A Salvation Convention at the Hotel California
February 1977
There is something good happening in California rock 'n' roll. Signs of life have been surfacing here and there for a couple of years, but I first caught the change—the emergence of a new, hard edge in the music—a few weeks ago, driving across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. The DJ played three songs in a row: the Eagles' new "Hotel California," Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good," from 1974, and Warren Zevon's spooky "Join Me in L.A.," which appeared last year. The tunes sounded of a piece, though that itself wasn't surprising: All were made by singers associated with—and one might say groomed by—David Geffen's toney Asylum label, which has come to represent mainstream taste in white Southern California rock. For that matter, the singers, like many Asylumites, were associated with each other: Glenn Frey and Don Henley have worked with Zevon and Ronstadt; Zevon contributed the title song to Ronstadt's recent album, Hasten Down the Wind.