Tag Archives: 1970s

When I Checked Into the Hotel California

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You can check out anytime you like… but you can never leave…

Sunday school was scheduled for Monday evenings when I was a kid, possibly to give moms a break on laundry day. For whatever reason, I went to CCD—which stands for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (thanks, Google!)—on Monday nights during the school year and for a few weeks every summer.

Not much sunk in, of course.

Except for one lifelong lesson. If you want to encourage someone to do something, make it taboo. Not only socially taboo, but bad for your mental and physical health, soul, and reputation. Friends, you know what I’m talking about: That taboo was rock ‘n roll.

During the most profound CCD lesson of my life—I’m not overstating this—an earnest teenager with an acoustic guitar came in to warn us of the grave danger posed by The Eagles’ “Hotel California.” Now, I was just a kid, but I knew this radio-friendly hit wasn’t the work of the devil. Yes, Joe Walsh played like a demon, and looked like he was possessed by one, too. Yes, the whole thing was creepy, but it was creepy in a good way. “Hotel California” wasn’t even raunchy and creepy, like Jimmy Page at times, or campy and creepy, like KISS or Alice Cooper. “Hotel California” was sleek and aspirational, sexy and beguiling. Maybe that was the danger it posed.

Back to the CCD classroom. The earnest teenager was too terrified to strum a few chords of the devil-infused “Hotel California” on his acoustic six-string. He didn’t need to, because most of us knew the song by heart, and those who didn’t were hopeless. The teen warned us to shun the song when we heard it. Just listening to it could invite the devil into our lives. Not just the devil, but sex and drugs, too.

Mind you, he was talking to a room of eight-year-olds!

So of course I went home and pulled the album from my brother’s record collection. My palms didn’t singe on contact with the cardboard and vinyl, nor did froth appear on my lips. My head stayed firmly screwed onto my neck. I didn’t know how to make the turntable spin backwards, but even if I did I doubted that Don Henley would have said anything more sinister than “Buy this album.” Frankly, “The Planet of the Apes” was far more terrifying, and you could find those images plastered on lunchboxes and T-shirts.

Suddenly, a song that seemed pretty and slick on the radio among other pretty and slick radio hits turned into something much more powerful and subversive now that it was taboo and sinful. And I liked it.

 

On the Irresistibility of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours

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Who doesn’t love Rumours? It’s impossible to resist. The artsy-fartsy cover with Mick Fleetwood’s dangling balls and Stevie Nicks’ feathered hair and showy cape. And the freewheelin’ California vibe of the rest of the band, just chilling out, some grass and white wine and whatever else you have just out of the camera’s range.

I picked up on the coolness and realness of this as a kid. It was just a much-cooler version of what I was seeing on TV. The drama and sexual politics of Stevie and Lindsey Buckingham was a hippie version of daytime soap operas that I watched every afternoon with my mom. I couldn’t figure out why, for example, Mary Anderson and Chris Kositchek on Days of Our Lives couldn’t be together when they were so clearly meant to be together (class differences, then he hit her with his car when he got Amanda pregnant, but I digress).

Stevie and Lindsey were similarly star-crossed but far more hip or with-it, and they had more thrilling explanations for why they couldn’t be together (“packing up, shaking up’s all you want to do” vs. “playin’”). Even better, they replayed their drama every time you dropped the needle on “Second Hand News,” which led into “Dreams,” and you know the rest. They got stuck in that mess for years—even Tusk couldn’t get them out of it—and they’re still stuck in it, decades later. And who can resist that?

In my mind, Rumours bisected the 70s. Before, women were singers singing someone else’s songs, and therefore weren’t taken seriously. After Rumours, women were part of the damn band. They were rich and glamorous, and they played around as much as the men, maybe more. Yes, Stevie and Lindsey and John and Christine (RIP) were couples (then separated) but the Fleetwood Mac women had more successful solo careers and took the lead on more of the band’s singles than their partners. You can dismiss Stevie Nicks for her shawls and lace, New Age witchiness, braying-goat voice, and some of her more tragic hairstyles, but she’s the draw, still. No one needed to explain that to me as a kid. Rumours has aged well—it really has! Give it a listen again and just try to resist.