Hotel California

Eagles, The

album cover

What a Difference a Personnel Change Makes

The hit-making operation known as the Eagles was riding the biggest album of its career, the pleasant (if molasses-slow) One of These Nights, when guitarist and songwriter Bernie Leadon announced in December 1975 that he was leaving the group. Normally, personnel changes for bands of this stature are cataclysmic. This one was different: Replacing Leadon, who wrote the group's single "Witchy Woman," was guitarist Joe Walsh, whose banshee wail and theatrical solos sparked the James Gang and such solo singles as "Rocky Mountain Way."

Almost overnight, the band known for peaceful easy feelings acquired a pronounced rock swagger. The timing was perfect: The Eagles had pretty much exhausted the cactus-and-tequila iconography of country rock as practiced by the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Walsh's biting guitar—and the hard, edgy sound favored by his producer Bill Szymczyk—put principal writers Don Henley and Glenn Frey in touch with a rock-star audacity they'd been missing. Together and separately, they came up with a confluence of muscular music and acidic lyrics that are unlike anything else the Eagles had done to that point. Henley later said that the album, released during the U.S. bicentennial celebration, was the band's comment on American decadence.

Hotel California begins with the premise that all of America is interested in what happens at the SoCal fantasy factory; its songs invite listeners inside the never-ending music business bacchanal, which was at a particular high point in the mid-'70s. And then, as they chronicle dark appetites and dependencies, the Eagles poke holes in all the cherished backstage myths. Here's addiction viewed from the perspective of a brutal morning after ("Life in the Fast Lane," the album's super-energized rock moment) and celebrity excess drawn with such skill it becomes a surreal grotesque.

The album, which stands as the Eagles' überstatement, belongs to a long line of conceptual works about the perils and perks of rock stardom. Though others are more intense (see Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here), few have offered such detailed portraits of dissipation in progress, right down to the pink champagne on ice. Being entertainers, the Eagles offset these caustic observations with more accessible material—the gently sung ballad "New Kid in Town," the retro "Victim of Love," and a plaintive country-rock ode that's the album's often-neglected masterstroke, "Try and Love Again."

Genre: Rock
Released: 1976, Asylum
Key Tracks: "Life in the Fast Lane," "Try and Love Again."
Catalog Choice: Desperado.
Next Stop: Gram Parsons: GP/Grievous Angel
After That: Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here.
Book Page: 248