THE Story in THE Song THE Eagles Hotel California

THE STORY IN THE SONG THE EAGLES HOTEL CALIFORNIA 1977

This song blows me away every time I hear it. There is a superb overlap of horror story and commentary on Los Angeles despair and decadence throughout. The song also has some of the best instrumental guitar riffs of all time.

LA has always been a Venus Fly-Trap for dreamers, a town where waiters and bar-staff dream of a break into film, music, modelling, fame, etc. Most end up on the fringes, never leaving, never admitting that their dream is never going to be fulfilled. It is a city of living ghosts.

The song begins with a weary traveller driving along a desert road and coming upon a mysterious hotel in the night. He isn’t planning to go there – he is passing through on route elsewhere.  

A girl leads him to his motel / hotel room by candlelight, and he hears voices whispering from the rooms on the corridor. The voices welcome the newcomer, and praising the hotel establishment.

The narrator is instantly infatuated with the girl, a reflection of the American Dream, or a ghostly apparition. The Hotel microcosm of the US state is reminiscent of The Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s novel, The Shining, issued in the same year. The narrator notices that the girl has lots of admirers and boyfriends and drives a Mercedes-Benz, probably a gift from someone she has seduced. The boys seem sad and dance the night away, torn between remembering where they came from and trying to abandon their past.

The narrator calls room service and asks for wine, only to be told that the label he has ordered hasn’t been served since 1969, the time when the sixties dream of free love perished, the very instant of time the Hotel California seems trapped by.

The traveller is freaked out by the sensual decadence of the Hotel, with its mirrored ceilings, and constant supply of ‘pink champagne’. He sees the dining facilities where the meat the hotel guest’s stab at with their knives refuses to die no matter how much they cut into it. The image is of futility and self-harm, a constant attempt to progress with getting into the acting, singing world, but ending up no nearer than ever before. California, (hotel, state, and mind-set) becomes a Limbo, a trap.

The narrator tries to get out of the hotel but a doorman prevents him. He is told that while he can ‘check out’, he will never be able to actually leave. The indication is that even death is not the end at the Hotel – its haunted decadence and broken dreams are pinned there forever.

Arthur Chappell