the Vietnam War just over. California became a lupanar for show biz stars, and the Beach Boys stopped singing about recklessness and sandy beaches. At that time, The Eagles were masters of the country-folk scene, selling millions of records and going on longer and longer, more and more exhausting tours. The infernal rhythm, the tensions between the members of the band and the drug abuse got the better of country guitarist Bernie Leadon who threw in the towel the previous year, replaced at the last minute by Joe Walsh.

The band entered the studio in March 76 and only came out eight months later, giving birth to a mythical album and the ultimate hit 'Hotel California' which finally gave the record its name. A worldwide success, this song is however at the beginning far from being the "slow that kills" that it became and tells the story of a guy who enters a detoxification center and will not be able to leave it. The song is largely copied from Jethro Tull's 'We Used to Know' (Ian Anderson, no grudge, refuses to talk about plagiarism but rather about "identical chord sequences"). But there is this melodically perfect solo, one of the ten most beautiful ever composed for electric guitar. Or rather these solos because Don Felder and Joe Walsh follow one another and then harmonize their guitars for two minutes of absolute feeling.

Mainly composed by the two founders of the band, Don Henley, drummer and singer and Glenn Frey, singer and guitarist, the album alternates Rock ('Life in The Fast Lane', 'Victim of Love') or country ('New Kid in Town', 'Try and Love Again') and melancholic pop ballads ('Wasted Time', 'Pretty Maids All in a Row'). The Eagles sing about lost paradises, decay and contradictions in America that the war has shaken and deeply divided.

The album ends with perhaps their most beautiful song, 'The Last Resort', about the white man's plundering of Indian lands and his propensity to destroy his environment. Don Henley's song is moving and the end of the last verse refers, in a magnificent double entendre, to the famous album cover showing the photo of the Pink Palace in Los Angeles at dusk, a disillusioned metaphor of the decline of the American myth. "They called it Paradise, I don't know why, You call some place Paradise, kiss it goodbye". - Official website

EAGLES

HOTEL CALIFORNIA

ELEKTRA ENTERTAINMENT

ROCK