home

Hotel California Still Rocks

By Jeralyn, Section Media
Posted on Wed Jun 01, 2005 at 07:24:13 PM EST
Tags: (all tags)
Share This: Digg! StumbleUpon del.icio.us reddit reddit

NBC aired the two hour farewell Eagles tour filmed in Melbourne, Australia tonight. As many times as I've seen them live, including the farewell tour, I couldn't stop watching. Hotel California still is one of the all time greats.

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes Benz
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

....Mirrors on the ceiling, pink champagne on ice
We are all just prisoners here, of our own device...

...'Relax,' said the night man, We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave!

One more favorite, one of the best drug songs ever, Smuggler's Blues:

So baby, here's your ticket, and the suitcase in your hand
Here's a little money, now we'll do it just the way we planned
You be cool for twenty hours, and I'll pay you twenty grand
I'm sorry it went down like this, but someone had to lose
It's the nature of the business, it's the smugglers' blues

The sailors and the pilots, the soldiers and the law
The payoffs and the ripoffs and the things nobody saw
Don't matter if it's heroin, cocaine or hash,
You've got to carry weapons 'cause you always carry cash
There's lots of shady characters and lots of dirty deals
Every name's an alias in case somebody squeals
It's the lure of easy money, it's got a very strong appeal
Perhaps you'd understand it better standing in my shoes
It's the ultimate enticement, it's the smugglers' blues

You see it in the headlines, you hear it every day
They say they're gonna stop it, but it doesn't go away
They move it through Miami and sell it in LA
They hide it up in Telluride, I mean it's here to stay
It's propping up the governments in Columbia and Peru
You ask any D.A., man, they'll say there's nothing we can do
From the office of the president right down to me and you
Me and you
It's a losing proposition, but one you can't refuse
It's the politics of contraband, it's the smugglers' blues

The Smuggler's Blues video was a classic, but I can't find a copy online. Here's the 1985 list of MTV video awards though:

Best Video of the Year: Don Henley, "The Boys Of Summer"
Best Male Video: Bruce Springsteen, "I'm On Fire"
Best Female Video: Tina Turner, "What's Love Got To Do With It"
Best Concept Video: Glenn Frey, "Smuggler's Blues"
Best Group Video: USA for Africa, "We Are The World"
Best New Artist in a Video: Til Tuesday, "Voices Carry"
Best Special Effects in a Video: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, "Don't Come Around Here No More"
Best Direction in a Video: Don Henley, "The Boys Of Summer"
Video Vanguard Award: David Byrne, Kevin Godley & Lol Creme, Russell Mulcahy
Viewer's Choice Award: USA for Africa, "We Are The World"

We'll see if Live 8 can compete.

< Former Felon Turns Scholar | Michael Jackson: Closing Arguments Thursday >

  • The Online Magazine with Liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news

  • Contribute To TalkLeft


    • Hotel California Still Rocks | 16 comments (16 topical)
    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    Yes, they still rock. BTW, Joe Walsh is talented, but he's a *** as a person, speaking as someone who had to tell a tech to pack **** before travelling to Japan. But Ella! is on PBS. As a rocker, I still recommend her over the Eagles.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    Nice to see you back here, Rocker.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#3)
    by BigTex on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    Tiffany-twisted? of our own disguise? Huh. Always thought the lyrics were definatley twisted, of our own device. Definatley puts a different spin on the song. Till now I always thought the song was about meth. Learn something new every day. -BigTex

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    You were right on the "device" - I just corrected it from "disguise" to "device" - but no, I don't think the song is about meth. Wrong decade. Yes, the words are "Tiffany twisted" -- which I always took to be a reference to the material excesses of the late 70's. But there are a thousand different interpretations to the song, and particularly, the line, "They stab it with their steely knives / But they just can't kill the beast.."

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#5)
    by Che's Lounge on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    Rocker, Sorry to hear that about Joe Walsh. I thought he was a good addition to the Eagles. I never really got off on his solo stuff after James Gang Rides Again, which I think is a great work. "The Bomber" was a great composition, complete with Ravel's "Bolero". Only the best FM stations ever played the whole thing. JMHO from this side of the stage.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#6)
    by Che's Lounge on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    Henley's voice is still intact.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    Che, you know,this was one of those cases where I hit send before engaging brain. I would never take money from the Enquirer and never commented on BTM, but seeing him kinda triggered me. I shoulda had more restraint. But having said that, people and the art they create have to be separated. He was the guts of the Eagles. Until they hired him they might as well have been America. And I don't think I would have cared to socialize with Wagner, Capote, or Picasso, but I sure admire the art.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#8)
    by TomK on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    The song is about marijuana. The colitas referenced in the beginning of the song is the spanish/mexican (not sure if it's spanish or just a mexican thing, honestly) slang for the choices parts of the marijuana plant. It translates loosely as little tails. Although, I think the song is obviously more generalizable towards any addictions.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#9)
    by manish on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:34 PM EST
    including the farewell tour Which farewell tour was that? :-)

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#10)
    by theologicus on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave! Nice motto for our bourgeoning empire of bases. Bases, Bases Everywhere

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#11)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    Loved the song but missed them last night for Ella on PBS. If you came of age in the seventies as I did, we survived on a mix of kick-ass freaky rock (Zepplin/Floyd) and Folksy soft rock (Elton John/Croce/Paul Simon/The Eagles). Somewhere in between were brief love affairs with Bob Seger (...Down on Main St....Beautiful Loser) and Steve Miller (..Fly like an Eagle....Jungle Love) *sigh* I almost feel fifteen again...Can anyone say Chuck Mangione? BTW ... Chalk up Lionel Richie to the Artists Formerly known as Nice Guys who turned out to be A**holes club.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#12)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    I've always thought the EAGLES only attribute was sucking so bad that punk rock had to be invented. They did always seem to embody all that was bloated and self indulgent about 70's rock. It was a horrible era, and we seem to have come full circle.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#13)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    billy ... - Interesting take, but I think the gamut of music available in the '70's was about 100 times greater than the choices now. Programming services had yet to take over the airwaves. We had New Wave, hard rock, metal, fluff (see Air Supply;-), rockabilly, traditional rock, and many others that defied any classification. A lot of FM D-Jays set their own playlists, I don't know any stations that allow that now. Now we have eminem and brittany spears. The fact that every +100k market still has a least one jurassic rock station should tell you something about the quality and choice that were available then and have survived the test of time.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#14)
    by desertswine on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    Okay that's it billy, get outta the cab!

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#15)
    by sarcastic unnamed one on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:35 PM EST
    I partied to the Eagles in high school a lot and saw them live a few times. Last night I tried, but I couldn't watch. Kept flipping the channel to HGTV. It was like watching my retired dad and his VFW buddies singing karioke. I kinda felt like I do sometimes at an open-casket funeral - I'd rather remember them as they were when they were alive. Like the Meadowlands Stadium concert in NJ in about '80 or so - Eagles, Heart, Blue Oyster Cult (?), and a couple others I can't remember. So much energy, so great, so fun.

    Re: Hotel California Still Rocks (none / 0) (#16)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:38 PM EST
    I always thought the Eagles were terribly over-rated. I find the majority of their work hollow...not enough balls, not enough grit. The lot of them combined couldn't carry Keith Richard's jock.

    Hotel California Still Rocks | 16 comments (16 topical)