You Can Check Out Any Time You’d Like

I am off to California in the morning. I got to thinking about the classic song by the Eagles called “Hotel California”. I will, in fact be staying in a hotel (3 of them actually), so I did a little homework on that song. There are many an urban legend, but below is more than you ever wanted to know about that song.

• This is about materialism and excess. California is used as the setting, but it could relate to anywhere in America.
• “Colitas,” in the line “Warm smell of colitas,” is often interpreted as a flower or a sexual reference. It is a Spanish word translated to Henley by The Eagles Mexican-American road manager meaning “Little Buds,” and is a reference to marijuana.
• The line “They stab it with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the beast” is a reference to Steely Dan. They shared the same manager and had a friendly rivalry. The year before, Steely Dan included the line “Turn up The Eagles, the neighbors are listening” on the song “Everything You Did.”
• Glenn Frey compares this to an episode of The Twilight Zone, where it jumps from one scene to the next and doesn’t necessarily make sense.
• Although it is well known that Hotel California is actually a metaphor, there are several strange internet theories and urban legends about the “real” Hotel California. Some include suggestions that it was an old church taken over by devil worshippers, a psychiatric hospital, an inn run by cannibals or Aleister Crowley’s mansion in Scotland. It’s even been suggested that the “Hotel California” is the Playboy Mansion.
• According to a reader-submitted poll for Guitar World magazine, the guitar solo for this song is ranked #8 out of 100.
• In Chicago at the time of this song’s popularity many people called Cook County jail “Hotel California” because it is on California street. The name stuck and now people of all ages and races refer to the jail by this nickname.