FEATURE:
Groovelines
Eagles – Hotel California
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IN the next part of this feature…
I am going to spotlight a song from a female band. Today, I am investigating the most-famous song by the Eagles. Their fifth studio album, Hotel California, was released in 1976 – it celebrates its forty-fifth anniversary in December. I think its title track is one of the best songs ever. I will come to a couple of interesting articles soon but, first, some information from Wikipedia:
“Hotel California" is the title track from the Eagles' album of the same name and was released as a single in February 1977. Writing credits for the song are shared by Don Felder (music), Don Henley, and Glenn Frey (lyrics). The Eagles' original recording of the song features Henley singing the lead vocals and concludes with an extended section of electric guitar interplay between Felder and Joe Walsh.
The song is considered the most famous recording by the band, and in 1998 its long guitar coda was voted the best guitar solo of all time by readers of Guitarist. The song was awarded the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1978. The lyrics of the song have been given various interpretations by fans and critics alike, the Eagles themselves describing the song as their "interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles". In the 2013 documentary History of the Eagles, Henley said that the song was about "a journey from innocence to experience... that's all..."
The Eagles won the 1977 Grammy Award for Record of the Year for "Hotel California" at the 20th Grammy Awards in 1978.
The song is rated highly in many rock music lists and polls; Rolling Stone magazine ranked it number 49 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". It was named one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. At the induction of the Eagles into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, all seven former and present members of the band reunited to perform "Hotel California".
The song's guitar solo was voted the best solo of all time by readers of Guitarist magazine in 1998, and was ranked 8th on Guitar Magazine's Top 100 Guitar Solos.[38] The song was also included in the music video game Guitar Hero World Tour. It was ranked the number 1 in the list of the best 12-string guitar songs of all times by Guitar World magazine in 2015”.
There is so much to dissect and enjoy when it comes to Hotel California. Opening an album with a song that is six-and-a-half-minutes might not seem like the best idea in order to keep people interested! I feel many would have considered the Eagles to be a very different band prior to 1976. I know Hotel California took them in a slightly different direction; the title track was certainly more ambitious than anything they had put out before.
From Hotel Yorba to Hotel California, there have been songs written about different (somewhat unglamorous) locations. I have always wondered what the Eagles’ masterpiece is all about. The lyrics are so evocative and stunning. I often wonder what would happen if someone tried to make a music video about the song now – as Hotel California is so cinematic and begs for some classic scenes! I want to bring in an article from the BBC, where we get some more insight into a stunning track:
“The senior Eagles, Glenn Frey and Don Henley, quietly tolerated Walsh's destruction but when it was their turn to write about what life on the road meant to them, the result was much less literal - and it made an enormous fortune rather than costing a small one.
Don Henley had been playing with the phrase "Hotel California" for some time, but to become a song, it had to go through the regimented process the band had adopted by the mid-1970s. The Eagles were not yet at the point of communicating via lawyers, but they were referring to one another by surname.
Another Eagles guitarist, Don Felder, was tasked with recording instrumental snatches onto tape and submitting them to Frey and Henley in hope of their approval. He had been doing this at home in Los Angeles' Topanga Canyon, but while on tour he took a call from his wife Susan, who had recently given birth.
It was a short call: "We're moving." Relaxing in their garden, she had noticed that the blanket she was lying on with the baby was next to a nest of rattlesnakes. Susan and son flew immediately to a rented beach house in Malibu; Don joined them and that evening duly began recording a suggestion for a song.
A snake in an apparently idyllic garden is the kind of on-the-nose image that would have fitted right in with what his rhythm track was to become. The chords he strummed followed a pattern closer to flamenco than to rock, but played on the off-beat, which gave the song its working title of Mexican Reggae when Frey and Henley granted it the nod.
As for the words the pair added, they describe a weary traveller who's lured into a "lovely place" of grotesque characters: it's glamorous and creepy and it seems he can never escape”.
I want to end with an interview article from 2010. Sound on Sound went in-depth regarding Hotel California. They spoke with Producer Bill Szymczyk about the experience of recording such an epic and timeless track:
“Ostensibly, a song about a luxury hotel visit that crosses over to the dark side, but really an allegory about American materialism and excess — as well as the decadent LA lifestyle that many musicians experienced during the mid‑'70s — 'Hotel California' was a pivotal track for the Eagles.
