Celebration of "Hotel California" Album!

[sad-cafe]

I love Randy's Try and Love Again. I think this song is way underrated.

[thelastresort]

Totally agree about Victim of Love being underrated (as much as anything on HC can be). Terrific song.

Indeed. Felder's opening guitar bit is just out of this world, and Walsh's solo I think is on a par with Frey's in ICTYW as their second best ever.

[Zanny Kingston]

Happy birthday HOTEL CALIFORNIA!

I have been spending the week here in CA and the Eagles have been on my mind constantly.. I will post some thoughts on that in a bit.

[SilverMoon]

Happy Anniversary, Hotel California!

I really love “Victim of Love,” “Life in the Fast Lane” and “New Kid in Town,” but “Hotel California” is truly a masterpiece and one of my all-time favorite songs.

[Glennhoney]

This song would have been a hit number one single had it been released as one.

....agree...

[Ive always been a dreamer]

Secret Squirrel posted a link in another thread, but since this is our celebration week for the album, I thought I'd post it here as well. This is a pretty interesting writeup and video from the art director on the album, John Kosh, about the album's famous cover art ...

http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/f...c-album-cover/

[Brooke]

Enjoyed reading that! Thanks!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
HOTEL CALIFORNIA!

It's fabulous! Love it! Must listen to it this week too!

[Houston Debutante]

When I opened up the board and saw the Hotel California design I smiled because I love this album ~ who doesn't tho? I'll be listening to it this week in honor of its birthday.

[Houston Debutante]

This song would have been a hit number one single had it been released as one.

Everything on that album is good enough to be a single, that's the problem. They can only release so many. In this case they released three ~ New Kid in Town, Hotel California, and Life in the Fast Lane, at least according to Wikipedia ~ and I don't think very many people would say that Try And Love Again is better than those three songs. I'm sure there are some of course...no offense to them....but not many.

It's not as if people never had the chance to hear it, this was a huge selling album and back in those days people actually listened to entire albums. Still if you ask people to pick their top 5 songs off Hotel California this one wouldn't make it onto the majority of lists.

The real surprise to me is that Victim of Love was only a B-side, I think it is better than New Kid In Town.

[luna65]

I acknowledge the album as a cultural landmark for certain, and I imagine I'm not the only person who draws the analogy of the title song being the band's "Stairway To Heaven" - and I don't mean that merely in terms of their most popular song but also the most theorized and misunderstood, containing the most mystique. But - and this is just my opinion - I find myself thinking that Side Two is missing something, like it needs another song. Side One is absolute perfection, and contains one each of Don and Glenn's best performances ever in "Wasted Time" and "New Kid In Town." NKIT especially has a textbook vocal arrangement, like people should be studying it forever; it gives me chills even now, and definitely deserved the Grammy it received. But as much as I enjoy Side Two, and especially "Try and Love Again" and how it's a perfect example of both the band's aesthetic and that of The Avocado Mafia, I feel like there should be something between it and the prior song. When I get to the end of Side Two I always feel incomplete somehow. But I know there wasn't room for another song; as I say, that's just me.