天津体育学院本科学生毕业论文（设计）
（2013届）
An Analysis of Cultural Characteristics of 70’s American Youngsters Reflected in the Song the Hotel California
从《加州旅馆》看二十世纪七十年代美国青年的文化特征
所属系部： 体育文化传媒系
专 业： 英语（国际体育交流） 专 项： 年 级： 2009 作 者： 李海山 指导教师： 王茁
2013年4月15日
An Analysis of Cultural Characteristics of 70’s American Youngsters Reflected in the Song the Hotel California
Abstract
The Hotel California is the hit song from the Eagles’ album with the same name and was released as a single in February 1977. This song is one of the most famous one from the Eagles, which clearly describes the sadness and confusion of the American society in 1970s. The social problems reflected in the song stimulate a lot of thinking among people. That’s why it’s so popular since its born .This paper aims to find out the cultural characteristics of 70’s American youngsters by analyzing the lyric, the historical documents and the contemporary literature, and explore the reasons for its popularity.
The lyric of the song can be treated as a complete story: a young man traveled “on the dark desert highway”, but it’s so late that he had to find a place to stay. He found a hotel where many people laughed, drunk, danced. He tried to enjoy himself, and he did it. When it’s time to leave, he suddenly found it’s impossible. Just like the Eagles sang, “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”.
The thesis is made up of four parts. The first chapter gives a brief introduction of the Eagles and the song. The second chapter is the elaborate analysis of the lyric and cultural characteristics of 70’s American youngsters that the song reflects. The third part analyzes the melody and the indication of the lyric and cultural characteristics of 70’s American youngsters these two aspects reflect. Finally, a conclusion is given.
Keywords: The eagles; The Hotel California; 70’s American youngsters; cultural
characteristics.
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1 A brief introduction of The Hotel California ...................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction to the Eagles .............................................................................................. 1 1.2 Basic information of The Hotel California ...................................................................... 2 2 Analysis of the lyric ............................................................................................................ 2 2.1 The first part of the lyric .................................................................................................. 2 2.2 The second part of the lyric ............................................................................................. 4 2.3 The last part of the lyric ................................................................................................... 6 2.4 The summary of cultural characteristics of 70’s American youngsters ......................... 8 3 The cause of the characteristics of 70’s American youths .................................................. 8 3.1 Crisis of confidence ......................................................................................................... 8 3.2 The Influence of Beat Generation .................................................................................... 9 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 9 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 11 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. 12
An analysis of cultural characteristics of 70’s American youngsters
reflected in the song the Hotel California
Introduction
AT THE MOST rudimentary, culture consists of two levels: a visible level and an invisible level. The visible level refers to the resultant of behavior or artifact of forms; the invisible refers to a level of values. When it comes to the characteristics of 70’s American youngsters, it’s hard to summary in a word, they were crazy, undisciplined, desperate and self-indulgent, and however, they were also active, ambitious and full of sincerity. They certainly did not have the ability to change life which is indeed conservative and old-fashioned. What they could do was to escape from it, they gave up money, status, social responsibility and family obligation, they got pleasure from taking addictive drugs, sexual love and jazz etc.
The Hotel California is the hit song written by the Eagles which is an American band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1971 by Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner, it is from the Eagles’ album with the same name and was published as a single in February 1977. It is one of the best-known songs of the album-oriented rock era. This song topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for one week in May 1977. Three months after its release, the single was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America representing 1,000,000 records shipped. Not only for the beautiful melody, but also for content it expressed that made people began to reflect. So in this thesis a detailed analysis of this song will be made in order to find out the cultural characteristics of 70’s American youngsters.
1. The brief introduction of The Hotel California 1.1 The introduction of the Eagles
The Eagles is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1971 by Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. With five number one singles, six Grammies, five American Music Awards, and six number one albums, the
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Eagles is one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s. The Eagles broke up in July 1980, but reunited in 1994 for Hell Freezes Over, a mix of live and new studio tracks. They have toured intermittently since then and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
1.2 The introduction of The Hotel California
The Hotel California is the hit song from the Eagles’ album with the same name and was published as a single in February 1977. It is one of the best-known songs of the album-oriented rock era.
The Hotel California topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for one week in May 1977. Three months after its release, the single was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America representing 1,000,000 records shipped. The song is rated highly in many rock music lists and polls. Rolling Stone magazine, for example, placed it as the 49th greatest song of all time. It is also one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. The song’s guitar solo is ranked 8th on Guitar Magazine’s Top 100 Guitar Solos and was voted the best solo of all time by readers of Guitarist magazine.
2. The analysis of the lyric 2.1 The first part of the lyric
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair 在漆黑荒凉的公路上，凉风吹散了我的头发 Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air 科里塔斯温热的气息，在空中袅袅上升 Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
抬头极目远方，看见微微闪烁的灯光 My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim 我的头脑变得沉重，我的视线越发模糊
I had to stop for the night 必须停下来了，寻找过夜的地方 There she stood in the doorway
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她就站在门廊 I heard the mission bell 布道的钟声在我耳边回响
And I was thinking to myself, \"This could be Heaven or this could be Hell\"
我心中暗念，“还不知道这里是地狱还是天堂” Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
这时她点起一根蜡烛，给我前面引路 There were voices down the corridor,
走廊深处一阵阵歌声回荡 I thought I heard them say... 我想我听见他们在唱…… \"Welcome to the Hotel California\"
\"欢迎来到加州旅馆\"
Such a lovely place, such a lovely face 多么可爱的地方, 多么可爱的脸庞 Plenty of rooms at the Hotel California
加州旅馆如此多的客房 Any time of year, you can find it here 一年四季无论何时何候，你都可以在这找到地方
“Dark dessert highway” is the characteristics of the American West landscape, and according to name of the song, we can easily guess that this story would happen in the west of America. In 1960s, the west is the economic and cultural center of America, also full of temptation, conflict and fall. That’s why they chose it as the place where the story happened. California was the miniature of the whole country during that time.
“Colitas”, this word can not be found in English dictionaries, which comes from Spanish. Mexico is just under California from the world map, and most of the drug in America came from Mexico. In Mexico, people speak Spanish; while “colitas” means marijuana here. The first part gives us an important word, drug. At that time, drug almost became the spirit food of American young people. In the early period, most of
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the drug addicts were adults, but since 1960s, a lot of adolescent students started to take marijuana, ranging from middle school students to the university students. It’s indeed a special phenomenon in modern history of the United States. According to statistics, in 1972, 14% of the drug addicts were teenagers aged 14 to 17, 4.79% of them were young people aged 18 to 25. And in 1960s at least half of the American university students took drugs .As Allen Ginsberg wrote in Howl, “who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatories their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls.” 2.2 The second part of the lyric
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes Bends 她心如玻璃丝扭曲，她开着一辆梅塞德斯·奔驰 She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends 还带着许多漂亮迷人的小伙子，她都唤他们叫朋友 How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat. 在庭院里他们舞的多欢，挥洒着夏日甜味的香汗 Some dance to remember, some dance to forget 有人狂舞中唤起回忆，而有人狂舞是为了忘记 So I called up the Captain, \"Please bring me my wine\"
于是我把主人召唤，“请给我来点酒” He said,” We haven't had that spirit here since 1969\" 他说，“自1969年我们这就再没那东西了” And still those voices are calling from far away,
而那些声音依然远远传来， Wake you up in the middle of the night
令人在午夜也会惊醒 Just to hear them say... 只听得他们在唱…… \"Welcome to the Hotel California”
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“欢迎来到加州旅馆”
Such a lovely place， Such a lovely face 多么可爱的地方，多么可爱的脸庞 They livin' it up at the Hotel California
在加州旅馆他们纵情狂欢 What a nice surprise, bring your alibis\" 多么美妙的惊奇呀，为你带来想要的借口！”
In the dictionary, “Tiffany” means thin cool yarn in this song; tiffany is capitalized and used as a terminology. It gets two meanings, one is tiffany jewelry which is very popular all over the world; the other meaning is a kind of glass art. Both of them are very expensive. “Mercedes Bends” is a very famous car brand made in Germany. Here the writer uses “bends” instead of Benz to do a wordplay: “twisted” and “bends” have the common meaning, distortion. Then we can understand the meaning of the first sentence, which tries to describe the twisted luxurious material life in 1960s and 1970s.
“She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys that she calls friends” and “How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.” This line depicts a picture where a girl got many boys. They danced indulgently in the courtyard, but they were not lovers. They were just friends. Though it’s not so distinct, the picture still gives us another message about the time that is filled with sex permissivism. As we talked about in last part, taking marijuana was the main activity among the youths in 1960s and 1970s, so was their sexual life. The young people then treated these as the way to freedom: If you want to be free, you need to liberate your body first. Consequently, such a wind of sex permissiveness swept the whole world, and coming with this is venereal disease and abortion. Before 1960s, there are only two kinds of VD, syphilis and gonorrhea. After the AIDS was found in 1981, we got 25 kinds.
On January 22，1973， the United States Supreme Court struck down the State of Texas's criminal abortion laws, finding that the right to decide whether to have a child is a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The 7-2 decision in Roe v. Wade would have an immediate and profound effect on the lives of American women.
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Before that，it is estimated that “ between 200,000 and 1.2 million illegally induced abortions occur annually in the United States.” As many as 5,000 to 10,000 women died per year following illegal abortions and many others suffered severe physical and psychological injury.
“We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969”, in which the word “spirit” is also a pun. First, it means there’s no wine here, while secondly it’s about mind .The writer said we hadn’t that kind of mind since 1969, so what happened in 1969?
Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as \"An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music\". It is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most pivotal moments in popular music history and was listed among Rolling Stone’s “50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll”. Desire of music and peace, this is the Woodstock Music Festival! So in 1969, people yearned for freedom at music festival like it, but in 1970s the baby boomers gradually stepped into the thirties. They cared no more about the politics and culture because of the burden of family. And at this time, America was in the worst political and economic situation, such as, the Watergate, energy crisis, inflation and the failure of Vietnam War. That social crisis made the confidence of the whole America fall to the bottom. What’s worse, economic crisis broke out all over the world. People no longer cared about their country. They took drug, had sex, and went to endless balls. And some tried to return to the place they were before. So the writer also tried to show this in the song by “some dance to remember, some dance to forget”. No more beautiful dreams, only the dissolute life of luxury after 1969.That is why they sang “we haven’t that spirit here since 1969”. 2.3 The third part of the lyric
Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice,
天花板上的镜子，冰上粉红色的香槟
And she said:” We are all just prisoners here, of our own device\这时她说，“我们其实不过是这里的囚徒，甘心被自己所驱使”
And in the master's chambers, they gathered for the feast,
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然后在主人房间里，他们聚集在盛宴前 ;
They stab it with their steely knives,
挥舞着钢制的刀叉 But they just can't kill the beast, 但却就是不能刺死野兽
Last thing I remember, I was running for the door,
我记得我做的最后一件事是跑向大门
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before,
我必须寻找来时的路回到从前的地方
“Relax”, said the night-man, “We are programmed to receive.”
“放松点，”值夜的说到，“我们都容易受诱惑,
You can checkout any time you like,
你可以在喜欢的时候结账, But you can never leave! 但你却永远无法离开!”
“Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice” still describes the luxurious life. Then in “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”, the writer tried to tell us that getting down was your own business. “They stabbed it with their steely knife, but they just can’t kill the beast”, which is very profound sentence. It reflected people did many things to oppose the government. In fact, they were afraid of the reality deep inside their heart, and what they did is just the way to abreact, to show that they are dissatisfied with the social system in certain respect while they couldn’t extricate themselves. Unluckily, they failed to cause the government’s attention, so they felt desperate and more disappointed about the country, and then took more drugs. And the last sentence of this part，“You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave” tries to tell us that if you lost yourself in those years, you wouldn’t be back, because the hippy culture became a fashion, diffused all over the country. This cultural activity is just like a black cloud covering the land of the United States, and would not disappear for a long time. On the other hand, the writer tells that the memory of this period is unforgettable; even now the influence of it still exists. The
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high divorce rate is one of the productions of that time. According to statistics, 60% of marriages end in divorce, and over 1,000,000 kids would see their parents break up every year. This phenomenon, which is very common in the United States, also relates to the sex permissivism in 1960s and 1970s.
2.4 The summary of cultural characteristics of 70’s American youngsters It’s a generation hard to summary in a word, they were crazy, undisciplined, desperate and self-indulgent, and however, they were also active, ambitious and full of sincerity. They certainly did not have the ability to change life which is indeed conservative and old-fashioned. What they could do was to escape from it, they gave up money, status, social responsibility and family obligation, they got pleasure from taking addictive drugs, sexual love and jazz etc. In pursuit of sensational experience, they tried to free themselves from old ideas, and look for a new life style, new faith, new values, and new relations with each other. Their life and art practice both demonstrate their active attitude towards the life. They took risk, brought forth new ideas, and explored true essence of life bravely. All in all, like a song sang, “Together we stand, divided we fall.”
3 The cause of the characteristics of 70’s American youths 3.1 Crisis of confidence
The crisis of confidence came from two sides: the civil social unrest and the shadow of the Vietnam War. For internal reasons, a sharp problem was the racial inequality, Martin Luther King pushed the Chartism to a new high, but one day after he finished a speech “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” he was killed. And the Watergate further shook people’s trust on their government.
For the external reasons, the Vietnam War was a part of the Cold War and made the strongest influence. On August 4, 1964, the U.S congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. For the next ten years, it almost brought all the baby boomers to the Vietnam War. But they did not want to lose their lives in the meaningless war. Thus, in the early months of 1968, more than 40,000 university students held mass demonstrations against the war.
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There is a theory in philosophy; the external environment can affect a person’s thinking and behavior. Why did the leading role in the song drive on the dark desert highway? He wanted to escape from the society and get out of control of the government. Then why did he take drug and drink in the hotel? He wanted to forget the social status which had confused and hurt him so much. So the social environment resulted in those varieties of movements to a certain extent. 3.2 The Influence of Beat Generation
The Beat Generation is a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired. Central elements of “Beat” culture included experimentation with drugs and alternative forms of sexuality, an interest in Eastern religion, a rejection of materialism, and the idealizing of exuberant, unexpurgated means of expression and being.
Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959) and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature. The members of the Beat Generation developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity. The activities of American youngsters during 1960s and 1970s were largely influenced by the Beat Generation, not only in the content but also the way they expressed their ideas, such as drug and alternative forms of sexuality. And the works and thoughts of Beat Generation provided rich thinking resources for them. For example, through the song, we know that taking marijuana and the sex permissivism are the main activities of the Beat Generation, and the baby boomers had inherited them. Conclusion
The Hotel California topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for one week after it was published in 1970s, Three months after its release, the single was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America representing 1,000,000 records shipped. And 30 years later, its position in the American music circles is never down.
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Not only for the beautiful melody, but also for content it expressed that made people began to reflect.
From the song, we can have a glance at the characteristics of 70’s American youths. They are crazy, undisciplined, desperate and self-indulgent, however, they are also active, ambitious and full of sincerity. And they will never ask themselves where they come from, where they want to go and how to get it. They lived up their life by what they called “now and here”, and this life attitude has a great influence on today’s American youngsters, “now and here”, this is their belief, and they never change. Living for the present and cherishing every moment are one of the representative values of American people. Just like Henley said of the Eagles. “The Hotel California was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles. It was meant to be a metaphor for the United States, for the excesses this country has always been known for. It wasn’t meant to be just about California or Beverly Hills.”1
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William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, London, 1973.
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Bibliography
Allen Ginsberg. Howl. Longman, 1955.
Larry Phillips. Ernest Hemingway on Writing. London, 1999. William Manchester. The Glory and the Dream. London, 1973. 深蓝，《老鹰乐队:绵延30年的感动》。现代交际出版社，2005。 厄普代克，《兔子四部曲》之《兔子归来》。外语教研出版社，1998。
李悦、杨丛梅，《鲍勃·迪伦与60年代的美国社会》。云南民族大学出版社，2008。 赵梅，“美国反文化运动探源”，《美国研究》2000年第1期。
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Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge all those people who have helped me in the process of completing my graduation thesis. Without their help, this thesis wouldn’t have been done successfully.
First, I am mostly grateful to my supervisor, Ms. Wang, who has followed my toils with invariable kindness and patience, reading as well as correcting this dissertation at different stages of its conception, giving me advice instructive and constructive in addition to valuable encouragement. Without her support and patience this project would not even have got off the ground.
I also want to say thanks to Mr. Li and Miss Xiao for their time spent on brainstorming and panel discussions in the opening defense of this paper which have given me much benefit in writing it.
Last but not the least, thanks go to my dearest parents and classmates, who in one way or another have given me help and encouragement during my work on this thesis.
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