'I think they’d left about a pound of cocaine in the board.')ĭespite the distractions, the quintet (Henley, Walsh, guitarists Glenn Frey and Don Felder and bassist Randy Meisner) wound up reaching a pinnacle, both commercially and creatively: Pieces like the epic title track revealed a more artful side to their collaborative songwriting, and sales continued to swell (eventually carving out another slot on the all-time Top 5). ('Before we could even start recording, we had to scrape all the cocaine out of the mixing board,' recalled Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, who were conjuring a much heavier atmosphere at Criteria. Teaming again with producer Bill Szymczyk, who helmed its two previous albums, the band split time between the Record Plant and Miami's Criteria Studios - adhering to its usual level of decadence along the way. And it's fascinating to glance back at how this cultural lightning strike originated from a perfect storm of personnel (swapping out country-minded guitarist Bernie Leadon with blues-rock maven Joe Walsh), technology (the luxurious mid-'70s production, captured in part at Los Angeles' famed Record Plant Studios) and timing (following a steady stream of early hits, up through their 1975 greatest hits compilation, still one of the highest-selling albums ever). Hotel California has become an essential part of that mythology since its release in 1976.

'There's a built-in mythology that comes with that word, an American cultural mythology that has been created by both the film and the music industry.' 'I've learned over the years that one word, 'California,' carries with it all kinds of connotations, powerful imagery, mystique, etc., that fires the imaginations of people in all corners of the globe,' singer and drummer Don Henley told Rolling Stone in 2016.

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