Hotel California (1976)
1. Hotel California
2. New Kid in Town
3. Life in the Fast Lane
4. Wasted Time
5. Wasted Time (Reprise)
6. Victim of Love
7. Pretty Maids All in a Row
8. Try and Love Again
9. The Last Resort
 
Just when you thought this band
couldn't get any better. This is where the band sort of, maybe
unintentionally, got a bit serious. We actually have a bit of a
concept record here. Pretty much ditching the whole "country" part of
themselves, the guys put together a symbol of the
hedonistic, high-living, culturally bare entertainment industry that
they found themselves thoroughly, yet unintentionally, immersed. It had only been five years
since their first record, and they exploded big,
and the climb for this band continued to
escalate on a fever pitch. That's not to say things were necessarily
easy. You could see the burnout already happening within the band
without actually even listening to the lyrics.
Bernie Leadon was now gone, the first member of The Eagles to "leave" (those
on the inside debate whether he left voluntarily, or was "pushed").
In his place was good friend, and accomplished solo artist Joe Walsh.
With Walsh and Don Felder leading the band in guitar licks and wailing axe duels, a
whole new dimension was brought into this band. The opening, haunting
riff to the amazing title song is Felder's creation, and matched with
Don Henley's chilling lyric about the hypnotizing highlife of the music
industry created arguably one of the best known and well loved rock and
roll songs ever. This song seemed to epitomize the whole culture of the
decade of the 1970s. In fact it's easy to imagine that if the record
contained only mediocre songs to accompany the title song, it still would
have been a damn fine piece of work. Safe to say the other songs are not mediocre.
Life in the Fast Lane is another of the big hit songs. The
lyrics seem, in a strange way, to compliment the title track, but the
riff here belongs to Joe Walsh and is arguably the hardest song this
band ever released. Also in the "materialism is bad and what happened
to good ol' fashion nature and happiness" is The Last Resort, a
song that never made it big, but every Eagle fan knows and knows well.
This was the perfect "ending" to the album.
Joe Walsh's main contribution is the ironically beautiful Pretty
Maids All in a Row. This is nothing like anything that I know by
Joe Walsh. I'd be lying if I knew what the song was about, but one
listen is obviously not nearly enough. Equally beautiful is the
Henley/Frey Wasted Time. Again, never a hit, but this song seems
to crop up at just about every Eagle show that gets performed. The
orchestra reprise of the piece that opens up side 2 is beautiful as
well.
Fans of the "old" Eagles will undoubtedly fall in love with New Kid
in Town, the acoustically drive light song that shows the guys
haven't lost anything in terms of harmonizing together - even they were
in sync more onstage than they were off. Randy Meisner's Try to Love
Again is a nice piece that sounds very similar in terms of style.
His distinctive voice makes it sound unique enough, and you have to
wonder if anyone knew it would be his swan song. The only other song
Victim of Love doesn't quite measure up to the rest of the album,
but it's more "rock" than "country", so it adequately shows the
direction of the band.
Sadly all of this success came with a price. Tensions were already high
before and during the recording of the album, and with it's success
simply meant more money, more commitments and more pressure. All were things which were
things they definitely did not need. They would never release anything
this good again, but then again, nobody else ever released anything this
good to even begin with, so the point is rather moot.
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