The Last Resort

[maryc2130]

The Literary Lyrics discussion got me looking at this song to see if it had any literary references in it. I didn't find them, but I found this discussion:

http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/4800/

I was surprised at some of the meanings people attributed to the song, especially the ones about Pepperdine University in California. I'm not sure I agree with that interpretation, but I love trying to figure out the meanings in songs that lie below the obvious, so I found it an interesting discussion. Whatever the underlying meanings, it's certainly an eloquent call-to-arms for environmentalism. Awesome song!

[sodascouts]

I think this song is dismissive of religion, particularly Christianity, but I don't think that's its main purpose. There's a great deal going on in the song and a lot of subthemes. However, I think the overarching theme is a criticism of the way people raze nature in order to accommodate their own agendas, be it for the purposes of colonization, evangelism, immigration, mining of natural resources, or simply a desire for better real estate; he argues these activities ultimately lead to the destruction of the beauty that attracted people there in the first place. It's along the same lines as Joni Mitchell's "pave paradise, put up a parking lot" lyric. Man thoughtlessly and selfishly corrupts natural beauty. The ending verse cynically implies that even Heaven is not safe from the inevitable corruption brought on by mankind's greed and arrogance.

This is from the Very Best of the Eagles booklet, and gives you Glenn and Don's thoughts on it.
GLENN: "The Last Resort" was the final piece of the Hotel California puzzle. We started the song early in the record, and Don finished seven months later. I called it Henley's opus. I helped describe what the song was going to be about and assisted with the arrangement, but it was Don's lyrics and basic chord progression.

One of the primary themes of the song was that we keep creating what we've been running away from -- violence, chaos, destruction. We migrated to the East Coast, killed a bunch of Indians, and just completely screwed that place up. Then we just kept moving west: "Move those teepees, we got some train tracks coming through here. Get outta the way, boy!" There were some very personal references in the song, including a girl from Providence, Rhode Island, who Don had dated for some time. She had taken an inheritance from her grandfather and moved to Aspen, Colorado, in search of a new life. Look where Aspen is now. How prophetic is "The Last Resort" 28 years after it was written? Aspen is a town where the billionaires have driven out the millionaires. It was once a great place. Look at Lahaina; look at Maui. It's so commercial. It's everything Hawaii was not supposed to be. Whether we're carrying the cross or carrying the gasoline cane, we seem to have a penchant for wrecking beautiful places.

DON: The final burst on this one happened in Benedict Canyon at a house I was living in with Irving [Azoff, the band's longtime manager and friend]. I was thinking of all the literary themes based on nature that I had studied back in school -- the awesome beauty and the spirituality inherent in the natural world and the unrelenting destruction of it, wrought by this thing that we call civilization or progress.

Some years earlier we had done a couple of benefit concerts with Neil Young for the Chumash Tribe, Native American people who are indigenous to California. We became friends with an elder in the tribe named Samu, and, eventually, we were invited to attend some tribal rituals and drum ceremonies. Samu was on a mission to raise funds for an education program which would teach the young people in the tribe about their language and their culture. The old man feared, rightly, that the white man's culture was stripping his people of their identity. They were losing the memory of their language, their ceremonies, their history. We were fortunate enough to be able to help.

Also, I'd been reading articles and doing research about the raping and pillaging of the West by mining, timber, oil and cattle interests. But I was interested in an even larger scope for the song, so I tried to go "Michener" with it. I remember going out to Malibu and standing on Zuma beach, looking out at the ocean. I remember thinking, "this is about as far west -- with the exception of Alaska -- as you can go on this continent. This is where Manifest Destiny ends -- right here, in the middle of all these surfboards and volleyball nets and motor homes." And then I thought, "Nah, we've gone right on over and screwed up Hawaii too."

I still think, though, that the song was never fully realized, musically speaking. It's fairly pedestrian from a musical point of view. But lyrically it's not bad. Especially the last verse, which turns it from one thing into another and it becomes an allegorical statement about religion -- the deception and destructiveness that is inherent in the mythology of most organized religion -- the whole "dominion" thing. The song is a reaffirmation of the age-old idea that everything in the universe is connected and that there are consequences, downstream, for everything we do."

[thelastresort]

It's quite something. I know a lot on here dislike it, presumably owing to the jabs at Christians, but I think it's wonderful. As Don says, it's not amazing musically but lyrically it is their absolute greatest (and that's saying something when you're talking about Henley-Frey!). I have listened to thousands of songs and hundreds of bands and I will attest to the day I die (or the universe implodes because we ruined it ;)) that these are the greatest lyrics ever written:

'Who will provide the grand design;
What is your and what is mine?
Because there is no more new frontier,
We have got to make it here.
We satisfy our endless needs,
Justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny,
And in the name of God'

How any human being is capable of something as wonderful as that is beyond me.

[bluefeather]

ITA The Last Resort's got great lyrics, maybe the best the Eagles ever came up with

To me the song is about the migration to the west where native Americans lived as a historical story and criticism of all the bad the Europeans caused when they built their own communities on the lands that native tribes had ruled for so long. I also think the song doesn't stab at Christianity itself but to the human tendency to justify our actions with a higher purpose like a noble religious deed.

[Houston Debutante]

I agree, this song is amazing.

