What do the Eagles mean when they sing “the warm smell of colitas”?
The introduction of Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ is appropriately hypnotic, to a point where if you shut your eyes, you can picture yourself on a reclining deck chair, with a cocktail in hand and smell the cool Pacific ocean breeze, wafting up your nose.
Because after all, isn’t that what the dream state of California is all about? Ever since pop culture formed itself in the late 20th century, this region of America has been synonymous with opportunity, glamour, and a sun-soaked culture that’s meant the entirety of the world’s entertainment elite has all flocked there.
But ultimately, wisdom has proven that the entertainment industry is propped on top of toxicity and corruption. The dangling carrot of success is presented in front of young, impressionable artists through every generation, who are subsequently exploited at the hands of their own ambition.
Eagles were acutely aware of that dark underbelly and so sought to expose it in their epic tale, ‘Hotel California’, and rather appropriately for the metaphor, the song’s grandiose backdrop hints towards a sense of allure that’s ultimately cut down the further Don Henley goes into the lyrics.
As his songwriting partner Glenn Frey explained, “That record explores the underbelly of success, the darker side of Paradise, which was sort of what we were experiencing in Los Angeles at that time”.
To faithfully represent the underhandedness of California, Henley had to first win the listener over, with baseless charm that brought with it the same promise of glamour presented to new musicians, so in that opening verse, he sings, “On a dark desert highway / Cool wind in my hair / Warm smell of colitas / Rising up through the air”.
On the surface, it sounds alluring, but what even is the “warm smell of colitas?” Again, rather apt for use in a song about California, the lyric has often been interpreted as sexual slang or a reference to marijuana, but Don Felder once clarified its true meaning, claiming, “The colitas is a plant that grows in the desert that blooms at night, and it has this kind of pungent, almost funky smell. Don Henley came up with a lot of the lyrics for that song, and he came up with colitas.”
It was an unexpected lyrical method from the band who have always sought to evoke the sensory element of storytelling, as Felder continued, explaining, “When we try to write lyrics, we try to write lyrics that touch multiple senses, things you can see, smell, taste, hear. ‘I heard the mission bell’, you know, or ‘the warm smell of colitas’, talking about being able to relate something through your sense of smell. Just those sorts of things. So that’s kind of where ‘colitas’ came from.”
It was a clever lyrical turn from the band, who, in utilising every sensory element of the world they inhabited, gave one of the most detailed and honest accounts of a California that exists in relation to the entertainment industry, one that, while naturally charming and glamorously alluring, is perhaps one of the darkest places to live.
