"Felder wrote the music, Henley the words. "
I know, the chord combinations aren't very Eagle'ish in the sense of how Henley and Frey write at all. I wouldn't be surprised if Don Felder listend to a bit of Django Reinhardt in advance.
Henley's lyrics are either nicely image-evoking and deeply meaningful or pretentious rubbish, take your choice. The vocal melody - whether Felder's or Henley's idea - is even, especially in the verses, a bit lame, chord-sticking and less than lush-melodic for The Eagles' high standards. Doesn't matter, however, it conquered the world.
When I first heard HC I thought: Except for the vocals this doesn't sound Eagles at all. Took me a while to like it, it wasn't an immediate hit with me at all. The prominent harmony guitars at the end surprised me. The Eagles had used harmony lead playing before (e.g. in One of these Nights, and Boston's debut was all the rage back then with its umpteenth layered lead sounds, it came out six months before and was omnipresent), but not to this extent. Bill Szymczyk had prior to his production duties with The Eagles for this album just finished producing an album for ...
... you guessed it, these guys, same studio and all ...
Martin Turner (who rates Bill Szymczyk highly) says to this day that Hotel California's (the album's) sound owed a little debt to Wishbone Ash's previous recording right down to Don Henley's drums. Listening to There's the Rub (the album), he doesn't seem to be entirely wrong!
