WELCOME TO THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA

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— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 3, 2023

 

Hotel California lyrics.  This is a decent reading of the song.  The song is about finding oneself in ambiguous settings with lines like, "You can check out any time you like, But you can never leave!"  it's a song about holding two opposing thoughts at the same time.  What's the effect of that?  One could be a canceling out of both.  Two could be the co-existence of the two and you being okay with one and equally well with the other.  Meaning, you can't stand for or defend either one.  Is it a song about moral ambivalence?  A place where you can be looking back in regret or with nostalgia and looking forward with hope and prospects, like Janus.

It's also about the seduction of getting into things and risky arrangements just to see if you could survive them.  And if you did, that experience would never leave you, nor would the temptations, for they would always be available.  So Hotel California is not so much a physical building as much as it is a state of mind, of thinking about a decadent lifestyle and setting.  The setting of the hotel could be a place of rest and comfort or a reputational disaster.

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

Who knows?

About the band members, the majority of the Eagles were from outside California with the exception of Bernie Leadon and Timothy B. Schmit, who joined in 1977.  Joe Walsh was from New Jersey.  Randy Meisner was from Nebraska.  Don Henley was from Texas.  Glenn Frey was from Detroit, and Don Felder was from Florida.  How does this help with the meaning of the song?  Not sure that it does.  Who wrote the song? Don Felder, Don Henley, and Glenn Frey.

Don Henley put it this way, "We were all middle-class kids from the Midwest.  Hotel California was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles."  Okay.  That's as good an interpretation as any.

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"