BY MIKE METTLER — MAY 29, 2014

“The moment that song came out, it captured the mythology of California,” observes Styx’s James “JY” Young of the iconic title track to the Eagles’ forever classic 1976 album Hotel California. “I’m really proud of it,” says Don Felder, who wrote the song with former Eagles bandmates Don Henley and Glenn Frey and is the man behind its signature guitar sound and arrangement. “We wrote some great songs and made some great records together. It was difficult at times emotionally and personally, and the end product that we all suffered through to produce was well worth it.”

As noted in my “Welcome to The Soundtrack of Summer Tour” story, Felder’s revised and revitalized take on “Hotel” is a major highlight of his show-opening solo live set, and he gets to trade off lead guitar and vocals with Tommy Shaw of Styx on the song every night. “It’s a great experience,” Shaw says with a smile. “When you have the opportunity to do something like that, you have to take it, right?” (The Soundtrack of Summer Tour featuring Don Felder, Foreigner, and Styx runs through July 27; go to soundtrackofsummer.com for details.)

Another golden opportunity taken in full came when Felder, Shaw, and other members of Styx and Foreigner convened in a Los Angeles studio together a few months ago to remake “Hotel California” for inclusion as a fresh new track on the tour’s companion The Soundtrack of Summer – The Very Best of Foreigner and Styx CD. During a pair of tour stops in Texas, I checked in with the main “Hotel” revisitors to get the scoop on how they were able to keep the pink champagne on ice and cut a track that sounds as modern as anything heard on rock radio today.

Mike Mettler: Was it an organic decision to remake “Hotel California” for The Soundtrack of Summer Tour CD? How was that brought to the table?

Don Felder: When we were talking about doing a Soundtrack of Summer CD for the tour, I knew Foreigner had done some re-recordings of their original hits and Styx had redone some of theirs too, so I said I’d like to re-record “Hotel” or something else if we had time. I started thinking that “Hotel California” was really the only song that I know that’s been recorded twice by the same band and nominated for Grammys both times — the original one in ’76, and then the rearranged version I did for Hell Freezes Over [1994]. So I said, “How do I do that? I don’t just want to do a remake of the original version. Let me see how we could do this. Well, how about we have Tommy come in and sing and play? And maybe Kelly [Hansen, Foreigner’s lead vocalist] could come in and sing and play. And Mick [Jones, Foreigner’s co-founder and lead guitarist] could sing and play.” So I put together the arrangement that starts out as sort of an acoustic version of it, and morphs its way through the verses and choruses before it gets to the end with the full drums and electric bass.

James “JY” Young (guitarist/vocalist and co-founder of Styx): It’s Don Felder’s right to re-record that song. For me, having grown up on the south side of Chicago — everyone’s vision of Los Angeles is the Hollywood awards shows you see. Everybody’s dressed up, and you think this is what life’s like there, looking up on the screen. It seems so much larger than life, as there’s a mythology about Los Angeles, Hollywood, the film business, and the music business. And done the way it is, in that minor key — the music of Don Felder in that song captures that mythology.

Felder: It was also one of the first times we’d all been together working on something in the studio. And you kind of get to know people and feel them out. I’ve known Tommy for a long time. I’d never really been around Mick and Kelly very much, but it was really a pleasure. Everybody was very easy-going, very amenable, and when they stepped up, the talent shone through. It was really impressive.

Tommy Shaw (guitarist/vocalist, Styx): It was a great idea. It was such a lovely bit of professional “What if we did this?” going back and forth. I have to thank Jeff Pilson [of Foreigner, who produced the track]. I can’t thank him enough for shouldering all that. He’s very talented all the way around. I didn’t realize how talented he was in the studio until now. He knew how to handle the artists. And Don was at his side, watching over all the little details.

Jeff Pilson (Foreigner bassist/vocalist, and producer of “Hotel California”): Collaboration, that’s a spiritual thing. We were all there for a common reason, which is the love of music. When you have that level of talent in the room, it’s not that difficult. I never felt I was asking guys to do something that they didn’t want to do. I’ve done projects before where you have to get people to do something they didn’t want to, but it never felt like that.

