"Hotel California"

Life is sad, life is a bust, and when you need a way out you head for the hotel. A few chose the hotel California. Although taken literally my many, if not most, the Eagles' song "Hotel California" has been dissected dozens of varied ways. Some believe it to represent a brothel, others think it rehab. Many say it stands for the music business, while still others claim it's all about the dope. What thoughts are believed true and fact will be tried soon hereafter.

When this tune, "Hotel California" was penned, the 60s were over- dead and in the ditch. The fallout, however, remained. Dylan was cooped up in Greenwich Village; The Beatles had broken up; the Rolling Stones were on a hiatus; and Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Brian Jones were dead at twenty-seven by 1970. Woodstock was legend and history as well, and the Stones' concert at Altamonte Hall ended in death and disaster. Led Zeppelin had just upped the ante by creating a blues injected "hard rock" and the Jackson Five were going away. Pink Floyd was leaving psychadelia for progressive rock. Dylan with The Band and the Byrds killed psychadelia with country rock. By the time the Eagles come around, the arena had changed. The city had new buildings and the meadow had different and stranger flowers. Record companies needed new acts and more money. Most of all, in a world before Bowie and Springsteen and Metallica, the people need stars.

The Eagles enter the hotel riding on fame from the desert of unknown musical acts. The hotel, in this case, represents the baggage of the music industry. Pictures that would supposedly line the hallways, show Woodstock and Beatlemania at their height. The hotel becomes something forever associated with the guest sleeping in a room. "You can check out anytime you like/ but you can never leave," is analogous to the burden of leaving the lime light, but always being recognized and hounded by press attempting to bring you down, or up. The "beast" possibly refers to the music contract or one's manager.

On the other hand, the hotel could be representative of a brothel. The girl who "lit up a candle/ and showed me the way," is the call girl or the prostitute; her "pretty, pretty boys" are her regulars. as such, the Captain is the pimp. When the author asks the Captain to bring his "wine," is the query of asking for his usual girl; but the response, "We haven't had that spirit here/ since nineteen sixty-nine," shows that she's left (for a new life? Is this a reference to "House of the Risin' Sun," or maybe Janis Joplin?) and gone away. The "pink champagne on ice" represents the head prostitute at the brothel, and the mirrors on the ceiling show that the author is looking down on himself. "Sweet summer sweat" might be the perfume used by the call girl. The "beast" in this case, is the addiction to the sex, or perhaps the call girl herself.

Drugs are often targeted as the subject behind many rock 'n' roll songs; for "Hotel California" this may very well be the case. The hotel is perhaps a rehab center, thus identifying the "voices down the hall" as voices in his head tempting him to break and go back to it. The Captain, then in this case, is the drug dealer. The "pink champagne" is his drug of choice. This calls to mind, the blue acid of Woodstock fame, which is simply put, bad acid. Pink and blue are colors often used in cotton candy, that tastes good but is dangerous in some cases. Does the "pink champagne," when paired with the blue acid of Woodstock, become the Yin and the Yang of drug use? The girl who "lit up the candle/ she showed me the way," might represent the friend who introduces the author back into drug use. The "beast" is the allure of drugs themselves.

"Hotel California" is a hit song by the Eagles. At it's surface, it details the story of man stopping at a hotel, that he can't leave from. Alas! The story goes much deeper, on dozens of different levels: from dope and booze, to call girls and prostitutes, and from fame to insane asylums! All things aforementioned equally show what the hotel is. All ideas, however, rest in the hands of the reader and listener, poetry is synonymous with beauty: it rests in the eyes of the beholder.