Eagles' 'Hotel California' turns 50

Denis McNamara remembers the day in late 1976 when an Elektra Records executive visited his home in Queens to drop off an advance copy of a new album: "Hotel California" by Eagles. Just by looking at the cover — a distant, dusky shot of the Beverly Hills Hotel beckoning from a grove of palm trees — McNamara had high expectations.

"There was always a mystique about California, especially if you were stuck in New York," McNamara, then a programmer and DJ at Hempstead’s influential FM radio station WLIR, said. "Just the name, the title track, the cover — it all added to the mystique of this mysterious place on the West Coast."

Nearly 50 years after its release, on Dec. 8, 1976, "Hotel California" remains one of the definitive albums of its era. The six-minute, 30-second title track, about a weary traveler who discovers a luxurious yet vaguely sinister oasis where "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave," evoked a particular American place but seemed to sum up the faded dreams of an entire generation. Trimmed to six minutes and eight seconds, it became a No. 1 hit, a staple of FM radio and a classic-rock masterpiece that stands alongside Led Zeppelin’s "Stairway to Heaven" and Queen’s "Bohemian Rhapsody."

"Everything about it gave it that anthemlike quality almost immediately," McNamara said. "It’s on the radio just as much now, it seems. People just can’t get enough of it."

Here are five things to know about the making of the song and album that would become Eagles’ crowning achievement:

It was Joe Walsh's Eagles debut

Walsh, the James Gang guitarist, had just joined the Eagles to replace Bernie Leadon and proved a valuable addition. One shining example: Walsh and Don Felder provide the keening twin-guitar refrain that closes out "Hotel California." Walsh’s arrival "at that point was very important," according to McNamara. "They hadn’t been considered as much of a guitar army until Joe joined them."

Felder co-wrote the title track

He composed the melody (working title: "Mexican Reggae") at his home in Malibu, California, he told the website Loudersound, and put it with a dozen or so demos on a cassette. Singer-guitarist Glenn Frey came up with the basic narrative premise, according to the book "Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings," and singer-drummer Don Henley brainstormed the lyrics while driving around Los Angeles with Felder’s cassette playing in the car.

'Life in the Fast Lane' was conceived in a fast lane

"I was riding shotgun in a Corvette with a drug dealer" who pushed the car to 90 mph, Frey recalled in the 2013 documentary "The History of the Eagles." "He grins and goes, ‘Life in the fast lane!' I thought, 'Now there's a song title.'" It became the album’s third track and third single — powered by a sleazy-bluesy riff from Walsh — and reached No. 11 in 1977.

Beverly Hills Hotel objected to the cover

The pink-painted Beverly Hills Hotel was already a legendary hot spot dating back to the silent film era, and Eagles members were frequent visitors. Yet the hotel's lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the album’s art director, known as Kosh, according to Rolling Stone. Kosh successfully quashed it by noting that the hotel’s bookings had skyrocketed since the album’s release.

It ranks as the No. 3 album

"Hotel California" is the third bestselling album of all time in the U.S. according to the Recording Industry Association of America. (At 28 times platinum, it ranks just under Michael Jackson’s "Thriller." Eagles’ own compilation "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975” still sits at No. 1.) "I heard the song ‘Hotel California’ in all its stages," the band’s longtime manager Irving Azoff once told Pollstar. "But we all knew that it was an incredible work. I don’t think anyone could have ever predicted its impact 50 years later."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com