Which Hotel California is the real Hotel California
 

I am trying to find out which Hotel California the Eagles sing about in Hotel California, but there are a shitload of hotels that call themself that. Theres even a Hotel California in Barcelona and Zurich. Anyone have a link to the "real" Hotel California?

wasnt the 'hotel california' a metaphor ?

yep..

thats the joke.

It doesnt really exist.

Eh, I dunno. The album cover has a picture of a hotel, and one of my friends who lived in California took a picture of the same hotel that was on the album. I guess I could call him and ask where it was, but I figured someone here would be able to post a link to the official site or someplace that has information on reservations and stuff.

Interesting Read -
http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/hotel.htm

"Some believe the song was written about a real inn bearing that name. Though there is a Hotel California in Todos Santos, a town on Mexico's Baja California peninsula, its relation to the song begins and ends with the coincidence of a shared name. None of the Eagles stayed there, let alone wrote music there. Nor did they have this building in mind when they set down the lyrics to this popular song.

Those who persist in believing the song must be named after an actual building have been known to assert "Hotel California" was the nickname of the Camarillo State Hospital, a state-run psychiatric hospital near Los Angeles which housed thousands of patients across its sixty-year history before closing in 1997. To them, the lyrics seem to fit what a mentally disturbed person would experience upon incarceration in a long-term care facility. The imagery of the song is explained as that person's hallucinations juxtaposed against moments of startling clarity as he realizes where he is. "

Hmm, interesting. Well, I guess the hotel on the cover is the next best thing, anyone know where that is and what its called?

I didn't know that, thanks!

:thumbsup

Wow, cool. Snopes is awesome. Nice find.
:thumbsup

Actually, that quote there about the 'psychiatric hospital theory' is just one of many urban legends mentioned on that site there - http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/hotel.htm

If you read the whole thing, this is the conclusion to it here:

The truth proves far less satisfying than the myriad rumors that have sprung up around this song.

Hotel California is an allegory about hedonism and greed in Southern California in the 1970s. At the time of its release, the Eagles were riding high in the music world, experiencing material success on a frightening level. Though they thoroughly enjoyed the money, drugs, and women fame threw their way, they were disquieted by it all and sought to pour that sense of unease into their music and to warn others about the dark underside of such adulation.

In a 1995 interview, Don Henley said the song "sort of captured the zeitgeist of the time, which was a time of great excess in this country and in the music business in particular." In another interview that same year, he referred to it as being about a "loss of innocence."

The album has as its underlying theme the corruption of impressionable rock stars by the decadent Los Angeles music industry. The celebrated title track presents California as a gilded prison the artist freely enters only to discover that he cannot later escape.

The real Hotel California is not a place; it is a metaphor for the west coast music industry and its effect on the talented but unworldy musicians who find themselves ensnared in its glittering web.

"But you cant ever leave...."

DOnt you get it.

Its talking about a mental institution.

interesting stuff, didn't know that.

great oldie btw :pimp

For some reason, I always thought it was about devil worshipers. :1orglaugh

I think one of my friends' older brother or sister must have told us that.

Gotta love snopes

I always thought it was talking about death.

Look closely and you'll see Anton Lavey

Read the link I posted above. The photographer was not aware of anyone there at the time of the shot so their identity is actually unknown. The shot is of the Beverly Hills Hotel from a sixty-foot cherry picker during rush-hour traffic on Sunset Boulevard.

Snopes also says it was a woman they hired for the shoot...oh well...it still looks a lot like Anton Lavey.

Congrats on getting to it before me. I was stationed at Point Mugu, just down the road from Camarillo, which had the psychiatric hospital. It is now closed, so I was not able to visit it. :(

For those of you that don't know. The psychiatric hospital was bought by the State of California, and turned into the new California State University Channel Islands. I've visited the campus, and needless to say it's quite the experience; titled walls, bars on the windows, small rooms, and long narrow corridors.

The joke is that they didn't have to look very far for professors.

:1orglaugh

:thumbsup

good one :1orglaugh

:1orglaugh