Welcome to the Hotel California

On a snowy night in winter of 1976, my family gathered around in the living room of our brick-red house on Country Homes Boulevard to listen to the latest album by the Eagles. As the youngest, I sat on the lime-green shag carpet. The last album I’d been excited about was The Bay City Rollers but no one else had been impressed.

This night, my oldest sister had a friend coming over (a boy!) to listen to the Eagles’ Hotel California straight out of the cellophane wrap. I thought it was cool that my folks’ hung out with us but, thinking back, there wasn’t really anywhere else to go in our home. Only us kids went downstairs and watched tv in the basement, except on weekends when my dad laid on the couch viewing through his eyelids whatever sportscast was a choice on one of the three channels. (PBS was only for educational tv, not entertainment. Barely counted.) And then there’s the fact that they were only 37 and 39, not as ancient as my 12-year-old self thought.

My initial anticipation was due to my introverted sis bringing home a boy for the first time. She’d made it clear to me that this was not a date, he was not a boyfriend, and not to be goofy. They were just friends who got along well and were both looking forward to listening to the new Eagles album. That was all. I got it but I figured they “liked” each other. When he arrived, my grin couldn’t be contained, never could.

The ritual of opening the album and removing the vinyl from its cover seemed almost reverent. For the next 48 minutes and 28 seconds, each of us experienced the music alone and together. Probably due in part to the mix of company and music, the song “Hotel California” swirled in my head like a Van Gogh come to life with haunting and beautiful images in my head, although I’m certain I didn’t understand the half of it. What an amazing, satisfying experience!

This wasn’t the first time, or the last, that I enjoyed listening to an album in the company of family and then friends, but it was the best. In the years since, Eagles have continued to be a mainstay in my life. Of course, “Hotel California” has evolved in my mind, but deep red is everywhere, tile floors and walls, inside the Spanish-style manse turned nightmare I first saw all those years ago.

When I got my first car in the spring of 1982, I to inherited my dad’s copy of the Eagles’ “The Long Run” 8-track to play in my 1976 Chevy Malibu!