Hotel California Introduction

In a Nutshell

"Hotel California" is a ballad, an anthem, and a mouthwatering masterpiece by America's greatest band whose observations on the shallowness of pop culture in the '70s and '80s are painfully relevant today. Its signature intro played in everything from high strung electric guitar to cold-room acoustic to bongo drums for fans of elevator music signal a warning which has grabbed attention since the song was released as part its namesake album. It remains one of the more recognized songs in all of rock and it's the Eagles' signature song.

The ballad tells a removed, hauntingly-distanced story of a guy driving along the highway, getting tired, and stopping at a hotel that ends up being a pleasure palace with a sinister side. At least that's the physical part of what's happening: The deeper take revolved around the band's experiences with the self-servicing narcissism they encountered rampant in Hollywood. 

Self-styled "green" people from intellectual heartland of America (blue-collar, bald-eagle respect for this country), they were appalled by the lies, deceit, and trickery that was an integral part of contemporary rock-and-roll culture. 

California was itself a hotel with many Midwesterners and East-coasters taking planes, trains, and buses looking for gold, only to find easy success not easy. The emigrating throngs grew more desperate and then...left. California itself was a hotel from which interlopers came and went like it was a revolving door. Under this frame, "livin' it up" at the Hotel California takes a dark caste as the would-be stars and starlets came to the "hotel" with an already-polluted goal and dream: shallow pleasures. 

From this twisted set of goals and sense of self-worth, there was forever a bond, an emotional anchor. And while players in the Hollywood shuffle needed external stimulus to feel good about themselves in order to assuage their own insecurities, the visit to the hotel was doomed—and doomed to repeat itself. 

"You can check out any time you want; but you can never leave." Sodom? Meet Gomora. You're here because you need to be. Read on if you dare.

About the Song

Shmoop Connections

Darkness isn't a new literary concept. You'll find it just about everywhere Shmoop shmoops.

"Hotel California" is a cautionary tale. It's also a commentary on the many people who likely ticked off the band in their travels. It's also the best kind of whining; it points out a systemic problem in a society so caught up in its own short term successes that it has created its own prison out of what was supposed to be a joyous holiday escape. Ever see the movie, The Boost? It's in the zip code.

Yes, there's the proverbial warning about the excesses of the rock-and-roll lifestyle, but there's more here. The Eagles lament the downside of a (touring) life built on easy money, testosterone cars, fast women, and tons of booze and drugs. It was their life. But they think it was "everyone's" life—at least, everyone whose lives revolved around the world they saw as Hollywood.

Are you bound by drugs? By your own insecurities? By your need for attention and love? What gets you out of the Hotel? A sense of self-worth, self-respect?

And there's the nescience: a $5 word for the science of nothingness, a kind of intellectual suicide that those who need the Hotel suffer. But as you listen to the song for the 487th time, you realize that the Eagles aren't suffering. They dont feel suicidal, at least not in the Hendrix cum Joplin, Morrison, and gang kind of way. The Eagles know exactly why the Hotel exists, who goes there, and why they need to go there...and they want no part of it. The song is a rebellion.

The Hotel California is this dark metaphor, a description of such a broken and low level of self-esteem that humans have become toys and nobody is real anymore. Rather, characters are ghostly reflections of their party personas. Remember Bon Jovi's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"? Map it with Entourage and you have the Hotel.

Eagles guitarist Don Felder, who wrote the tune for "Hotel California," has talked about how the song was inspired by driving into Los Angeles, filled with high expectations that were later disappointed. He said in an interview, "If you drive into LA at night you can just see this glow on the horizon of lights and the images that start running through your head of Hollywood and all the dreams that you have" (source). 

What happens when those dreams don't pan out? It's a theme that runs straight through American literature and history, the dark underbelly of the American dream. Tom Joad could tell you a thing or two about it. So could Jay Gatsby. So could the miners who went to the West for the California Gold Rush and never found the mother lode, or the immigrants who later found more hardship than fortune in American cities' overcrowded tenements.

And yet, even amidst all the hardship, the dream remained. However dark the message of "Hotel California" may be, we just can't stop humming the tune. It taps into something in all of us.

On the Charts

The album Hotel California reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart in 1977. Likewise, the title track, "Hotel California," was #1 on the American Billboard Pop Singles chart.

"Hotel California" won a Grammy in 1978 for Record of the Year.

In 2009, the song was certified digital platinum for having sold over 1 million digital downloads.

Rolling Stone ranked "Hotel California" #49 on its list of the top 500 rock and roll singles. It's also included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.