{"id":313003,"date":"2026-02-23T12:45:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/313003\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T12:45:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:45:16","slug":"1977-hit-rock-song-voted-best-guitar-solo-of-all-time-was-released-49-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/313003\/","title":{"rendered":"1977 Hit Rock Song Voted ‘Best Guitar Solo of All Time’ Was Released 49 Years Ago Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty-nine years ago today, on February 22, 1977, the Eagles released ‘Hotel California’ as a single. The song was an immediate hit, and since has become deeply rooted in rock culture in a way that most bands could never dream. It would go on to be recognized by Guitar magazine as having the greatest guitar solo in history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The track had already been available on the album of the same name since December 1976, but its arrival as a standalone single set an unstoppable push into pop culture in motion. Written by Don Felder, who developed the original instrumental demo on a four-track recorder in his rented Malibu beach house, the song came to life lyrically through Don Henley and Glenn Frey. Its now-iconic opening guitar gave way to one of the most debated sets of lyrics in rock history.<\/p>\n

Henley has described the song<\/a> variously as being about ‘the dark underbelly of the American Dream,’ ‘the excesses of American culture,’ and ‘a journey from innocence to experience.’ That deliberate vagueness is part of what made it so popular. Listeners have spent nearly five decades reading into lines like ‘you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave,’ finding drug allegories and spiritual allusions. The band largely let the theories pile up.<\/p>\n

Related: 60 Years Ago Today: The Recording Session That ‘Rewrote the Rules’ of Pop<\/a><\/p>\n

Commercially, the single hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100<\/a> in May 1977, where it stayed for one week. It went gold within three months of release. The album it came from spent eight non-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200 and has since sold more than 26 million copies in the United States alone, and is a certified 28-times platinum by the RIAA as recently as January<\/a> 2026. The Eagles won<\/a> the Grammy Award for Record of the Year for the song at the 1978 ceremony. In 2003, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

The guitar work has become its own part of rock lore. The song closes with a 2-minute, 12-second dual solo by Felder and Joe Walsh. They trade leads, then harmonize into the fade. Readers of Guitarist magazine voted it the best guitar solo<\/a> of all time in 1998. Rolling Stone ranked the song No. 49<\/a> on its 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included it among its 500 Songs That Shaped<\/a> Rock and Roll.<\/p>\n

Its impact on pop culture has never really faded. The song opened the first episode of American Horror Story<\/a>: Hotel in 2015, punctuating the finale. It’s turned up in The Sopranos, The X-Files<\/a>, and Absolutely Fabulous. A Gipsy Kings flamenco cover of it appeared in The Big Lebowski. The phrase ‘Hotel California effect’ entered the vocabulary of economists describing regulatory traps that are easy to enter and painful to leave.<\/p>\n

Henley and Frey reportedly drew inspiration<\/a> partly from Alfred Hitchcock<\/a>‘s Psycho while writing it. Fitting, given how thoroughly the song has creeped its way into the cultural imagination the way a great thriller does.<\/p>\n

At the 1998 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, all seven members of the Eagles (past and present) gathered onstage together for the only time to perform it. That moment alone says something about what the song means to the people who made it.<\/p>\n

Forty-nine years in, ‘Hotel California’ continues to be a foundational song in rock. You may want to check out from the song, but it will never leave.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfacSIGN UP for Parade\u2019s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox<\/a>\ud83c\udfac<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Parade<\/a> on Feb 22, 2026, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forty-nine years ago today, on February 22, 1977, the Eagles released ‘Hotel California’ as a single. The song…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146493,86199,35401,93,61,60,278,146494],"class_list":{"0":"post-313003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-don-felder","9":"tag-don-henley","10":"tag-eagles","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-rock-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}