The No1 album in the US on this day, January 15th 1977, was Hotel California by the Eagles. Hotel California topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for one week in May 1977 and peaked at No2 in the UK. Billboard ranked it No19 on its 1977 Pop Singles year-end chart. Three months after its first release, the single was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing one million copies shipped. In 2009, the song was certified Platinum (Digital Sales Award) by the RIAA for sales of one million digital downloads. The Eagles also won the 1977 Grammy Award for Record of the Year for Hotel California at the 20th Grammy Awards in 1978. The music for this song originated from a demo written and recorded by Don Felder and given to Don Henley and Glenn Frey to write lyrics for it. The song is rated highly in many rock music lists and polls; Rolling Stone magazine ranked it No49 on its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It is also one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fames 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. The songs guitar solo was voted the best solo of all time by readers of Guitarist magazine in 1998 and was ranked 8th on Guitar Magazine s Top 100 Guitar Solos The song was also included in the music video game Guitar Hero World Tour. It was most recently voted the No1 12 string guitar song by Guitar World magazine. The lyrics weave a surrealistic tale in which a weary traveler checks into a luxury hotel. The hotel at first appears inviting and tempting, but it turns out to be a nightmarish place where you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. The song is an allegory about hedonism, self-destruction, and greed in the music industry of the late 1970s. Don Henley called it our interpretation of the high life and dark underbelly in Los Angeles In 2008, Don Felder described the origins of the lyrics: Colitas in the first stanza means little tails in Spanish. According to Frey, it means little tails, the very top of the ganja plant. According to Glenn Freys liner notes for The Very Best Of..., the use of the word steely in the lyric, They stab it with their steely knives, but they just cant kill the beast, was a playful nod to the band Steely Dan, who had included the lyric Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening in their song Everything You Did. The metaphorical character of the story related in the lyrics has inspired a number of conjectural interpretations by listeners. In the 1980s some Christian evangelists alleged that Hotel California referred to a San Francisco hotel that was purchased by Anton LaVey and converted into a Church of Satan. Other rumors suggested that the Hotel California was the Camarillo State Mental Hospital. Whatever your interpretation, heres the Eagles performing Hotel California two months later in March of 77 in Largo, Maryland..... Enjoy!
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 18:23:27 +0000
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