At a time when punk was starting to explode and album‑oriented rock was all the rage, the song not only topped the US singles chart and scooped the Grammy for 'Record Of The Year'; it also established the theme of — and lent its name to — the Eagles' autobiographical, multi‑platinum LP that, courtesy of guitarist Bernie Leadon's replacement by Joe Walsh, saw the band make the transition from country rock to mainstream rock while achieving their greatest critical and commercial success. So, it's interesting that the track itself underwent three different versions before emerging in the form that everyone knows.
PHOTO CREDIT: RB/Redferns/Getty Images
"The first version we recorded was just a riff,” says Bill Szymczyk, who earned a 'Producer Of The Year' Grammy for his efforts producing and engineering the album. "However, once Don Henley began to write the lyrics, it turned out to be in the wrong key. So, then we recorded it in the right key with largely the same instrumentation and a smattering of lyrics, but after we'd developed the song a little more and Henley and Frey had fine‑tuned the lyrics, we came to find out the tempo was too fast. When we recorded it the third time, that was the charm.”
The first two versions of 'Hotel California' were recorded in LA, the third and final one was cut in Miami, and as with the rest of the album, the band members recorded live together in both studios.
"Meisner's bass was gobo'd off and I'd take it direct as well as through a small Ampeg amp,” Szymczyk recalls. "Henley, on the other hand, I tried to keep as open as possible, so I didn't use a drum booth. However, I did use iso booths for the acoustic guitars and there were gobos for the electrics. The miking all depended on what the song and the sound called for. I'd change the mics constantly, and so when people ask me, 'What mic did you use on that?' I have no clue at this point. The only thing that was consistent was a pair of Neumann KM84s that I discovered to be the absolute best setup on acoustic guitars. As far as the guitar amps went, it was a case of whatever worked.'
PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Dallen
"For the drums, like everybody else I'd put a [Shure] SM57 on the snare. Then there'd be [an AKG] D88 on the kick and either Sennheiser 414s or perhaps [Neumann] U87s on the snare — I'd change every now and then to see if something else sounded better, and as I've said, I'd use a total of eight or nine mics on the kit. For vocals, I'd use 67s and 87s.”
Although Szymczyk shared the Hotel California engineering credit with Allan Blazek, Bruce Hensal and Ed Mashal, those three men were actually his assistants.
"Having come up as an engineer and gotten stiffed on many credits, I made sure that everybody got credit on the records I produced,” he explains. "And as with all of them, the Eagles recorded together as a band on Hotel California. Remember, this was before the days of build‑a‑record, where you start with a click track and then do things piece by piece. We may have gone back and replaced a guitar or keyboard part, but my way of doing things was to record numerous takes, select the five or six best ones and use the very best parts from all that. So I did a lot of two‑inch tape editing, and I know for sure that on 'Hotel California' there were 33 edits on the two‑inch master.
"By the time we recorded the third version, we'd pretty much refined what we wanted and everything was set, including the arrangement and the tempo. I had a system where I'd pull all five takes off however many reels there were, and I'd put them all on a master reel. Then I'd cue it up and listen to all five intros and pick one; listen to all five verses and pick one; and then go back and physically lop it together. The band members would be there to pick things, and then, when I started editing, I'd make them go play pool.
“At this stage in their career, the Eagles were pursuing perfection, and in the process of editing I'd hear, 'Well, see if you can do that, Coach,' which was my nickname back then. This might refer to replacing one drum fill with another fill that was a little better, so there'd be an edit at the front and an edit at the end. That's the kind of perfection we were dealing with — the stuff people now do in Pro Tools every day. Still, it wasn't hard to retain my objectivity. To me, the objectivity and the creativity went into the actual recording of the five tracks, then I'd turn from a creator into an editor, before we then took care of overdubbing lead guitars at a later date.”
Mixed in Criteria's Studio C, Hotel California was released in December 1976 and spent a total of eight weeks atop the Billboard 200 en route to selling more than 16 million copies in the US alone. 'New Kid In Town' topped the singles chart in February 1977, followed by the title track that May, which shifted a million units within three months of its release”.
I wanted to discuss a song that I have loved since childhood. I play it now and then and I am always riveted! The lead vocal by Don Henley is tremendous. The guitar work from Don Felder and Glenn Frey is exquisite, as is the backing of Joe Walsh and Randy Meisner. After almost forty-five years, the song still makes people wonder and speculate. With a mixture of Rock and Reggae elements, Hotel California is both inviting/laid-back and exhilarating. It was clear, with the song and Hotel California album, the Eagles were aiming and flying very high. Not only did they achieve that; I think that album is their greatest work. That is thanks, in no small part, down to its…
SUBLIME title track.