"Hotel California"

"Hotel California" is the quintessential summer song for me. When I hear it on my way home from work, I turn up my bass to full blast, put down the windows, and turn up the volume. It's a great tune to belt out the lyrics to and it's my first day of Summer song. My personal favourite version is the live recording from their 1994 Hell Freezes Over Tour. The dual guitar solo at the end is probably one of my favourite jams.

The Eagles used The Beverly Hills Hotel for the cover of Hotel California (February 1977)

The tune was written by The Eagles, a ridiculously awesome band, and released in 1977. At face value, the story is about a weary traveller who finds himself at an initially inviting and tempting hotel to stay at, but later he finds out that "you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave." But of course, a song like "Hotel California" should not be taken at face value.

"Hotel California" is an allegory about greed, self-destruction, and hedonism in the music industry of the '70s.  It's a song about the underbelly of success and excess in America. Don Henley calls it their interpretation of the high life in LA. Apparently, when the band first drove in to LA, it looked so inviting and like a place where dreams could come true. After years in the industry though, they found the bad part of fame and success.

As far as the debate about the nomenclature of alcoholic beverages is concerned when it comes to the line "So I called to the captain / Please bring me my wine / He said, 'we haven't had that spirit here since 1969,'" don't take that at face value either. Clearly, wine is not a spirit since spirits are distilled and wines are fermented, so it's clearly not a mistake on The Eagles's part. I've always interpreted it to mean that the captain hadn't seen someone with that much life and spirit in a long time, not that he was out of that particular wine. I mean, if you're at a luxury hotel, even a nightmarish one, $10 says they've got a ton of awesome vintages of wine.

It's summer time. Celebrate by listening to "Hotel California" on full blast and enjoy the sweet guitar at the end.