Rethinking Hotel California: why ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ belonged first
Look, there’s no denying how much of a massive song ‘Hotel California’ is, so I’ll start things with a bit of praise for what we now recognise as a classic track.
There is so much to love about the song that feels rather like an opera, given what we admire about it is broken up into three parts. You have that gorgeous introduction, with a flurry of chords and plucking. Next, you have the catchy chorus and mystifying vocals that create a fictional world within this endless hotel. Finally, you have one of the best guitar solos in rock history.
Perhaps the reason why ‘Hotel California’ came across as such a massive story was because it was written with a loose concept in mind. This wasn’t the Eagles’ first album, far from it. They had been working in music for years by this point, and experienced both the highs and lows of the industry, which meant embracing the freedom that comes with it but also acknowledging a sense of feeling trapped. ‘Hotel California’ was essentially a representation of that mix of emotions.
“The concept had to do with taking a look at all the band had gone through, personally and professionally, while it was still happening to them,” said Don Henley, “We were getting an extensive education in life, in love, in business. Beverly Hills was still a mythical place to us. In that sense, it became something of a symbol, and the ‘Hotel’ was the locus of all that LA had come to mean for us. In a sentence, I’d sum it up as the end of the innocence, round one.”
Let’s face it, it’s probably the best song that the Eagles have ever written, and it’s also easy to see why the band chose to name the subsequent album after it. There is a slight issue that comes with albums named after songs, though, and that’s the fact that it becomes difficult knowing where you can put that song in the tracklist. A lot of acts who choose to use a title track either put it at the beginning or the end of the LP, which makes sense, but it is also a little bit restrictive.
Eagles decided to follow the same approach and so had ‘Hotel California’ be the opening song for the album. It was great, as it gave people an immediate glimpse into what was one of the best rock songs ever written; however, it also came with some problems as well. The first of these was the fact that it set the bar too high for the rest of the album, and the other issue is that, simply put, ‘Hotel California’ just isn’t an opener.
“Killer” was how Slash described the opening riff to the band’s song ‘Life In The Fast Lane’, and you have to admit, he has a point. That riff might be one of, if not the best, in the band’s discography; it’s the perfect way to open a song, and subsequently, the perfect way to open an album. It sets the tone in the most perfect of ways, as the song is stellar, making the style of this new rock-orientated version of the Eagles clear, but it also leaves the best to come.
There’s more than just that opening riff, though. ‘Life In The Fast Lane’ should have been the opening track for the album Hotel California because it plays into the concept of the title track. The song ‘Hotel California’ sounds like a novel, one that a reader can look into, dissect, and that contains both highs and lows, so throwing a listener straight into something quite abstract can be somewhat disorientating.
However, ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ is a lot more straightforward. This song highlights the problems that the band had with life in Los Angeles and the superficial nature of a lot of their contemporaries. And as such, by putting that song first, the Eagles would give listeners a taste for the album before fully leaning into the complex narrative that surrounds it.
“[It] kind of expressed the stereotyped LA ‘run around in your Porsche’ 24-hour boogie mode that unfortunately is too true for a lot of people,” said Glenn Frey, “It wasn’t really a statement about the guys in the band, or anybody in particular, just it’s kind of disturbing to see the extremes that the bourgeois jet set will involve themselves in.”
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