<P> In his Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volume 1, Steve Sullivan theorizes that the "spirit" that the Hotel California hasn't had since 1969 refers to the spirit of social activism of the 1960s, and how disco and the related pop music of the mid-1970s had turned away from it . </P> <P> The metaphorical character of the story related in the lyrics has inspired a number of conjectural interpretations by listeners . In the 1980s some Christian evangelists alleged that "Hotel California" referred to a San Francisco hotel that was purchased by Anton LaVey and converted into his Church of Satan . Other rumors suggested that the Hotel California was the Camarillo State Mental Hospital . </P> <P> The term "colitas" in the first stanza ("warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air") has been interpreted as a sexual slang or a reference to marijuana . "Colitas" means "little tails" in Spanish; in Mexican slang it refers to buds of the cannabis (marijuana) plant . According to Glenn Frey, the "warm smell" is "colitas...it means little tails, the very top of the plant ." The Eagles' manager Irving Azoff appears to lend support to the marijuana hypothesis, however, Felder said: "The colitas is a plant that grows in the desert that blooms at night, and it has this kind of pungent, almost funky smell . Don Henley came up with a lot of the lyrics for that song, and he came up with colitas ." </P> <P> Other interpretations of the songs include heroin addiction and cannibalism . On the various interpretations, Henley said: "Some of the wilder interpretations of that song have been amazing . It was really about the excesses of American culture and certain girls we knew . But it was also about the uneasy balance between art and commerce ." </P>

Check out anytime you like but you can never leave