The one word Don Henley said gave him his biggest hit: “A built-in mythology”
Whether you’re a fan of them or not, you can’t deny that the Eagles delivered an extraordinarily potent record when they released their fifth album, Hotel California.
The record was an instant hit upon its release in late 1976, achieving sales far beyond any of the band’s previous outings, and it was lauded as their best and most complete work to date. Quite often, it takes bands of their ilk a long time to truly hit their stride, and by the time the Eagles had hit the mid-1970s, they were undoubtedly at their strongest as a unit.
Not only was it a resounding success at the time, but its legacy has managed to live on in the years since, and fans still perceive it as their crowning achievement as a group. Yes, there are critics who see it as being somewhat dated and a clear product of its time, but the nostalgia factor is what has helped it hold up over the course of almost 50 years, and the fact that it remains one of the best-selling rock records of all time is testament to just how popular it was and has remained.
But what is it, exactly, that makes Hotel California so special to so many people? You can argue that the Eagles’ songwriting was at its best at this point, surpassing even the brilliance of Desperado and On the Border, and the lineup they’d put together by this point had more chemistry than previous incarnations of the group. The introduction of Joe Walsh as a second guitarist alongside Glenn Frey appeared to hold more value than the relationships they’d had with previous members, and with Frey and Don Henley having worked for so long together as songwriting partners, things were clearly beginning to fall into place.
However, for all of its strengths in these areas, Henley has always believed that the magic lies elsewhere, and the specific choice for the setting of the album is what drove sales in the first place. It may well be their strongest set of songs, but choosing to specifically deliver a set of songs about California was ultimately what made people take notice of the record, specifically the title track.
In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2016, Henley spoke about why this simple decision is what turned the album and single into something of a global phenomenon, more so than anything else they’d done. “I’ve learned over the years that one word, ‘California’, carries with it all kinds of connotations, powerful imagery, mystique, etc,” the drummer proclaimed.
Adding, “That fires the imaginations of people in all corners of the globe. There’s a built-in mythology that comes with that word, an American cultural mythology that has been created by both the film and the music industry. But I think the success of the album was due to a combination of things that all coalesced at that point in time.”
It may be a brilliant set of songs, and they would undoubtedly have had success with them based on that alone, but if they were singing about the ‘Hotel Idaho’, if indeed that is a place, do you think it would have caught on in the same way? It’s likely that it probably wouldn’t have, as it doesn’t have this same kind of mystique, and I mean that with no offence to Idahoans everywhere.
