"Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air..."
While current(ish) music is the general theme around here, I'll stick up a 'classic' track at weekends. Something that would make my All-Time Favourite Playlist. And, because these songs are inevitably going to be (over)familiar, I'll have a bash at a bit of context...
So, Hotel California is one of those mythical songs that everyone thinks is about Vietnam, or Aleister Crowley's mansion (because of the "they just can't kill the beast" line) or a Christian church that was abandoned in 1969 and taken over by Satan worshippers and that you can see Nicky-Boy himself in the window on the album cover (smudge, bottom-left)...
But it's more of a lament for the death of the hippy era (1969 seems about right), with writer/singer Don Henley reflecting on his culture's loss of innocence, courtesy of the rapacious LA music biz.
It's Henley world-weary and bloated after a decadent decade of groupie-collecting, dollar-hoarding and drug-hoovering. More broadly, it's a bittersweet flex of regret at the way heads-down hedonism gnaws away the soul.
A face-slap for ol' William Blake, then. The road of excess doesn't lead to the palace of wisdom. It dirt-tracks out to some whitewashed flophouse where the palm trees sway seductively but the interiors are hollow. And once you step inside that world, there's no going back ("You can check out any time you like/But you can never leave...").
And if that's not bleak enough for ya, have a go on my favourite Don Henley solo song about sudden-death anxiety...
[MP3] The Eagles - Hotel California
[MP3] Don Henley - New York Minute
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