Joe Walsh Talks Hotel California and Eagles Flight Plans

People always want to know about the guitar interplay on "Hotel California." Did you and Felder spend a great deal of time working out your parts? Not a great deal. Once Don [Henley] had figured out the words, and once the vocal was sung, so we knew where not to play, Felder and I decided we would have multiple guitars playing together, doing the same thing, in different voices. We wanted to build that up within the body of the song, so that it would gradually become more complex. And we decided that, at the end of the song, we would have a go at one another. Felder and I pushed each other. It was competitive. It was like, "Okay, watch this!" We did that on purpose, because it created tension, that effort to be the tougher guy. You can hear that in our performances.