Hotel California by Eagles (Vinyl record album review)

Album name: Hotel California

Group name: Eagles

Year: 1976

Number of discs: one

Label: Asylum Records

Collection: Selman

Distinguishing characteristics:

Scratched into side one of LP: 7E 1084 A RE SP A-3 “IS IT 6 O’CLOCK YET?”

Scratched into side two of LP: 7E 1084 B-1 RE SP 1-2 “V.O.L. IS FIVE PIECE LIVE”

Buy it on Amazon: $22.96

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m pretty familiar with the song Hotel California, but I’m not sure that I’ll recognize any of the other songs.

Previous Eagles records that I’ve reviewed:

Eagles (1972): 3/5

Desperado (1973): 3/5

One of These Nights (1975): 2/5

What I expected

Rock, soft rock, maybe some country.

What it was actually like

These songs mostly seemed to have a very produced sound, and many were too slow, like a tenth grader double spacing his paragraph-long essay and using a 13 point font to stretch it to “two pages.”

Pretty Maids All in a Row was an example of a song that was far too slow, and another was The Last Resort, the final song on the record, that seemed to go on forever.

Wasted Time was an easy listening song that kind of reminded me of Bryan Adams, and Wasted Time (Reprise) introduced a weird orchestral sound that was brought back on The Last Resort.

New Kid in Town had a bit of a country sound, and Try and Love Again was country rock, with vocals that sounded sort of like Neil Young; it was also too slow, but in this case still pretty decent.

Life in the Fast Lane was one that I recognized and never would have thought was an Eagles song (in fact, I never would have thought it was from the mid 1970s – I probably would have guessed the mid 1980s). Like Victim of Love, it was really more of a hard rock song. The latter made me think of Kiss.

As for the title track Hotel California: does it deserve to be one of the most popular, most recognizable and best selling songs of all time? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a great song. It is a great song that’s very carefully put together, with strong vocals and bass line and electric guitar. I had not heard it in a long time and was impressed by how much it delighted me to hear it. I might have made it the last song on the record instead of the first, though.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me