‘Two trains running side by side, forty miles wide, down the eastern line’.
There’s another repetition in which temporal distance gives way to spatial. And it’s eternal in that their union is no longer in time and so is permanent. It’s in the distant past in that it represents the situation prior to the incarnation, before Christ had become human. If the walk down the ‘long, long aisle’ is a marital metaphor for the union of the divine and human sides of Christ, then it’s that union which is both in the distant past and timeless. In our minds the temporal becomes just spatial, and so timeless, so that what on one level happened in the distant past, on another is eternal. The repetition of the phrase makes us want to identify the temporal distance referred to in the first case with the spatial distance implied in the second. Both at the beginning and in the penultimate verse the phrase ‘long, long’ appears – ‘long, long time’ and ‘long, long aisle’. In each case the regret is about the time that’s passed since the divine and human parts of Christ were together, presumably a precondition of the latter’s being able to take on his role as redeemer. Since we walked down that long, long aisle’. ‘It’s been such a long, long time since we loved each other and our hearts were true’Īnd in similar vein the penultimate verse ends: Most importantly perhaps is the language used to express regret at the beginning and end of the song because it suggests that what goes on in time is also timeless, or eternal. It’s notable that various ideas and images are repeated as the song develops. Although on one level the song ends without the reunion of the divine and human sides of Christ, and so without the world yet having been redeemed, on another both that unity and the redemption are presented as eternal and so, in a sense, complete. Whilst the divine Christ is expressing his regret, it seems that the human Christ is in the desert presumably trying to come to terms with his divine role. He regrets the human race’s moral demise – ‘they may be dead by now’ – and urges his human part to take the action required to save it.
‘Maybe it’s the same for you as it is for me’ He begins by lamenting the split between the divine and human sides of his nature (the Father and the Son)and suggesting that the feeling of loss is experienced by them both: The narrator, then, seems to be Christ in his divine role. Accordingly something which applies to one of them is likely to apply to at least one of the others and, as it turns out, to the human race generally. It’s never made explicit who the various parties represent, and as the song develops it becomes clear that none of the three can be completely differentiated from the other two. The narrator and the woman, would appear to represent respectively the divine part of Christ (God himself), and Christ the man. The idea is explored through three individual characters – the narrator, the woman who’s being addressed, and the ‘enemy’. However, various indications suggest that on a deeper level the song concerns the incarnation of Christ and the means of achieving salvation. It didn’t matter.At first glance the song is about a marriage which has failed and one of the partners’ attempts to mend it. Don’s singing abilities stretched so many of our boundaries. You’re not going to find that track on a Crosby, Stills & Nash record or Beach Boys record. We did a big Philly-type production with strings - definitely not country-rock. He could stand out there all alone and just wail. I sent for some sheet music so I could learn some of those songs, and I started creating my own musical ideas with that Philly influence. As Frey wrote in the liner notes to The Very Best Of The Eagles, “I loved all the records coming out of Philadelphia at that time.
Perhaps the most left-field departure of them all was “Wasted Time,” a song where co-writers Glenn Frey and Don Henley dared to display their blue-eyed soul. The album found room for the sinewy mid-tempo groove of the title track, the crunching rock of “Victim Of Love” and “Life In The Fast Lane,” and the epic sweep of “The Last Resort.” But the addition of Joe Walsh on guitar allowed the band to spread its wings, so to speak, on Hotel California. Early hits like “Take It Easy,” “Tequila Sunrise” and “The Best Of My Love” certainly fit the bill. Up to that point in their career, it would have been fair to lump the band within the genre of country-tinged soft rock.
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