Hotel California
by Eagles
- 75
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 58
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
The Eagles were getting what Don Henley called "an extensive education, in life, in love, in business" in Los Angeles. None of them was from California. Beverly Hills was still a mythical place to them. The Beverly Hills Hotel had become a focal point of their lives, and "Hotel California" took its theme from it. Henley summed it up as "the end of the innocence, round one."
The music came first. Don Felder made an instrumental demo in a rented house on Malibu Beach, with a Rhythm Ace drum machine, a 12-string guitar recorded on a four-track deck in his spare bedroom, and a bassline. He gave copies to Henley and Glenn Frey. Henley liked the Latin and reggae feel. He said it sounded like "a Mexican reggae or Bolero". That gave the song its first working title, "Mexican Reggae". Felder later said the band drove into L.A. at night, saw the glow of lights on the horizon, and let the images of Hollywood and its dreams start running through their heads. Henley and Frey wrote most of the words.
The single was released on February 22, 1977. Henley sang lead, and the song closed with a long guitar solo traded between Felder and Joe Walsh.
Hotel California runs at 75 BPM, the tempo of soul, trip-hop and half-time hip-hop. In classical terms it sits in largo territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3.2 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 800 ms. It is in D major, Camelot 10B, which shares its notes with B minor and mixes cleanly with G major and A major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.