CoronaVinyl Day 119 (RS Greatest Albums 1-50): Hotel California by The Eagles

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We have reached the final day of albums on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time, taking a look at the top 50 albums on the list.  Like yesterday's albums ranked 51-100, I have a good number of albums from this group on vinyl (19), and I've already featured many of them, while others are by artists that I've already featured, leaving me with only a couple options, which makes my selection a little easier.  I'm going with The Eagles' 1976 mega-album Hotel California, which is ranked #37 on the list.

Admittedly, I'm not really an Eagles fan.  I like some of their songs and loathe others.  This is a pretty good album, though.  It was the first album the group made after Joe Walsh replaced Bernie Leadon on guitar, as well as the last album to feature bassist Randy Meisner.  Walsh -- formerly of rock trio James Gang, the lesser-known Barnstorm, and also a solo artist (and now brother-in-law of Ringo Starr!) -- provided more of a rock and roll edge to the band, as Hotel California had several songs that drifted from the Eagles' signature country rock and soft rock sound (though there's plenty of that), and more towards rock.

The iconic album cover shows the Beverly Hills Hotel at dusk, and it is one of the album covers that I have hanging in my office.  The album itself is, unquestionably, one of the most successful in music history.  It has been certified 26x platinum in the U.S., making it the third-best-selling album ever in the U.S., behind only the Eagles own Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) album (#1, 38x platinum) and Michael Jackson's Thriller (#2, 33x platinum).  So basically, between this album and their first greatest hits album, the Eagles have sold nearly 65 million albums in the U.S. alone, which is insane.

On the charts, the album was a smash all over the world.  It hit #1 on the Billboard album chart for eight weeks over various parts of 1977.  It also reached #1 on the album charts in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Norway, and Top 10 on the album charts in Austria, France, Japan, Sweden, and the UK.  Both the title track and "New Kid in Town" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "Life in the Fast Lane" got to #11.  The title track won the Grammy for Record of the Year, and "New Kid in Town" won the Grammy for Best Arrangement for Voices.

A fun fact about the recording of the album is that recording was split between LA and Miami, and while in Miami, Black Sabbath was recording Technical Ecstasy in the same studio. Black Sabbath was so loud that the sound came through the walls, forcing the Eagles to stop recording several times and to re-record songs.  Sabbath!

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Life in the Fast Lane"
While the title track is a classic, I'm going with "Life in the Fast Lane" because it's more of a rocker.  Also, it was inspired by a conversation between Glenn Frey and his drug dealer while they were driving fast.

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Victim of Love"
This is a brooding rocker with a nice guitar riff from Walsh that drives the song.  Don Henley also has some nice drum fills on this one.