Hotel California - For What It's Worth

My Mary gave me the book “Hotel California” for Fathers Day, with her handwritten inscription “here’s a look at the crazy, wild, wacky, and just plain weird things that CSN&Y, James Taylor, The Eagles, etc got up to along the years”. Of course the mid sixties through the seventies was my music listening “Prime Time” and I know much about my icons. My musical heroes were young (only 5 to 10 years older than myself) men and women swept up by the power of music, witnessed music’s ability to move people and even culture and who were determined to propagate that movement. More than biographies about specific people, this is more of a story about the growth of the music industry through that particular era, and of course contains many stories about how the musicians helped start, create and change the industry. But unlike an authorized biography, the authors does not feel obliged to put a positive spin on anyone in particular, and paints a much broader picture of the musicians, the music, the times and the effect they had on each other.

The book chronicles how these rebellious young singer/songwriters and music industry upstarts congregated in L.A. in the 60’s – hungry, restless, motivated, committed, and eager to change the world. Of course, as they start to succeed in changing their world, their world changes them. Eventually most of them become the exact people doing the exact things that they so vigorously protested against when they were starting out. Their rebelliousness against the establishment was the reason that listeners loved them so much and bought records and concert tickets which afforded them the ability to stop being hungry, restless, motivated, committed, and eager to change the world.

“Come on people now, smile on your brother. Everybody get together; try to love one another right now” and “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man with a gun over there telling me I’ve got to beware. I think its time we stop, children, what’s that sound. Everybody look what’s going down”. Music could change the course of society’s evolution – or so they/we thought.

As young listeners, we were moved emotionally by certain songs, bands, players – and eagerly took sides, defiantly defended OUR bands. We argued who was better – the Beatles or the Dave Clarke 5 (yes, that preceded arguments that continue to this day between the Beatles or the Stones), or even who was better within a band – John or Paul, or Stephan or Neil. Songs weren’t just favorite melodies; they MEANT something to us – as they obviously meant something to the songwriter/performer. I always gravitated towards the “singer/songwriter” types, as their lyrics and the performance of them seemed so personal and committed. Sonny and Cher sang songs that were written by someone else who wrote songs all day that could be sung by anyone else. Neil Young wrote songs that nobody but Neil could do properly. Sonny and Cher could never had sung “The Needle and the Damage Done” while Neil could never had sung “I’ve Got You Babe”. I (and most every young musician wannabe) felt a certain allegiance to certain performers, and learned to play and sing their songs with as close to the same intensity as I could master. The music was personally important, it meant something, it became a part of our beings, and it helped to drive us and even politically motivate us. Bands or songs could motivate us to take a stand and protest against war, injustice, prejudice, government wrong-doing. Of course I am now well aware that many of my icons became drug and people abusing, money hungry egomaniacs, but their self-destructive outcome didn’t change the honesty of their previously expressed idealist views and artistic talent.

Maybe I’m old and blind and out of touch, but I don’t see that these days. Certainly my own kids have favorite bands and songs, but I don’t think it’s with the same sense of commitment. I’m sure Mary or Corey have “their songs” and have learned to play them on their guitars and years down the road will make them smile when they come on the Oldies station, but I’m not sure they have songs that will make them cry (now or 30 years from now) or that make them want to become better people or join a cause. I do. And I’m not saying I’m better or they are lesser – of course they are good people and will do good things. I just don’t think that the “power of music” contributes as much to their developing psych-ee as it did to me and my contemporaries.

These days, people scoff at the summer/oldies/reunion concert tours that these aging throwbacks perform. Certainly these 60-something rockers & bands are a far cry from what they once were. Lack of health, voice, energy, and current relevance is obvious. They are no longer a “force to be reckoned with” as they originally were. I agree that their efforts to record and sell new material generally fall far short of their own previously set standards. By all logical reason, they should have hung it up long ago – so why do they still survive? Because even though they are no longer the idealistic rabble-rousers they once were, they still remember the feelings they had when they wrote those anthems so long ago. Maybe CSNY or Joni Mitchell are not relevant to today’s music industry, but they are still relevant to us who first learned about the world through their songs. WE still remember the power and the emotion evoked by the songs, and long for that feeling that once drove us (or celebrate that it still does). I wonder if Corey will go to a Counting Crows or Green Day concert when he is in his 50’s? (Not that at 18 I could conceive of going to a CSNY concert at 50!)



The book ends with a short, recent interview with Ned Doheny – a lesser known member of the old Laurel Canyon 60’s-70’s Singer/songwriter clique – talking about how those artist’s collective rise to superstardom ruined themselves, and their effect on the world in general.
[In selling their souls for fame and riches, the stars of the 60’s and 70’s helped create a world where passive consumerism replaced emotional engagement and political commitment. The apathy of twentysomethings over the environment and Iraq is shocking when one harks back to the civil rights and Vietnam War protests of the 60’s. Nobody is writing songs about what George Bush is doing. And you get to thinking ‘maybe the power of music is over’. He pauses and proffers a sad smile. “Maybe I should go downstairs and not worry about it,” he says. “But I keep saying to my son ‘Don’t you guys get it?’” {taken from the book Hotel California by Barney Hoshyns}] These last lines haunted me.

I wonder what art form will inspire our children to desire to make their world a better place? I don’t think it’s music – at least not now. Maybe their world is so comfortable that they feel no need to improve it, they have no hunger. Or they simply don’t know what they hunger for, and have no spokes-person to point it out in a way that moves them. One of their own music icons even points out the apparent apathy in one of his own songs, singing

[Now we see everything that's going wrong With the world and those who lead it We just feel like we don't have the means To rise above and beat it So we keep waiting Waiting on the world to change We keep on waiting Waiting on the world to change
{John Mayer}]

If this performer wrote this lyric in the late 60’s / early 70’s, Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynrd would have ganged up and retaliated and mobilized their fans so much that it would have been the last song this guy ever sung. Ah but that was the good old days – not that they were so good, they weren’t – which is why people united together, rose up and did something about it. The difference in my generation was that, instead of Presidents and Generals and Adventurers, our heart and soul leaders were our poets and singers. I don’t know who my own children’s heart and soul leaders are (Bart Simpson, Steven Colbert?). It’s not me – I’m who they are supposed to be rebelling against. On one hand I’m glad they are not, but on the other I’m not sure that’s good. Our country was built on rebellion and desire for social improvement. If we are so well off and our children so complacent that they no longer care to rebel and improve their world, then we might be in big trouble.