Hotel California

This morning for our Leadership Community "New Leader Song", we did Hotel California by the Eagles. This was one of the best ones we did (although I think I say that all the time!). The whole band was great but we had three guitar players all up to the task. We ended up learning the live version. The studio recording has like 6 or 7 guitars. What was great is that there is a live version on You Tube from their recent tour that was great to use. Thank goodness for You Tube! The video was great in that you could tell what each guitar player was doing for the various lines in the song. So, our communication during the week was made much simpler. Since one of our players, Chris Stell, had a double neck, he was Don Felder and did all of his parts. Bob King had the 12 string acoustic and did all of Glen Fry's lines. I got to do Joe Walsh's stuff. Although I did miss playing the classic intro/verse guitar parts, I was excited to play Joe's stuff. He is one of my favorite guitar players. It's like he almost inserts a quirky sense of humor in what he does. I can identify with that.

So, I was thinking today about the song. I have always liked it. However, after playing it I have come to realize that it could be somewhere in a top 20 of the greatest guitar songs ever made. There are so many of those songs out there but the way they put all of their parts together in this song was wonderful. If you really get into their solos, for example, they aren't technically difficult (mostly pentatonic scales). However, all the notes and runs mesh together perfectly.

I think that it could be in the top 5 amongst great double guitar songs. I would include it with Thin Lizzy's the Boys Are Back in Town and Boston's More Than a Feeling. I know there are others. Can you think of any?