"Hotel California" as written by and Glenn Frey Don Felder....
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself
'This could be heaven or this could be Hell
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor
I thought I heard them say
Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year (any time of year) you can find it here
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget
So I called up the Captain
'Please bring me my wine
He said, "we haven't had that spirit here since nineteen sixty-nine
And still those voices are calling from far away
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say"
Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
They livin' it up at the Hotel California
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise), bring your alibis
Mirrors on the ceiling
The pink champagne on ice
And she said, 'we are all just prisoners here, of our own device
And in the master's chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can't kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
'Relax' said the night man
'We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave!
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself
'This could be heaven or this could be Hell
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor
I thought I heard them say
Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year (any time of year) you can find it here
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget
So I called up the Captain
'Please bring me my wine
He said, "we haven't had that spirit here since nineteen sixty-nine
And still those voices are calling from far away
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say"
Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
They livin' it up at the Hotel California
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise), bring your alibis
Mirrors on the ceiling
The pink champagne on ice
And she said, 'we are all just prisoners here, of our own device
And in the master's chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can't kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
'Relax' said the night man
'We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave!
Lyrics submitted by Demau Senae, edited by whoiscloud, Teampeeta254, Matilda Is Rad, SpongeBobForPresident2016, MegaManGaming
"Hotel California" as written by Don Henley Don Felder
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
all-lies.com/legends/media/music/…
Don Henley actually admitted publicly that he is a Satan worshipper.
The album's lyrics were designed to be vague to the outsiders. But it has a clear meaning only to the members of the cult. Perhaps, back then, they were not sure how public would react if they knew about the satanic church. But now, our world has become more liberal than ever, so they finally decided it is safe to reveal the truth.
I remember the day when I came up with the idea for the song:
"I had just leased this house out on the beach at Malibu--I guess it was around '74 or '75. I remember sitting in the living room, with the doors wide open, on a spectacular July day. I had a bathing suit on and I was sitting on this couch, soaking wet, thinking the world is a wonderful place to be. I had this acoustic 12-string and started tinkling around with it, and those 'Hotel California' chords just kind of oozed out. I had a TEAC four-track set up in one of the back bedrooms and I ran back there to put this idea down before I forgot it. I also had one of those old Rhythm Ace things, and I remember it was set to play this cha-cha beat. I played the 12-string on top of that. A few days later, I came up with a bass line and mixed the whole thing to mono, ping-ponging back and forth on this little four-track."
Eagles singer/guitarist Don Henley picked the song out of a cassette containing eight or ten different ideas that Felder had put together. "Henley said, "I really love that one that sounds like a matador or something," Felder recalls.
Originally written and recorded in E minor, the song was ultimately transposed to B-minor and re-recorded to accommodate the vocal melody delivered by Henley. Felder capoed his acoustic 12-string at the seventh fret, which enabled him to preserve the open chord shapes of his original guitar arrangement. The "High strung" timbre produced by the capo's placement, enhanced by processing the 12-string through a Leslie cabinet, ended up becoming part of the song's distinctive sound. Felder played all of the song's guitar tracks except for the landmark solo, for which Felder and Joe Walsh traded licks and harmonies. "Joe and I sat on two stools and worked the whole thing out," Felder recalls.
Don Henley and Glenn Frey collaborated on the song's memorable lyric. "Glenn had this idea," Felder remembers. "The fantasy of California. It's supposed to be a microcosm of the world. Glenn is great at conceptualizing. He'll say, 'I can see this guy driving in the desert at night and you can see the lights of L.A. way off in the horizon.' Henley gets the picture and goes from there.
"Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way " That's not a candle she's lighting up.
"Some dance to remember, some dance to forget" Some people do them do remember good memories, some people do them to forget bad memories.
'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device" That is basically what drug users are
"The stab it with their steely knives But they just can't kill the beast" The beast being the addiction/
"You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave!" You can always say you aren't addicted or that you can quit anytime you want, but you'll always end up going back to them.
Pretty basic clear maening, there are other metaphors in there to decipher but that's tha basics.
"Don Henley and Glen wrote most of the words. All of us kind of drove into LA at night. Nobody was from California, and 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, and so it was kind of about that... what we started writing the song about. Coming into LA... and from that Life In The Fast Lane came out of it, and Wasted Time and a bunch of other songs."
He also stated that the band refutes and claims that the song has anything to do with satanic churches or mental hospitals, etc.
"colitas" in the first stanza of the song is a desert flower, also known as Antelope sage or Colita de Rata, Don Henley has made many references to the "heady desert flower"
Also "Killing the beast" has nothing to do with a drug addiction. The line "stab it with their steely knives But they just can't kill the beast" is a reference as a playful nod to Steely Dan in return for the Eagles being referred to in the song "Everything you did" as "Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening".
The End
but yeah, this songs DEFINATELY about drugs.
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair....... it refers to our life
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light .... its refers to the light after u die
There she stood in the doorway;........................ "She" refers to angel of death
�this could be heaven or this could be hell�........... just as it is
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way....... way down to hell
all the stuff next describes the stuff happening in hell...refer google
And in the master�s chambers,.............................devils lair
The stab it with their steely knives,......................u try to kill the devil
But they just can�t kill the beast........................u cannot kill him so u can escape
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave! ..................................u cannot leave from hell
There’s a picture of the Beverly Hills Hotel on the front, which is really THE hotel in California; very elegant and very decadent at the same time. It’s a romantic place and you can see all kinds of people there—You see a lot of tourist types, a lot of very glamorous movie star people, and a lot of phony people. A lot of real people too. A lot of people have parties there, so that’s what the front of the album cover is. It’s shot from a crane about 100 to 150 feet up in the air, at sunset. There are black silhouettes of palm trees and the sky is a kind of rusty, smoky color. We superimposed a neon sign that says ‘Hotel California’, because we couldn’t use the name Beverly Hills Hotel: we’d probably have been sued.
nice greetings
S
"Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year, you can find it here "
Camarillo is well known for having some of the best weather in the world, with no real winter to speak of. Archetypal soCal weather.
"How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget"
mental institution
"What a nice surprise, bring your alibis
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said 'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"
Camarillo itself was once used as a retreat for recovering artists before Ventura County's population went up. Famous Jazz musicians were known to visit to get clean, and rumor has it that many of them did this at the mental institution.
The mental hospital shut down in the late 90's and in 2002 it became California State University Channel Islands. Wandering around was creepy during restoration; the first classes were sometimes taught in rooms with the bars still on the windows (hence "can never leave")
but hell, it's probably about drug addiction.
I do believe that there are minor drug references but overall it revolves around "No Exit".