Shaw: We were out in California, and I went to Jeff’s home studio in Los Angeles. Jeff was there with Don and Kelly, and we were all in the room together, which really helped. I did my parts in the afternoon. Then it was a matter of, “Do you like this? Do you like that?” It was so easy because it was so well done.

Lawrence Gowan (keyboardist/vocalist, Styx): It was kind of unexpected, redoing a classic like that. I added my voice to the choruses, and to a couple of the verses as well. Jeff Pilson had a mellotron thing underneath it, which I thought was really great. That’s really all the keyboards that were required, and I just wanted to get my voice on the chorus stack of vocals, and I also added some piano on there later.

Felder: It’s difficult to tweak a classic. So many people have heard those two versions of “Hotel” for thousands and thousands of times on radio or have seen it on DVD, so it’s difficult to go in and tweak it without people going, “Oh, that’s not as good as the original. I like the acoustic version better. I like the nylon-string one better.” It was a bit of a challenge — but I like taking on challenges like that, doing something that’s a little bit different and fresh.

Never Leave: Felder and Shaw check into “Hotel” live. Photo by Jason Powell.

Shaw: We’re whacking the hive a little bit here too. We’re taking a classic song that’s etched in stone. We’re not being disrespectful to it, but we have redone it more as a tribute to what we have going on out here on the road. And it’s really well done. The one thing that we did do is modernize it a little bit by making it rock. It starts off a little quiet, and it builds to this great crescendo at the end. You can’t go back in time and change the way it was, but it sounds like if the Eagles were going to redo it again in the studio, maybe they’d do that too because they’ve played it so many years.

Gowan: Watching it happen was great. Getting really up close to a guy like Don playing an iconic piece like that, and seeing how it’s rendered out of those fingers — I had a fantastic day just seeing that up close and watching all the parts go down, not just my own little bit in there.

Felder: When we got to the end, everybody plays different guitar solos. I started off with something reminiscent of the first part of the guitar line, and then Tommy comes in. I said to him, “Don’t play what [Joe] Walsh played — you play you. You be you.”

Shaw: Yes — I was told, “Don’t be so Joe-ish.” [laughs] It’s funny, because I’m a bendy player like that, so I worked it in, and we just slotted it in with the harmony. I’m a self-taught guitar player, and even my own solos are different every night. I’ve never trained to play anything that’s written since I never learned to read music.

Pilson: I think we all kind of had everything in place. I might have reminded them about “being themselves” when they were doing their parts, but it all happened organically.

Shaw: Where I sang in the song was just logical. And I appreciated the fact that everybody said, “Be yourself. Take it and sing it how you’d sing it.” All the while, it’s one of the most classic rock songs ever, but left to just being myself, I was singing it just the way I heard it. I would have had to sit down and listen to the record to learn it note for note, and that didn’t seem like the point of having us on it.

Pilson: The section where we did the vocals and then Tommy’s solo was so much fun. We were all there, laughing and having a great time, and we made some great music. What can I tell you, man? It was just a genuinely fun project.

Young: For Don Felder to be the first vocal on it is great because it connects it to source. And Kelly Hansen does a great job on his part too. But I believe the part that my bandmate Tommy Shaw sings on there — his voice has a quality that maybe captures the pathos of the California experience more than even Henley’s did. I think Tommy’s voice on that song is magical. It brings it into the now as well. The crazy thing is, the album got on Billboard’s Top 200 sales chart, so maybe it’ll get on radio out there too. It’s a fantastic thing, and it’s a great advertisement for this three-act show, if you will. All the bands are represented. Tommy plays his guitar, Felder plays his magical guitar, and Mick Jones shows how he’s an excellent lead player as well as a rock songwriter.

Gowan: I like how reverent it was to the original recording, and yet you still hear the personalities coming out. Obviously, you can hear Tommy’s personality in there, singing and playing, and Kelly Hansen of Foreigner. And Jeff Pilson really impressed me how he pulled the whole thing together. I thought it was well done.

Pilson: The song and its composition are timeless. The original recording itself is amazing. Interpreting it, without losing the intention of the original and making it its own thing — Styx and Foreigner added their own energy levels to this thing, and it just really, really worked.

Felder: It turned out to be something really fun and different to do. It’s not so far from the original that it’s a completely different song or an orchestral arrangement, but it still has the essence of what was there when I wrote the music for it. I’m very proud of what came out of that session.