Hotel California

When I was still at BHL Bank, one of my colleagues there, Cynthia, was a very devout Catholic. One day, we were listening to the all-new Talk Radio that had just been launched by AMP Radio Network. Talk Radio was like a breath of fresh air in an unimaginative local broadcast industry but unfortunately, it could not be sustained and it's been off the air for many, many years now.

"I wouldn't listen to that song if I were you," she told me suddenly as the Eagle's Hotel California played in the background. It has a catchy rhythm, I replied, what's wrong with that?

"Yes, I know. I used to like it until I listened closely to the lyrics. Have you?" she asked.

I had to admit that I did not. That conversation passed out of my mind, forgotten like so many others. But it is rather funny that something in the future may one day trigger back the memory. I heard the song play on the radio this morning and it stayed with me until I reached the office. Memories came flooding back. What was it that Cynthia said to me almost 11 years ago about this song? Ah, yes, the lyrics.

Like a man obsessed, I've been googling this song. I've now read the lyrics and I've seen the cover art. It's taken of the Beverly Hills Hotel in California at dusk. And of course, I've been reading all the urban legends and interpretations of the lyrics.

Some say it was a song about drug addiction ("warm smells of colitas rising through the air" is the scent of burning marijuana); others say the song was about a mental hospital. But the most enduring rumour was that the Eagles were singing about devil worship. Is it true? Devil worship? I don't know. Were these lyrics alluding to devil worship? You judge for yourself:

We are all just prisoners here
Of our own device
And in the master's chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can't kill the beast
Last thing I remember
I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
Relax said the nightman
We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave

Maybe I'm an alarmist but everytime I read about something where you can go in and cannot come out, I get the shivers about getting myself trapped and seeing no way to escape. I feel sick in the stomach. The last time I felt like that was when I was crawling in the pitch darkness of the Cuchi tunnel in Vietnam. Complete disorientation.

Nevertheless, let me try to set the record straight about this song, at least my version of it. In 1995, Don Henley - he's one of the Eagles - said the song captured the mood of the period that the song was written. It was a time of great excess in the United States. It was about losing one's innocence, the corruption of impressionable rock stars by the decadent Los Angeles music industry. California was a gilded prison that an artiste freely enters only to discover that he cannot escape from its clutches later. [Ref: snopes.com]