Quick, what is the state anthem of California?
If you answer 'California, Here I Come,' you are, like me, wrong. If your answer is 'I Love You, California,' you are an unusually well-informed career state employee. And if, like billions of people around the world, you answer 'Hotel California,' well, you are technically wrong but, oh so right.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the release of 'Hotel California,' both the song and the album it graces which is one of the most telling, and best-selling, albums of all time. The power and mystery of 'Hotel California' has tantalized and inspired, provoked and mystified ever since its exotic and evocative guitar figures and enigmatic lyrics were first heard 40 years ago.
"It makes me want to go there and it makes me want to get away," said one tourist standing near a California street corner as a singer with a guitar gave the song a go. "Look at me," she said. "Here I am."
December also marks the 50th anniversary of 'Buffalo Springfield', the first album by the group of the same name, and of their own all-time classic song, 'For What It's Worth.' No Buffalo Springfield, which pioneered much of the California sound and begat a little group called Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, maybe no Eagles. We'll get to that a little later.
While the Springfield, named after a steamroller parked near the house Stephen Stills, my old campaign friend from the '80s, was then crashing in, were a group of guys most all of whom were in their early twenties when they released their very first album 10 years earlier, the Eagles were veterans by the end of 1976. All of them were approaching or just at the age of 30.
"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave" ... from the 'Hotel California' tour, spring 1977 in suburban Washington, D.C., Don Henley on lead vocals.
'Hotel California' was their fifth studio album. Their other album, released in early 1976, was a little record called 'Eagles: Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975).' The record company put it out without input from any of the band members (except, unbeknownst to the rest, founder Glenn Frey) to meet hungry market demands as the band worked on what would turn out to be their master work. It was a good thing that the opinions of the Eagles not named Frey did not carry the day; 'Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)' proved to be the best-selling album of the 20th century in America.
The Eagles, led by Frey, had begun five years earlier in the back-up band of one Linda Ronstadt, an incredible virtuoso of a singer who was herself then on the verge of becoming the queen of rock and roll, not to mention the consort of California's young governor-about-to-be, Jerry Brown. With a huge assist from the very kindly Ronstadt, Frey, who had the assurance of a deal from his neighbor Jackson Browne's friend and manager David Geffen if he had a band, brought together fellow guitar player Bernie Leadon, bass player Randy Meisner, and a drummer and sometime singer by the name of Don Henley.
Although Frey, the principal arranger of the band's music throughout its history, had made, as he told me many years later, a detailed study of the brilliant and fractious supergroup which emerged in the wake of Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- for a time, till they broke up, the California equivalent of the departed Beatles -- he did not want to make himself and his bandmates household names. He wanted a band name like that for a tight-knit gang, short and pithy, "bad and cool." And he came up with one. The Eagles.
After a few months rehearsing and playing small clubs in Colorado, they were a tight combo, playing a country-ish rock featuring high Crosby, Stills and Nash-type harmonies with a Western texture all their own. Their debut album, 'Eagles,' out in early '72, hit big right away, propelled by a Frey-sung ditty written by Jackson Browne and Frey that was to become an instant all-time classic. If 'Take It Easy" (which I loved so much the moment I heard it in my school parking lot that I sprinted after the car playing it to find out the name of the band) lacked the earnest and often bittersweet social relevance of CSNY, well, the times were getting pretty tired, awfully disillusioned. Something upbeat and positive seemed in order, though, as it turned out, the Eagles had their own brand of progressive politics to push when the time again seemed right.
With sudden stardom, the band then veered onto a frequently acoustic, country and western-oriented concept album about outlaws in the O
If you answer 'California, Here I Come,' you are, like me, wrong. If your answer is 'I Love You, California,' you are an unusually well-informed career state employee. And if, like billions of people around the world, you answer 'Hotel California,' well, you are technically wrong but, oh so right.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the release of 'Hotel California,' both the song and the album it graces which is one of the most telling, and best-selling, albums of all time. The power and mystery of 'Hotel California' has tantalized and inspired, provoked and mystified ever since its exotic and evocative guitar figures and enigmatic lyrics were first heard 40 years ago.
"It makes me want to go there and it makes me want to get away," said one tourist standing near a California street corner as a singer with a guitar gave the song a go. "Look at me," she said. "Here I am."
December also marks the 50th anniversary of 'Buffalo Springfield', the first album by the group of the same name, and of their own all-time classic song, 'For What It's Worth.' No Buffalo Springfield, which pioneered much of the California sound and begat a little group called Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, maybe no Eagles. We'll get to that a little later.
While the Springfield, named after a steamroller parked near the house Stephen Stills, my old campaign friend from the '80s, was then crashing in, were a group of guys most all of whom were in their early twenties when they released their very first album 10 years earlier, the Eagles were veterans by the end of 1976. All of them were approaching or just at the age of 30.
"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave" ... from the 'Hotel California' tour, spring 1977 in suburban Washington, D.C., Don Henley on lead vocals.
'Hotel California' was their fifth studio album. Their other album, released in early 1976, was a little record called 'Eagles: Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975).' The record company put it out without input from any of the band members (except, unbeknownst to the rest, founder Glenn Frey) to meet hungry market demands as the band worked on what would turn out to be their master work. It was a good thing that the opinions of the Eagles not named Frey did not carry the day; 'Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)' proved to be the best-selling album of the 20th century in America.
The Eagles, led by Frey, had begun five years earlier in the back-up band of one Linda Ronstadt, an incredible virtuoso of a singer who was herself then on the verge of becoming the queen of rock and roll, not to mention the consort of California's young governor-about-to-be, Jerry Brown. With a huge assist from the very kindly Ronstadt, Frey, who had the assurance of a deal from his neighbor Jackson Browne's friend and manager David Geffen if he had a band, brought together fellow guitar player Bernie Leadon, bass player Randy Meisner, and a drummer and sometime singer by the name of Don Henley.
Although Frey, the principal arranger of the band's music throughout its history, had made, as he told me many years later, a detailed study of the brilliant and fractious supergroup which emerged in the wake of Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- for a time, till they broke up, the California equivalent of the departed Beatles -- he did not want to make himself and his bandmates household names. He wanted a band name like that for a tight-knit gang, short and pithy, "bad and cool." And he came up with one. The Eagles.
After a few months rehearsing and playing small clubs in Colorado, they were a tight combo, playing a country-ish rock featuring high Crosby, Stills and Nash-type harmonies with a Western texture all their own. Their debut album, 'Eagles,' out in early '72, hit big right away, propelled by a Frey-sung ditty written by Jackson Browne and Frey that was to become an instant all-time classic. If 'Take It Easy" (which I loved so much the moment I heard it in my school parking lot that I sprinted after the car playing it to find out the name of the band) lacked the earnest and often bittersweet social relevance of CSNY, well, the times were getting pretty tired, awfully disillusioned. Something upbeat and positive seemed in order, though, as it turned out, the Eagles had their own brand of progressive politics to push when the time again seemed right.
With sudden stardom, the band then veered onto a frequently acoustic, country and western-oriented concept album about outlaws in the O