[deb828]

It's quite something. I know a lot on here dislike it, presumably owing to the jabs at Christians, but I think it's wonderful. As Don says, it's not amazing musically but lyrically it is their absolute greatest (and that's saying something when you're talking about Henley-Frey!). I have listened to thousands of songs and hundreds of bands and I will attest to the day I die (or the universe implodes because we ruined it ;)) that these are the greatest lyrics ever written:

'Who will provide the grand design;
What is your and what is mine?
Because there is no more new frontier,
We have got to make it here.
We satisfy our endless needs,
Justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny,
And in the name of God'

How any human being is capable of something as wonderful as that is beyond me.
So well said--agree the lyrics are magnificent.

[chaim]

I don't mean to start a "yes he did, no he didn't" debate or to turn this into a Felder bashing thing. But I think it's appropriate to mention it in this thread (I already did in some other thread some time ago). Don Felder said rather recently that this song started when he was telling some story to Don H and Glenn. I say this, because this isn't mentioned in the quotes from Don H and Glenn. And since this discussion is about the song, everything we have heard/read about it can be brought up. We know that Felder isn't exactly Mr. Modest when it comes to musical contributions, but I did find this info very interesting (as a possibility at least), because normally we don't associate Don F with lyrics or themes.

As I recall Don F didn't claim that he started the song, but that Don H and Glenn were inspired by the story he told them.

EDIT:

Here it is. He doesn't say that he started the song or wrote anything to it, but that Don H and Glenn were inspired by the story he told them. I think this is totally possible. Interesting bit of Eagles trivia at the very least - that conversation he mentions.
http://rockshowcritique.com/2014/05/donfelder-2/

[UndertheWire]

I remembered that and went back to look it up.


RSC: Off Hotel California the closing song “The Last Resort” is such an amazing tune. How did that song come about?
DF: Well we had been doing a tour and we had landed in Hawaii. Don, Glen and I had stayed up for about a day and a half talking in this hotel room. My first wife was born in Providence. I remember telling them a story about this guy named Walter Beck who used to come into this music store in high school and told me that I should buy land on the north to northwest side of town. There was nothing there in Gainesville, just woods. He said the human migration pattern is west by northwest. And if you look at where it started in Africa across the planet it came across into Europe and across into the east coast of America and when it hits either a divide, a mountain or water it turns north. The old part of town is typically the east part of town. So I’m sitting there telling them about this we’re thinking about the whole human migration and we’re sitting in Hawaii and that’s like the last vestige of paradise so we’re talking about that, out of that conversation came that concept of “The Last Resort.”
http://rockshowcritique.com/2014/05/donfelder-2/


It's possible that both versions are true. It seems a coincidence that both Dons dated girls from Providence but maybe that's Glenn's memory playing tricks. Or maybe Henley's girl who moved west came from somewhere else but they decided Providence sounded better (Isn't there a story that Jackson Browne didn't actually stand on a corner in Winslow but in a town close by with a name that didn't fit as well?)

[thelastresort]

I'm sure eventually Mr. Felder will reach a point where he claims to have written Romeo & Juliet. :grin:

[chaim]

I'm sure eventually Mr. Felder will reach a point where he claims to have written Romeo & Juliet. :grin:

No, not "written, but "influenced". :lol: But seriously, I do think that this was an interesting new paragraph to the Eagles saga - whether we choose to believe Don F's influence in this case or not.

[Brooke]

(Isn't there a story that Jackson Browne didn't actually stand on a corner in Winslow but in a town close by with a name that didn't fit as well?)

He took a trip through Arizona, but I don't think he actually stood on that corner.

[bluefeather]

interesting piece of history, thanks chaim

[Houston Debutante]

Interesting, it was on their minds for sure and I believe they talked about it, whether or not it was on their minds only because of Don Felder is debatable ;)

[MaryCalifornia]

Thanks, Chaim, interesting. Did Felder say, "my first wife?" Has he been married more than once????

[sodascouts]

Not as far as I know. However, he and his current girlfriend were engaged for at least seven years (they were already engaged by 2007 when his book came out and this interview is from May); she is the mother of his youngest child, so maybe he got to thinking of her as his second wife?

However, things have changed since that interview in May. In a July video chat (https://www.eaglesonlinecentral.com/forum/showpost.php?p=283518&postcount=28), he dismissed the idea of another marriage entirely as something that might "spoil" their happy relationship. Obviously, they are no longer engaged. Indeed, if you didn't know better, from the way he talked you'd think that he'd never been engaged to her. I was a little taken aback, honestly, but whatever works for them!

[MaryCalifornia]

Yep, I'm guessing that's exactly what was going on with that quote. He probably thought they would get married. I know it's not PC to make the observation, but I can't believe he has a child that young. But come to think of it, Glenn's youngest is not much older. 66 is the new 36!! Good for them (I'm being sincere, not snarky).

One thing you can say about Felder, after all of these years he still speaks fondly of his first wife and the long marriage, it seems to be of great value to him. He is not at all dismissive of her. Flings with groupies on the road aside, the end of his marriage seems to have affected him very strongly and still does. He has made his long marriage part of his narrative. Smart, since he has grown children with her.

Sorry, got off track of this thread.:blush:

[VAisForEagleLovers]

If TLR was written after such a conversation, it just goes to show the nuances of songwriting. Guys just sitting around chatting about things, they probably did that a lot. Then a conversation starts and heads in a direction, then influenced by where they were currently touring, the conversation takes a twist that ends up being the seeds for a song. I guess when you're a songwriter, a good one, you just never know when and how a song will materialize.

[DivineDon]

I'm sure eventually Mr. Felder will reach a point where he claims to have written Romeo & Juliet. :grin:

Ha! I was going to suggest that he'll probably tell us next that in a past life he 'influenced' Michelangelo's depiction of God in the Sistine Chapel because he resembled him :hilarious: