Please tell me you were joking when you mentioned the Beatles lyric “the girl with colitis goes by.” You were joking, right? You know it’s “kaleidoscope eyes. It's from the original Hotel California album. Henley and Frey, the word `colitas’ was translated for them by their Mexican-American road manager as ‘little buds.’ You have obviously already done the necessary extrapolation. This E-mail just in from Eagles management honcho Irving Azoff: “In response to your memo, in 1976, during the writing of the song ‘Hotel California’ by Messrs. The Eagles, with the prescience given only to true artists, were touting the virtues of high-quality industrial hemp! And to think some people thought this song was about drugs. By and by a denizen of wrote: “Colitas is little tails, but here the author is referring to ‘colas,’ the tip of a marijuana branch, where it is more potent and with more sap (said to be the best part of the leaves).” We knew with an instant shock of certainty that this was the correct interpretation. One thinks: you know, I could write a love song around a phrase like that.Įnough of these distractions. “Colitas de langosta enchiladas” was baby lobster tails simmered in hot sauce with Spanish rice. Looking for a little … we suddenly recalled a (male) friend’s guess that colitas referred to a certain feature of the female anatomy. Hmm, one thinks, were the Eagles rhapsodizing about the smell of some good carryout? We asked some native Spanish speakers and learned that colitas is the diminutive feminine plural of the Spanish cola, tail. Type “colitas” into a Web search engine and you get about 50 song-lyric hits plus, curiously, a bunch of citations from Mexican and Spanish restaurant menus. Personally I had the idea colitas was a type of desert flower. He’s also got this bit about “on a dark dessert highway, Cool Whip in my hair.” Well, I thought it was funny. The worker said, “Wurn Snell of Colitas … rising up through the air.” One of the workers who escaped the explosion talked to another guy … I think it was probably Don Henley … and Don asked what the guy saw. One of the workers was named Wurn Snell and he was from the town of Colitas in Greece. (6) My fave, posted to the Usenet by Thomas Dzubin of Vancouver, British Columbia: “There was this fireworks factory just three blocks from the Hotel California … and it blew up! Big tragedy. Makes perfect sense, and goddammit, who you going to believe, some ignorant rock star or me? (5) It’s about the pitfalls of living in southern California in the 1970s, my interpretation since first listen. See “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.” This comes from the published comments of Glenn Frey, one of the coauthors. (4) Hotel California is a metaphor for cocaine addiction. I see one guy on the Web has identified it as “Camarillo State Hospital in Ventura County between LA and Santa Barbara.” (2) The Hotel California is a mental hospital. In other words, the song is a hard look at the modern hospitality industry, which is plagued by guests who “check out any time like” but then “never leave.” (1) The Hotel California is a real hotel located in (pick one) Baja California on the coastal highway between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz or else near Santa Barbara. According to the Eagles, this iconic song of theirs has various interpretations.
Figuring that we should start with the general and move to the particular, I provide the following commonly heard theories: Updated JHotel California is the title of one of the most famous songs by the American band, Eagles.In a complaint filed late Monday, the Eagles said owners of the 11-room Todos Santos hotel in Baja California Sur actively encourage guests to believe the hotel is. You’re probably thinking of that famous Beatles lyric, “the girl with colitis goes by.”Īs for “Hotel California,” you realize a lot of people aren’t troubled so much by colitas as by the meaning of the whole damn song. The Eagles have filed a lawsuit accusing the owners of a Mexico hotel of using the name Hotel California, arguably the band’s most famous song, without permission. Colitis (pronounced koe-LIE-tis) is an inflammation of the large intestine. How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.Uh, Wendy.She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends.Her mind is tiffany-twisted, she got the mercedes bends.Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way.this could be heaven or this could be hell.My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim.Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light.Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air.On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair.