Lyrics submitted by Demau Senae, edited by whoiscloud, Teampeeta254, Matilda Is Rad, SpongeBobForPresident2016, MegaManGaming, nullportal
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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.
How come nobody says anything about these "certain girls we knew". There are a lot of references to sex in the lyrics. Like there are somme really pretty girls that know a lot of guys and they call them their "friends". Gee, I wonder how these girls make their money. And what does "colitas" mean In Spanish...small tails or small tales.And also stab with their steely knives is that a reference the mail cucumber. And there are mirrors on the ceiling because there these certain hotels that have a bed and a mirror on the ceiling and the couples like to get on the bed and talk about record companies while they look at themselves in the mirror. sex sex sex.
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.
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"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
I mostly agree. "Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air". Colitas is a Mexican term for marijuana so there is a clear drug reference. However, I still think this song is about a mental hospital. I loved your outlook though.
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
"The song began as a demo tape, an instrumental by Don Felder. He'd been submitting tapes and song ideas to us since he'd joined the band, always instrumentals, since he didn't sing. But this particular demo, unlike many of the others had room for singing. It immediately got our attention. The first working title, the name we gave it, was "Mexican Reggae."
For us, "Hotel California" was definately thinking and writing outside the box. Similar to "Desperado," we did not start out to make any sort of concept or theme album. But when we wrote "Life in the Fast Lane" and started working on "Hotel California" and "New Kid In Town" with J.D., we knew we were heading down a long and twisted corridor and just stayed with it. Songs from the dark side-the Eagles take a look at the seamy underbelly of L.A.-the flip side of fame and failure, love and money.
"They stab it with their Steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast" was a little Post-It back to Steely Dan. Apparently, Walter Becker's girlfriend loved the Eagles, and she played them all the time. I think it drove him nuts. So, the story goes that they were having a fight one day, and that was the genesis of the line, "turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening" in "Everything You Did," from Steely Dan's The Royal Scam album. During the writing of "Hotel California," we decided to volley. We just wanted to allude to Steely Dan rather than mentioning them outright, so "Dan" got changed to "knices," which is still, you know, a penile metaphor. Stabbing, thrusting, etc.
Almost everybody in my buisness can write music, play guitar, play piano, create chord progressions, etc., but it's only when you add lyrics and melody and voices to these things that they take on an identity and become something beyond the sum of the original parts. I remember that Henley and I were listening to the "Hotel California" demo tape together on an airplane, and we were talking about what we would write and how we wanted to be more cinematic. We wanted this song to open like an episode of The Twilight Zone-just one shot after another.
I remember De Niro in The Last Tycoon. He's got this scene, and he's talking to some other people in his office. He speaks to them: "The door opens... the camera is on a person's feet... he walks across the room... we pan up to the table... he picks up a pack of matches that says 'The Such-And-Such Club' on it... strikes a match and lights a cigarette... puts it out... goes over to the window... opens the shade... looks out... the moon is there... what does it mean? Nothing. It's just the movies." "Hotel California" is like that. We take this guy and make him like a character in The Magus, where every time he walks through a door there's a new version of reality. We wanted to write a song just like it was a movie. This guy is driving across the desert. He's tired. He's smokin'. Comes up over a hill, sees some lights, pulls in. First thing he sees is a really strange guy at the front door, welcoming him: "Come on in." Walks in, and then it becomes Fellini-esque-- strange women, effeminate men, shadowy corridors, disembodied voices, debauchery, illusion... Weirdness. So we thought, "Let's really take some chances. Let's try to write in a way that we've never written before." Steely Dan inspired us because of their lyrical bravery and willingness to go "out there." So, for us, "Hotel California" was about thinking and writing outside the box."
I do believe that there are minor drug references but overall it revolves around "No Exit".