https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/eagles-hotel-california-tour-review/619973/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

 

Hotel California

This music, this song is inevitably tied to my friend Jim Walsh who died in an overloaded light plane crash in Sacramento around 1982. One of the last and best memories of being with Jim was a warm Sacramento summer night out for a drive to who knows where (and that was the very point). The drive took us into the foothills up near Sierra College. Back then, 'in the olden days' it was not as built up as it is now - of course of course.

We were in our young 20's, our very young 20's and the night, like our lives, was ours with nothing between us and a bright long future. We drove his silver shining Honda into that night with all the windows and sunroof open to the stars and moon. We talked of nothing but everything that lay between us and the universe racing by. Hotel California played on the radio and we sang with it a bit, lifting our voices in sync but little knowing of life's travails then or what was to come. Not many of us do I guess . . . but even at a young age I had seen some amazing things and Jim . . . he had some stories to tell too, some much darker, some much brighter.

It is good, this memory. I hold and cherish, nurture it close to my heart. I shared it over the years with Jim's brother, Mo Walsh. He is one of the finest men I know on this planet. We carry this mutual sorrow, he for the brother lost and I for one of my best friends. In his dying, Jim gave us the gift of our friendship. From death comes many gifts even if I could not see that in the making. This song is many things to all of us who heard it back in the day. But to me I will always remember that night speeding along in the darkness of a full moon with a best friend, in a silver Honda, on a warm summer night, long long ago.