Szymczyk was happy to return, but he had one condition: He wanted to record at Miami’s legendary Criteria Studios, far from the band’s standard base of operations at L.A.’s Record Plant. To oversee the new sessions, the Eagles turned to veteran producer Bill Szymczyk, who had worked on their previous album, One of These Nights. Black Sabbath was recording in the studio next door, and the noise disrupted the Eagles’ sessions. “Mexican Reggae” ultimately became the song’s working title during early sessions before the lyrics were finalized.Ģ. What a nice synthesis of styles,” he said in a 1992 episode of In The Studio With Redbeard. “We said this is electric Mexican reggae. I think I was driving down Benedict Canyon Drive at night, or maybe even North Crescent Drive (adjacent to the Beverly Hills Hotel) the first time I heard the piece, and I remember thinking, ‘This has potential I think we can make something interesting out of this.'” There may have been some Latin-style percussion in there too. It was a simple demo – a progression of arpeggiated guitar chords, along with some hornlike sustained note lines, all over a simple 4/4 drum-machine pattern. “None of them moved me until I got to that one. “Felder had submitted a cassette tape containing about half a dozen different pieces of music,” Henley told Rolling Stone in June. Despite his initial reticence, the reggae-flavored tune made the cut. When the Eagles reconvened in the spring of 1976 to begin work on what was to be their fifth album, Felder assembled cassettes of his instrumental demos for his bandmates to mine for song ideas. “It was kind of reggae, almost an abstract guitar part for what was on the radio back then.”
“I knew it was unique but didn’t know if it was appropriate for the Eagles,” he admitted to in 2010. I had this acoustic 12-string and started tinkling around with it, and those ‘Hotel California’ chords just kind of oozed out.”Īfter completing the basic melody, he fetched his TEAC 4-track tape recorder to preserve his latest composition, which he embellished with bass and drum-machine overdubs. “I had a bathing suit on and was sitting on this couch, soaking wet, thinking the world is a wonderful place to be. “I remember sitting in the living room on a spectacular July day with the doors wide open,” he told Guitar World in 2013. Don Felder had rented a beach house in Malibu, and was in the midst of taking in the ocean breeze as he leisurely strummed his guitar. Though it’s since become synonymous with the dark, sinister underside of Los Angeles, the album’s title track took shape in a surprisingly idyllic setting. The working title of “Hotel California” was “Mexican Reggae.” In honor of Hotel California‘s 40th anniversary, we look back at some lesser-known stories behind the blockbuster album.ġ. In a sentence, I’d sum it up as the end of the innocence, round one.” In that sense, it became something of a symbol and the ‘Hotel’ the locus of all that L.A. Beverly Hills was still a mythical place to us. “We were getting an extensive education, in life, in love, in business. “The concept had to do with taking a look at all the band had gone through, personally and professionally, while it was still happening to them,” Henley told author Marc Eliot. Was Hotel California about a mental institution? Drug addiction? A feud with Steely Dan? Satanism? The rich lyrics – both introspective and allegorical – had fans pondering their true meaning for decades to come. Hotel California drew heroic sales figures and critical plaudits in equal measure, and affirmed the band’s shift from laid-back country-tinged pop act to major players in the rock & roll fast lane. Their efforts would create a song cycle that succeeded on nearly every level. Don and I were going, ‘Man, this better be good.'” “Everybody was going to look at the next record we made and pass judgment. “We were under the microscope,” Glenn Frey said of the time.
Their previous album, 1975’s One of These Nights, had spawned three Top 10 singles, and their greatest-hits album sold in such stratospheric numbers – on its way to becoming the best-selling album of the 20th century in the United States – that the RIAA had to invent to platinum certification. It was a scene they were uniquely qualified to address. With Hotel California, the Eagles sought to capture the excesses and self-destructive behavior that had become status quo in the rock world. It tightened its grasp on the band, the music industry and the country at large. A deep malaise had set in, one which couldn’t be soothed by money, sex or drugs. By the second half the Seventies, the Eagles‘ “Peaceful Easy Feeling” seemed like a distant memory, a pleasantly stoned dream rudely interrupted by the pressures of business and fame.
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