“ They called it Paradise - I don’t know why,” sings Henley on this, the album closer, distilling the disillusion and despair that courses through the whole album. If Eagles (and orchestrator Jim Ed Norman) wanted to compose a requiem for a dead affair - one, say, between a band and an idyll that turns out to be as illusory as any relationship - this would have been just perfect.
Its sweeping grandeur would have made it the ideal instrumental coda to a Hollywood movie based on the album. This is a lush, all-strings reprise of the ballad Wasted Time. Hotel California was to mainstream US radio what Bohemian Rhapsody was to the UK variety - the ostensibly overlong number that broke the mould and forced programmers to indulge the artists’ creative whims despite the restrictive (three-minute) format. Then again, have there ever been two lines - “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair” - so evocative of a place and milieu? This is the dark side of the California dream writ large. Plus: country reggae, anyone? Has there ever been such an unlikely collision of opposites in a single song? The title track’s relatively lowly position here is partly the corollary of its ubiquity: you’ve heard it so many times, you almost don’t need to hear it again. The inevitable guitar solo gives it some grit, some ballast. “ Why do we give up our hearts to the past/And why must we grow up so fast?” - it’s a corny rhyme, but it works, given the aching chords and sparse arrangement. Interesting how quickly Walsh became infected by the atmosphere of sorrow in the band. The notion that Walsh was solely drafted in to beef up their sound and afford them some credibility among the serious rock fraternity who dismissed Eagles as purveyors of faux, wimpy country is disabused by this sombre ballad, co-penned by Walsh and Joe Vitale, one that moves at a waltz pace. Joe Walsh’s best-known contribution to Hotel California had more value as a key part of the narrative than as a song in and of itself: this was lite boogie, albeit with a hugely memorable guitar riff, that attacked bourgeois decadence with a smiling venom worthy of Johnny Rotten himself, although the fact that Eagles were mired in moral decay themselves somewhat undercut the potency of the message. The original running order of the album was designed to tell the story mapped out by the overarching LP concept: you’re ushered into the Hotel California as the New Kid In Town, at which point you start enjoying Life In The Fast Lane and a bunch of Wasted Time before becoming a Victim Of Love, and so forth. Every song on Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, ranked from Worst to Best.The Eagles: "It's a record about the dark underbelly of America".Every Song On Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, Ranked From Worst To Best.