DUBAI: Pick any aspiring rock guitarist from any corner of the world. No, make it a thousand guitarists, or ten thousand or even a million, and ask them to name the top 10 tracks they must learn, and Hotel California by the Eagles will be in the list. If not, the poor guy needs to be pitied.
While there's no formula for a perfect song, the parts of Hotel California - the chord arrangement, the acoustic picking intro, the verses and the climactic electric twin-lead solo - they all combine to make the song such an extremely effective piece of learning material, that once you have learnt it, there's no mistaking the sense of achievement that comes over you.
For a beginner, mastering Hotel California equals mastering 100 or more other ordinary tracks. And the trick here is you don't only learn a song - because you end up learning a lot more: how to play the guitar.
The only other song that does a similar trick is Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.
For some mysterious reason, both the songs have been linked to devil-worshipping by those who champion the cause of the anti-rock and roll movement. We may find it silly now but there was a time when people seriously thought Hotel California (released in 1976) was about Satanism, that it was a tribute to the place where The Satanic Bible was written. They often cite the line "they stab it with their steely knife but they just can't kill the beast" from the song as proof of their allegation.
But regardless of the allegations of hidden meanings and despite the abstractness of the lyrics, one thing is definite: it's difficult not to like the song at the very first listen. That's the magic of Hotel California.
For the record, Rolling Stone magazine has placed the song as the 49th greatest song of all time while the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame considers it one of the 500 songs that shaped rock and roll. The guitar solo is ranked 8th on Guitar Magazine's Top 100 Guitar Solos and has been voted the best solo of all time by readers of Guitarist magazine.
But sadly for UAE music fans, as the Eagles land in Dubai for their first-ever concert in the Middle East, there'll be one thing amiss. Don Felder, the chief architect of Hotel California and who, along with Joe Walsh, created the celebrated guitar solo, won't be on stage - he was forced to leave the band in 2001. We will have to be content with the remaining members: Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit.
As for the twin-lead climax of the song, one can only wait and watch who Joe Walsh pairs up with. But then again, the Eagles are not only about Hotel California. In Glenn Frey and Don Henley we have two of rock's most prolific songwriters and singers whose vocal qualities have charmed generations since 1971, while bassist Timothy B. Schmit is a star in his own right (I Can't Tell You Why, Love Will Keep Us Alive).
And as music fans from the UAE drive down to 7he Sevens Stadium on the Dubai-Al Ain highway (most will probably be playing the Eagles on their systems), it'll be hard not to notice the significance of Hotel California's first stanza:
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air...
