49 Years Ago, One Song Changed Rock Music Forever

Do you remember the first time you heard this iconic song? If so, what did you think it was about?

Hotel California, the haunting rock ballad by The Eagles, was released on February 22, 1977, and continues to leave a lasting impact on listeners — though what that impact is varies from person to person.

The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and brought the band a Record of the Year Grammy Award, and has been referenced and needle-dropped more than almost any other song in television, film, and other forms of media. Still, its enduring legacy has been unaltered by its popularity, offering commercial dominance in popular culture, without falling victim to commercialism itself, in the same way many of its classic rock contemporaries have.

Its most common interpretation, of course, is of a world-weary narrator decrying the California myth that rock bands such as The Beach Boys and ratings-smash hit shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies offered to their audiences. The woeful tale of hedonism and vast excess of the rock-and-roll lifestyle, oddly enough, has come to represent the entire genre for many of its fans as one of their favorite offerings.

Similar interpretations, that of classic literature themes regarding loss of innocence and coming of age, are inextricable from the disenchantment expressed by the song's lead vocalist, Don Henley. As the narrator searches for the spirit supposedly lost since '69, the youth-driven, carefree culture of the 1960s, led by the emerging post-war generation, has had its place taken by cynicism and self-imposed isolation of a conservative post-Nixon era.

With the dual guitar solo representing the duality of majesty and melancholy of self-medication and nostalgia, the song's most famous line echoes this sentiment: You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave! Even when taking other interpretations of the song, from drug addiction to mental illness, or the more extreme, conspiratorial concepts of Satan worship and celebrity cannibalism, the enduring ideas of falling victim to your own vices remain. Perhaps, despite its fantasy element of an eternal hotel and its mystic qualities, therein lies a deeply human story that nearly fifty years of subsequent songwriting have failed to re-capture.