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by DaiPlusPlus
1835 days ago
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Can someone explain it to me, though? Logically, after you check-out of a hotel you've surrendered your right to abode at that location - after that you're usually limited to common/shared areas like the lobby, bar, restaurant, maybe the pool - but excepting the lobby those places are closed at night - and they'd have security to remove people from the lobby if necessary - so as far as the Eagles' are concerned, what is it to "never leave" when you legally cannot stay? |
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> The song has been described as being "all about American decadence and burnout, too much money, corruption, drugs and arrogance; too little humility and heart." It has also been interpreted as an allegory about hedonism, self-destruction, and greed in the music industry of the late 1970s. Henley called it "our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles", and later said: "It's basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about."
Hotel California is, of course, not literally a hotel; it's a metaphor for an addictive and entrapping lifestyle, and your legal "right to abode at that location" is a real-world detail that doesn't really matter for the purposes of the metaphor. The singer wants to get out -- by "checking out" he has declared his intentions to leave the hotel, but the point of the song is that wanting to leave is not the same as actually leaving.
It's a bit more obvious if you consider the full verse:
> Mirrors on the ceiling / The pink champagne on ice / And she said: "We are all just prisoners here / Of our own device"
> And in the master's chambers / They gathered for the feast / They stab it with their steely knives / But they just can't kill the beast
> Last thing I remember, I was / Running for the door / I had to find the passage back / To the place I was before
> "Relax," said the night man / "We are programmed to receive / You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave!"