| From Wikipedia: > 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!" |