Glenn Frey of The Eagles sadly died yesterday. He co-wrote the lyrics of their most famous song “Hotel California” with drummer Don Henley (music by Don Felder). Like Bohemian Rhapsody, it’s a classic 70s song with striking imagery, the meaning of which is tantalisingly vague (“I think we achieved perfect ambiguity,” Frey told NBC in 1998. Like Freddie Mercury, he took the real meaning of his most famous song, if there was one, to the grave with him). Some have seen Satanic references in the song which Don Henley has dismissed as “ludicrous.”
It all comes down to what I call “Intention Versus Perception”: what a writer intends and really means and what the reader sees, takes from it and/or twists to fit their own agenda. But, almost as if the Devil himself was tempting us to do so, let’s tease out those Satanic “Hotel California” references, real or imagined, for fun.
The cover of the album “Hotel California” allegedly has an image of well-known Hollywood Satanist Anton LaVey glaring down from a balcony.
LaVey was head of the Church of Satan (located, ahem ahem, in a hotel on California Street, no less!). So we’re already in eerie territory before a song has even been played on the record. (It was rumoured that LaVey placed a curse that resulted in the car crash that killed actress Jayne Mansfield. “Hotel California” begins with a car driving. Were Henley and Frey thinking of the Mansfield crash, perhaps? LaVey’s alleged appearance on the cover seems to point in that direction.)
The first line of the song “Hotel California” is: “On a dark desert highway…” The Devil is also known as the Prince of Darkness and he tempted Jesus in the Judean Desert when he was fasting for 40 days and 40 nights.
“There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
“This could be Heaven or this could be Hell”” (Self-explanatory)
“So I called up the Captain…” In the 1973 film, The Exorcist, teenager Regan McNeil communicates through a Ouija board with someone she calls Captain Howdy. It is later revealed to be the demon Pazuzu.
“Please bring me my wine…” Jesus turned water into wine and gave wine to his disciples at the Last Supper, saying: “This is my blood, the blood of the new everlasting covenant, it will be shed for you and for all men, so that sins may be forgiven, do this in memory of me.” Now that’s a possible Christ reference, but the next line brings us back to Old Diablo again.
“We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969…” A rejection of Christ’s blood? What happened in 1969? The big story of that year was the Moon Landing (A crescent moon is a symbol of the aging goddess (crone) in witchcraft)
“And in the master’s chambers, they gather for the feast…” A witches’ Sabbath?
“They stab it with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the beast…” The Eagles claim this was a playful reference to Steely Dan who they were big fans of and also because Dan had referenced The Eagles in a song called “Everything You Did.” It could also be a reference, unconscious or otherwise, to the movie The Omen that opened a year before “Hotel California” in 1976. In it, Damien, the Antichrist, can only be killed by one of the Seven Sacred Daggers of Tel Megiddo. Damien also has three sixes on his scalp, “the number of The Beast.”
“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave…” Sounds like souls trapped in Hell.
There the song ends and the interpretations began. Is any of it true? We’ll probably never know, but I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next man.
Years later, when Irving Azoff, the manager of The Eagles, received an award, Don Henley took to the presentation stage and said: “He may be Satan, but he’s OUR Satan.”
The Eagles split up in 1980 and vowed they would only reunite when “Hell freezes over.” Sure enough, they did reunite 14 years later in 1994 with the album “Hell Freezes Over.” Hmm…
No doubt Glenn Frey went straight to Heaven yesterday. May he rest in peace.
© Stewart Stafford, 2016. All rights reserved.
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