History of the Eagles Part One Page #10

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One of the most terrifying

things that ever happened to me

was that Keith Moon decided he liked me.

All those Keith Moon stories are true.

This guy was full-blown nuts, and you

never knew what was coming next.

Keith was my mentor at

chaos, getting arrested,

practical jokes, pranks, room damage.

I live in hotels, tear out the walls,

I have accountants pay for it all,

They say I'm crazy, but

I have a good time...

One year, we gave him a chainsaw

for his birthday as a joke.

Life's been good to me so far,

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

By this time, we were

eating in nice restaurants

and buying expensive wine and

staying in great hotel rooms.

There were a lot of hotels that

we weren't allowed to go back to.

We were in Chicago, and we were

staying at the Astor Towers.

In Chicago, here's what happened.

There was a knock on the door,

and in walked John Belushi.

John wanted to show me the

finer restaurants of Chicago.

So, we went to the restaurant,

and they wouldn't let us in

because we had jeans, and he got

the maitre d' up to like a 300 bribe

and still they would not let us in.

And John said, "I know what to do.

I know what to do. "

And the next thing I knew, we

were standing in the alley,

and he spray-painted my jeans

black and made me do his,

and we went back, and we got in.

We were sitting in these Queen

Anne-period chairs that had

needlepoint, and when we stood

up, that was all black,

and the butts of our

pants were jeans again,

so, we had to kind of back

out of there and leave fast.

But that was the beginning of it.

And so that night, with much glee,

Joe set about to set the

world record for room trash.

John and I did 28,000 of room damage.

Glenn and Don didn't really ever

approve of the room trashing,

but they understood it.

They wanted respect as rock 'n' rollers,

and Joe brought that respect.

I was insecure always and afraid,

so I hid behind all of

my hang-ups with humour.

I was totally in awe of Don and Glenn.

I was intimidated by Don and

Glenn because they sang so good,

and they were writing stuff I could

never come close to writing.

After we've just had a bunch of hit

records on One Of These Nights,

we were under the microscope.

Everybody was going to look at

the next record we made and pass judgment.

Don and I were going, "Man,

this better be good. "

- Look at that.

- It's going to be quite a nice guitar.

- Felder, you see this?

- Who, uh, who tuned this?

Well, it has no nut.

With Joe in the band with me,

I wanted to write something,

musically, that would fit

two guitar players, that we

could play off of each other.

So, I was sitting on a sofa in

Malibu at this rental house

that I had on the beach. I was

playing this acoustic guitar

and this introduction came

out, that progression.

I kept playing it three or four times.

I had an old reel-to-reel tape recorder,

so I went back and recorded that

introduction to that song and

laid down that progression, made a

mix of it, and put it on a cassette

with, I don't know, the other 14

or 15 pieces of music that I had

assembled, and I gave a copy of the

cassette to Don, one to Glenn.

Don Felder used to send Henley and

I instrumental tapes, song ideas.

95% of them were cluttered

with guitar licks,

and we would listen to these things

and go, "Well, where do you sing?"

As Don and I were listening through

one of the Felder cassettes and this

song came up, we both sort of said, "Hmm.

Now, this is interesting. "

The music sounded to me like

some sort of a cross between

Spanish music and reggae music, and

that one really jumped out at me.

So, we set out to write a

song to that progression.

I'm pretty sure it was Henley's

idea to have a song called

Hotel California.

I think Henley's and Glenn's lyric

writing really came to a head.

They became real honest-to-God

songwriters then.

During the recording of

it, I thought that we

were on to something. I knew

we were on to something.

We were in a really creative phase,

and it just so happened that

Bill Szymczyk pushed record.

Thank God!

On a dark desert highway

Cool wind in my hair

Warm smell of colitas

Rising up through the air

Up ahead in the distance

I saw a shimmering light

My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim

I had to stop for the night

There she stood in the doorway

I heard the mission bell

And I was thinkin' 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

- Such a lovely place

- Such a lovely place

Such a lovely face

Plenty of room at the Hotel...

We've been asked a million times,

"What does that song mean?"

Don and I were big fans of

hidden, deeper meaning.

You know, you write songs and

you send them out to the world.

... So I called up the Captain

Please bring me my wine

He said

We haven't had that

spirit here since 1969...

And maybe somewhere in that song

is some stuff that's just yours,

that they're never going to figure out.

.. Far away

Wake you up in the middle of the night

Just to hear them say...

There has been a great deal of ridiculous

speculation about that song over the years.

I mean, it's really taken on a

life or a mythology of its own.

It's sort of like the "Paul is dead"

thing, or "Who was the walrus?"

.. Bring your alibis...

It's been denounced by Evangelicals.

We've been accused of all

kinds of wacky things,

like being members of the Church of Satan.

People see images on the album

cover that aren't there.

Just lunatic stuff.

.. And in the master's chambers

They gathered for the feast

They stabbed it with their steely knives

But they just can't kill the beast

Last thing I remember

I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back

to the place I was before...

My simple explanation is it's a

song about a journey from innocence

to experience. That's all.

.. You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave...

Whereas Felder was technically very,

very good, Walsh brought spontaneity

to it, and the two of them playing

off each other was just brilliant.

Out of great respect for each

other, there was always a little

competition between Felder and I.

We always tried to kind of

one-up each other, you know?

And that's really healthy.

It always made the song

better when we were kind of,

"Oh, yeah? Listen to this. "

We got to the end, where now is

the harmony guitars that are

playing together, and Joe said, "We

should do something that's like...

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

The ending of Hotel California -

that's one of my high points

of my entire recording career.

To have a seven-minute single be

number one - that was unheard of.

The record company said, "You got to do an edit.

You got to do an edit. "

And we all said, "No. Take it

or leave it. " And they took it.

We had no idea that that

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