What is the real meaning of the lyrics of Hotel California?

There are many interpretations of the lyrics of Hotel California, as follows:

Interpretation 1: Drug rehabilitation center

Many hints about drugs in the song are the source of the statement that "California Hotel" was originally a drug rehabilitation center. According to this statement: California Hotel is a voluntary drug rehabilitation center beside the highway in Southern California, and the experience of the Hawks taking drugs in hospital is the source of the lyrics. At the beginning of the lyrics, Coritas suggested that top-heavy feeling is the characteristic of smoking marijuana.

"Lighting a candle" is a common expression of drug abuse, and dancing in the backyard is an uncontrollable epileptic seizure after drug abuse. This kind of voluntary drug rehabilitation center is mainly for the middle class, between sanatorium and drug rehabilitation center, and promiscuity is a normal phenomenon after the middle class debauchery in the 1970 s.

Drug addiction allows you to recover in a certain period of time and leave the drug rehabilitation center, but you can never get rid of the shadow of repeating the same mistakes. This is the portrayal of "you can check out for a while, but you can never leave".

Interpretation 2: innuendo of the erosion of the music industry

The 1960s, when Hotel California was born, was a period of free creation in American music industry. The popularity of rock music became a symbol of freedom and rebellion in the 1960s, but its grand occasion gradually led to musicians' increasingly erosive attitude towards life. Drug abuse and promiscuity became almost every American rock musician's degenerate road in the 1970s, and money and pleasure became the new image of rock music in the 1970s.

Eagle, two musicians, saw this fact, but there was nothing they could do. Musicians have regarded this addicted life as the normal state of the music industry. Rock musicians are always surrounded by beautiful girls and decadent lives. They always forgive themselves for questioning from outside.

Interpretation 3: Los Angeles

"Los Angeles", this is the answer given by the Hawks after countless questions.

In 1960s, Los Angeles metropolitan area adjusted its original industrial structure. It quickly revived after the national economic recession in the 1970s, and finally became one of the global financial, trade and management centers in the 1980s. With the adjustment of economic structure and the influx of a large number of immigrants, the social structure of Los Angeles has also changed, and it has gradually become a concentrated place of high society.

Don henley, a member of the band, explained, "We are a group of young people from middle-class backgrounds in midwestern states.' Hotel California' is our understanding of the upper class in Los Angeles. It can also be seen as a symbol of the United States, which always pursues a luxurious life, not just about California and Beverly Hills. " Beverly Hills is a wealthy area in Los Angeles, where Hollywood movie stars live. )

Interpretation 4: Mental Hospital

The strangeness of lyrics may be the source of the statement of mental hospital. The related hints in the lyrics are: there are always auditory hallucinations of distant voices; Heaven and hell refer to some demonic evil human nature and angelic pure unconsciousness among mental patients; In the backyard, the patient danced like a demon; The distortion of the mind is the straight language of mental illness; The prisoner of his own thoughts is also a code word; A psychotic illusion that you want to kill the devil but you can't kill him.

Of course, mental illness and drugs are the same. You can feel normal for the time being, but you can't guarantee that you will be normal in the future, and you will never leave that shadow. The seventies were the time when horror films were popular in the film industry, and this lyric was exactly the story frame. A lonely man on a remote desert road, a beautiful woman holding a candle in front of the door, a mysterious foreman in a bar, a magic dance in the backyard,

A demon who wants to kill but can't kill, even if it's over, someone will always remind him behind his back that the sequel has an end. All these make the lyrics have a ghostly feeling, and in horror movies, mental hospitals are often the main background places.

Interpretation 5: American society in 1970s

1969 Woodstock Music Festival is the pinnacle of rock and roll. The lyrics of Hotel California, "We haven't had that thing here since 1969", imply that the rock spirit no longer exists after Woodstock. People who think this song symbolizes American society understand it this way: 1969 was the last year of the 1960s, and since then there has been no spirit of freedom, peace and equality.

As soon as the United States entered the 1970 s, it encountered the Middle East oil crisis, the failure of the Vietnam War, the Nixon Watergate incident and so on. Overnight, America's mental outlook changed from struggling youth to vulgar and decadent middle age.

Baidu Encyclopedia-California Hotel (Eagle Singing)