Hotel California

This article is about the song Hotel California . For the album of the same name see Hotel California (album) .

Hotel California
Eagles
publication	February 22, 1977
length	6:30
Genre (s)	Rock music
Author (s)	Don Felder , Glenn Frey and Don Henley
Publisher (s)	Asylum Records
album	Hotel California

Hotel California is a song by the Californian band Eagles . He first appeared in December 1976 on their fifth album of the same name; the release as a single with the B-side Pretty Maids All in a Row followed on February 22, 1977. An acoustic unplugged version was released in 1994 on the live album Hell Freezes Over Live .

contents

A tired traveler stops at a remote hotel and decides to stay the night. He is assigned his room and soon realizes that the hotel residents are a tight-knit community. Although they appear hospitable, they are prisoners of their addictions , which they indulge in willlessly. Once you have entered the Hotel California, you can check out at any time, but you can never leave it again.

interpretation

In Hotel California , the supposed ideals of the American Dream turn out to be a nightmare on closer inspection . Specifically, it addresses the decadence and decline of the American way of life in the 1970s.

The Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles is shown on the album cover . However, the band members denied several times that the song refers to a real Hotel California. The Chateau Marmont Hotel , where numerous rock stars stayed , is also named as a possible source of inspiration . The Hotel California in Todos Santos , Mexico, is also a possible source of inspiration for the song. Donald "Don" Henley, however, also explicitly denied that this was the case; it was rather the success of the song that prompted the hotel owners at the time to create this connection retrospectively. In the meantime, the Eagles had sued the hotel management for continued false statements about this. The legal dispute has, however, been set with a settlement.

The ambiguous text has given rise to various interpretations. The Hotel California is said to be a hippie sect, a community of Satanists around Anton Szandor LaVey or a closed psychiatric facility from which no escape is possible.

Another interpretation sees the Hotel California as a metaphor for drug addiction . Just like this one, the hotel seems to cater to your every need, but you can't leave it, just like you get addicted to drugs. The lines “ And still those voices are calling from far away, Wake you up in the middle of the night ” illustrate the addiction that leaves the protagonist no longer in peace. The same thing is indicated in the last sentence of the song: “ We are programmed to receive, you can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave! Don Felder, co-writer of the song, wrote in his autobiography that Hotel California is always what people want to see in it.

Cover versions

Hotel California has been covered several times . A flamenco version of the song by the Gipsy Kings can be heard in the movie The Big Lebowski , in which the main character expresses his dislike for the Eagles . There is also a reggae version by Majek Fashek . Stefan Hallberg wrote a German version in 1977, which appeared as a single and on some samplers. Jürgen Drews sang this version at Ralph Siegel's request, but in a shortened version. She appeared on the album Barefoot Through the Summer . This version was again covered by Wiglaf Droste (CD Mariscos y Maricones , 1999). An a cappella version is available from the Cuban band Vocal Sampling . The Finnish band Eläkeläiset released advertisement, Baby! a humppa version of the song. It bears the title Hotelli Helpotus . A French version called L'Hôtel de Californie was released in 2005 by the Australian band The Cat Empire . In 2007 Otto Waalkes performed his fun version Das Lokal by Karl and Sonja . Also known was the version of the English band Alabama 3 from the 2000 album La Peste . In 2016 a post-hardcore version of the band OurLastNight was released .

Trivia

• All over the world there are hotels with the name Hotel California , some of the walls of which are decorated with quotes from the song. Neither of these houses has anything to do with the genesis of the song title.
• To this day, the question is still debated whether the piece was written a few years earlier by the British rock band Jethro Tull as We Used to Know . So far, however, no copyright claims have been asserted, and Ian Anderson , the head and main author of Jethro Tull, also counters the plagiarism allegation with the assessment that it is just a very similar chord progression with different timing and in a different key.

Awards

The song became number one on the charts in Canada and the United States. In Germany it was ranked 6th, in Switzerland 2nd and in Austria 13th on the charts. In 1978 the Eagles received the Grammy Award in the Record of the Year category for the piece . In 2004, the music magazine Rolling Stone voted it 49th on its list of the 500 best songs of all time .

The guitar duet of the song by Don Felder and Joe Walsh in 1998 by the magazine Guitarist voted the best guitar solo of all time and in 1998 by Guitar Magazine at number eight of the Top 100 Guitar Solos .

Awards for music sales

Country / Region	Awards for Mu-sik-ver-käu-fe (country / region, Award, Sales)	Sales
Denmark (IFPI)	platinum	90,000
France (SNEP)	gold	200,000
Italy (FIMI)	2 × platinum	100,000
Japan (RIAJ)	platinum	100,000
United States (RIAA)	Gold (Physical) + Platinum (Digital)	4,000,000
United Kingdom (BPI)	platinum	600,000
All in all	2 × gold 6 × platinum	5,090,000

Main article: Eagles / Music Sales Awards

literature

• Michael Behrendt: I don't like Mondays. The 66 biggest song misunderstandings . Darmstadt 2017, pp. 152–156.

Web links

• Hotel California at Discogs
• 'Hotel California' for sale . BBC News , February 20, 2001
• Bernd Harder : Is it true that the songs “Hotel California” and “Sympathy for the devil” have a satanic background? In Skeptiker , issue 2/2006, of the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Parasciences
• Claim: The Eagles song “Hotel California” is about Satanism - Status: False . snopes.com, May 24, 2007, updated April 24, 2014.
• Benjamin Maack: 40 years of satanic messages: Rock'n'Roll in reverse . one day , March 19, 2009.
• Tom Noga: In search of the Californian dream: a visit to the Hotel California . Deutschlandradio Kultur , May 21, 2009

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 45cat.com
2. ↑ allmusic.com: Hotel California
3. ↑ Where the Eagles found their "Hotel California" . Seitennotiz.de, accessed on January 19, 2016.
4. ^ 'Hotel California' for sale . BBC News , February 20, 2001, accessed January 19, 2016.
5. ↑ Maxime Donzel, Géraldine de Margerie: Super Cocktail - Stars in the Hotel . Arte website, October 22, 2014.
6. ^ Jochen Scheytt: Eagles: Hotel California . Pop songs and their backgrounds, August 14, 2015, accessed January 19, 2016.
   Fax from Don Henley, August 4, 1997. Todos Santos Pages, accessed January 19, 2016.
7. ↑ BBC News, May 2017: The Eagles sue Hotel California, accessed April 4, 2018
8. ↑ BBC News, January 2018: The Eagles settle Hotel California legal battle, accessed April 4, 2018
9. ↑ Kenneth Stoffels: Minister Links Rock, Sympathy for the Devil. The Milwaukee Sentinel , September 28, 1982.
10. ↑ Don Felder, Wendy Holden: My Life with the Eagles 1974-2001: Through Heaven and Hell . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2008, ISBN 978-3-85445-295-9 .
11. ↑ Otto Waalkes - Karl and Sonja's bar, 2007
12. ↑ Jethro Tull on YouTube
13. ↑ From Guitarworld.com: Did the Eagles Get the “Hotel California” Chords from Jethro Tull?
14. ↑ billboard.com
15. ↑ Grammy Winner search ( Memento April 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), www.grammy.com, accessed April 5, 2007.
16. ↑ Best Solos. rocklistmusic.co.uk
17. ↑ Rich Appel: Revisionist History, Holiday Edition: Mariah Gets a 'Christmas' Gift, Wham! Gets the boat. In: Billboard . December 10, 2014, accessed March 7, 2017 .