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The Eagles: Hotel California
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.
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1977
I bought my first music in 1975 with money of my own. That was just four 45rpm records and I don’t recall my next purchase. I just remember I bought the second Captain and Tenille album and maybe that was my first one? I’m not totally sure.
It was probably more like 1977 when I started to become a more proper music fan. By this time I was doing a bit of babysitting and earning my own money so control of my listening habits was shifting to what might be expected when one is nearly a teenager.
Another thing that may or may not have any influence is that we moved from Atlanta to Charlotte at the end of 1976. I think my understanding of the world really increased during this time period so it may be a by-product of my recognition of what was happening in the world. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence due to my age at the time.
I return to The Eagles again thanks to the song New Kid in Town, which I think must have resonated with me. Not that I was really listening closely to lyrics then but I was a new kid so it seemed an apt song. Another song that I strongly remember was Year of the Cat by Al Stewart.
Weirdly I got really attached to the song You Light up My Life by Debby Boone. It was hugely popular for many weeks so it was easy to get a bit obsessed. This was one of those songs that I liked then but I am rather indifferent to now. I wasn’t a religious person then so I guess it didn’t really have lasting power. I didn’t see it as religious at the time though, so I guess something about it reached me.
It was in 1977 I was listening to a local pop music station. That summer they sponsored a reading program where if you read a certain number of books they would give you six singles. I don’t recall the reading but I was taken to the station to get my records and I have a vague memory of standing in line with all the other teens. I got my records and I think I still have them today. I can’t recall all of them but I think one was Low Down by Boz Scaggs and Best of my Love by the Emotions. The one I remember the best was Undercover Angel by Alan O’Day. When I find my old records I will have to figure out the other three songs. Everyone got a different set of singles so it was all a random sort of thing.
I carried on doing babysitting jobs in the neighborhood and so continued to have some spending money. It was around this time I bought the first album that influenced me in any big way and it was not even a regular album but a compilation. Love Songs by the Beatles was released in late 1977 and I bought it because I liked some of the Beatles songs I heard on the radio. This was my entry point to becoming a Beatles fan. I used to listen that album all the time and it still is a sentimental favorite of mine even though it’s not one of their proper records. I think I must have the album still for that reason. Well, I think I brought it to Australia but those records are packed away in the closet at the moment. It would still be a few years before I came to know the proper albums by the group in any way.
The Bee Gees hit it big in 1977 too, with the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, a movie I still have never seen even though it’s supposed to be a good one. I have seen a few bits here and there when it’s replayed on tv but just have never watched it. The music, on the other hand is still pretty prominent in my memory. I already liked some of the Bee Gees music at this time although their shift to disco music was a bit of a surprise as it was a quite different from songs from their early days. That said I think they had a couple records before this that were already moving into this style. I have never owned this album but I do have the songs that were popular on a compilation album somewhere. Well, I don’t think I still have the vinyl so maybe I don’t own it now.
This was also the year that Billy Joel became a big thing. The album The Stranger was everywhere and these songs were also being played constantly. Just the Way You Are was the biggest song but I latched onto She’s Always a Woman at the time instead. I think some of the songs got played so much I was a bit tired of it. These days I can appreciate it all much more than I did then, and maybe I will actually buy a copy of the album one day. It almost came to pass that I saw him in concert that year but for some reason I didn’t go. I later became a big Billy Joel fan so I do regret that I didn’t go then since it’s unlikely I will be able to afford a ticket even if I am in the right place at the right time.
Which leads me to considering my first concert, Shaun Cassidy. To be honest I don’t recall much of his music but I think the concert was that year and he was popular and my mom took me and I enjoyed it. Most of his music was cover songs and I did like the songs a lot. But Shaun Cassidy wasn’t my main teen idol. Instead it was Andy Gibb, who I loved and I would have seen a concert by him had the opportunity happened. His album Flowing Rivers was really good and I think even now it stands up a bit on the few occasions when I’ve tried to listen to it. Of course, some of the songs were written or co-written by his older brother Barry, who was able to pen a popular song himself. I will point out that the other idol from that time period was Leif Garret and I never liked his music and I didn’t care much for him either.
I should also add the album Frampton Comes Alive at this point. While I wasn’t a huge fan at the time, I did like some of the songs and I have come to appreciate how great the music was on that record. Funnily enough that’s the only record I know Frampton for and I’d guess that’s the case for many of us. This was a record that was popular with the neighbor girls I hung out with early on when we lived in NC. They were also big fans of Kiss, a band that I’ve never liked much although there are a couple of songs that are okay. I was just never a fan and most of the time these days I am as likely to change the radio station when they are on. I can’t recall if they had an album that year or not but there was a lot of fandom right then so I guess there must have been. Maybe I will look it up. Well it seem there was an album plus a live album that year so it makes sense they were so popular.
There was one other album that was really big that year which I will write about separately as it is a major album with major influence in my musical tastes.
