I spent a long time deciding on whether to include Hotel California on this list. I don’t actually own a physical copy of the album and my only album by the group is a compilation I bought a few years ago and it’s not even the best-selling one from the 1970s. Still this group and album are very much part of my musical life so I am going to put this here. One of these days I will definitely get a proper copy but meanwhile I listen on streaming services.

When I think of the Eagles, I think of my growing up years spent near Atlanta. We lived there for about a decade from the time I was a toddler until we moved away at the end of 1976. The songs by this group were well-played throughout the early 1970s and I remember hearing their country-rock melodies regularly. There was a period of time in the mid-’70s when my parents were part of a bowling league as were the parents of our closest friends. While the parents bowled we kids would roam around the premises doing whatever we did. Music was always playing and I remember hearing a lot of Eagles songs there.

To go off on a bit of a tangent, one of the songs I remember hearing at the bowling alley wasn’t anything related to the Eagles but the song “Love Rollercoaster” by the Ohio Players. The reason I recall this is the urban legend associated with the song about a scream in the song being that of someone being murdered. It’s kind of interesting to think of how quickly that rumor spread, well before the internet came along. If not for the urban legend, I imagine this song wouldn’t be more than a blip in my memory. But it was in there along with lots of other popular music from that time.

Around that time the Eagles put out their Greatest Hits: 1971-1975) compilation and it got a lot of play. It’s one of the few greatest hits albums that’s so iconic in my memory. I’d grown up hearing most of these songs but they all became big again and my musical memory is of re-engaging with these songs. Not in in any conscious way but I think it primed me for what was coming.

I was eleven years old when we moved from the Atlanta area to Charlotte, NC on December 10, 1976. Three days before that the song “New Kid in Town” was released. Back then I wasn’t playing very close attention the lyrics but the title of it definitely hooked me seeing that I was a new kid. It wasn’t until I was much older I came to understand the song for what it really was. This song still has a bit of the country-rock feel but it’s definitely moving away from the country part of it. It’s another one of those sentimental favorites that takes me back to a place and time.

By the time “Hotel California” was released early the next year, we were a bit more established in North Carolina. This song was something totally different and the imagery evoked was amazing. Even now when I hear the tune begin, I feel taken to another place. It’s an alien place which is kind of surreal, much like it must have seemed to be, going into that scene of Hollywood at the time and even now. It’s a mixture of Twilight Zone and horror movie, made especially clear by the final lyrics:

“Relax”, said the night man
“We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave”

“Life in the Fast Lane” is sort of a continuation on the theme of Hotel California and Hollywood excess but taking on a harder, rockier edge for me. When I think of this song, I think of the opening guitar riff and it really does embrace that feeling of living to excess and on the edge.

The final song on this album is “Last Resort” and it’s one of my favorite songs by the Eagles. It’s still related to the theme of excess but it targets the way humans seem happy to pillage and plunder the earth and warns of running out of spaces to destroy. It’s very much a song of activism and is just as relevant today as it was then.

Again I find myself in the year 1977 when there was so much amazing music coming out. I find it really fascinating that Rumours by Fleetwood Mac was released during this time and yet it doesn’t figure into my memory of that year much. But “Hotel California” is firmly down in my mind as one of many essential parts of that musical year.