By the end of 1977 when The Eagles released Hotel California, the Los Angeles rock scene had become a corporate industry manufacturing soulless music from fading remnants of counterculture ideals. The Eagles embodied that trend and yet, Hotel California served as a critique of that soullessness, ironically wrapped in a production as passionless as 2 percent milk.
The 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition includes a second disc, recorded in concert a year earlier, whose first-take versions of Hotel California songs sounded a bit snappier in that live setting. And this of course points to one problem with ’70s West Coast rock—and late ’70s mainstream rock in general: sterile production in facilities that resembled Mission Control more than Sun Studio.
The several excellent songs on Hotel California dealing with the treacherous high-life of L.A.—especially the Latin-tinged “New Kid in Town” and the Joe Walsh-guitar propelled “Life in the Fast Lane” and “Victim of Love”—all suffer from a production that valued mellow over all else by engineers determined to airbrush all imperfection. The songwriting is the reason the album holds together.
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