I’m sure there’s heaps more from that year I’m forgetting right now. Until I started putting all this down, I don’t think I realised how much of the music of that year had been such a part of my life.
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Music in the early years
I was thinking about how I might write about influences on my musical tastes and I will do the album thing but it seems useful to think about the beginnings of my musical tastes.
I don’t really recall having much interest in music when I was very young. That said, I was a big fan of Glen Campbell when I was quite young. I don’t even know what songs I liked at the time as the ones that I mostly recall are some from the mid-70s or so.
I imagine a lot of my music knowledge was centered around what my parents listened to at the time. There was a lot of Charley Pride at my house. My mom was a big fan of it so we heard a lot of his records playing. Olivia Newton John was also quite popular although it was a bit later. I suppose we heard a lot more country music back then. But I did hear pop music too. When I was in third grade I remember the “song” The Streak by Ray Stevens was a thing. Of course I guess that was more from the country side of things too. That song reminds me of a girl named Paris in my class at school who used to sing that a lot for a time. Hmm…I just know there’s a lot of pop music I know when I hear it on the radio. At the very least we heard it in the car.
It wasn’t until the mid-70s I started to take a more active interest in music. I guess it was probably 1975 to be exact. That summer my cousins and grandfather came down to visit us for a week or so. This was when my aunt had the baby she gave up for adoption (even though we were all told it had died)…the one who I connected with a year ago on Ancestry.
Some where along this time I bought my first 45 rpm records. There were four of them at the time although I don’t know if I recall all of them. I still have them somewhere in the house but have nothing to play them on. The big one is Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain and Tenille. It was hugely popular during that summer and my cousin and I both loved the song a lot and sang it all the time while she visited. Even after she’d gone we started writing letters to each other and quoting lines from the song. I think sometimes before this I’d been to Pennsylvania and the big song was Donny Osmond singing Go Away Little Girl. Not sure which year but probably the year before, I guess. I didn’t have the record though. That song is still a favorite, mainly for sentimental reasons. It still reminds me of my cousin, who died many years ago from ovarian cancer.
Another of those records was Calypso by John Denver. I just liked the sound of the song and that has always been my favorite song by John Denver. But I was a fan of some of his other music too. I guess country music played a bigger role than I realized before.
The third single was Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band…which upon reflection was a country group, I think. Funny, I never thought I liked country music all that much but I guess I did have some roots in that area for a while.
I can’t remember what the fourth single was right now. I will have to figure it out later.
To carry on the country theme, I used to like a lot of Eagles songs from their earlier years. I know they were more country rock but it’s still connected. I have pretty much always liked their music but it was only a few years ago that I bought a collection of their music. I guess that’s one of those groups I liked to listen to but I wasn’t compelled to have my own copy. There were lots of groups like that. I guess the reason this came to me was my parents were in a bowling league sometime in the mid-70s and these songs were playing a lot in the background there. We kids used to run around while the adults bowled. I do have ideas of getting a couple of proper albums one day in the future.
Elton John was another artist I heard a lot of back in those days. My parents had the single Daniel which got played a lot in our house. Funnily enough that’s not one that I heard very often these days but it does take me back to those years. But I also remember the era when he sang Don’t Go Breaking My Heart with Kiki Dee really well. That was a radio play thing so I guess I must have heard it in the car a lot. I don’t have any of his albums either although I do hope to get a couple of them one day. Or maybe a compilation.
Neil Young’s Heart of Gold is my favorite song by him and I know it’s almost completely a nostalgic choice. Oddly I remember hearing this played across the street at our neighbor’s house. They had a son who was a year or two older than me and a daughter who was quite a bit younger. My brothers and I were playing there one day and that song was on. I honestly don’t remember much else about that day aside from the song and the fact we were in the son’s bedroom for a time.
I was also just reminded of Helen Reddy from that era too. My parents had at least one of here albums and it was played a lot. Funny to thing we were listening to an Australian at the time (not to mentioned Olivia Newton John). I remember the song I am Woman being really big for a long time. Kind of funny also to think this feminist song got played so much back then considering how non-feminist my mom has become in more recent years.
I was just reminded of The Association as a group from my earlier years. My family had best friends from when we lived in Pennsylvania. They moved to Atlanta around the same time as a us and we lived in the same apartments. Back in PA were were neighbors in an upstairs/downstairs apartment or duplex so of thing. Anyway, we were close with their family all the years I was growing up. I spent the night there many times and I remember hearing the Association music being played. I think Never My Love was the most prominent but I am sure there were plenty of others.
I guess the last music I will mention is probably one of the earlier records I knew. My parents had a copy of the first Beatles album released in the US. It didn’t have a cover from the point I recall it and I think it was mentioned at some time that we kids destroyed it. It may well have been me, in fact. The Beatles will get a look-in at some point of sharing although I haven’t quite worked out which album. So there is definitely some pop music I remember from way back although I wouldn’t say it made me a Beatles fan at a young age.