Why The Eagles Refused to Attend the Grammys When ‘Hotel California’ Won Album of the Year
In January 1978, The Eagles won big at the Grammys, but they weren’t there to collect their prize. The band’s song “Hotel California” received Record of the Year, but they declined to attend. They had some big demands to get them at the ceremony and when they weren’t met, they decided not to go.
The Eagles didn’t want to attend the Grammys in 1978
In 1978, The Eagles received Grammy nominations for Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance By A Group, Best Arrangement For Voices, and Record of the Year. After months of bad press, however, their manager, Irving Azoff, didn’t want them to endure the embarrassment of losing. Per Rolling Stone, he told Grammy producer Pierre Cossette that the only way they’d perform, or even attend, the ceremony was if they had a guarantee they’d win.
Unsurprisingly, Cossette refused. Azoff proposed setting aside a private dressing room where they could hide until they won Record of the Year, but this was turned down as well. They also couldn’t let another artist accept on their behalf.
Therefore, the band did not attend. When they won, nobody accepted the award.
They shared the idea behind the album
Hotel California is one of the band’s most iconic albums. They gathered their experiences as a group in order to write it.
“The concept had to do with taking a look at all the band had gone through, personally and professionally, while it was still happening to them,” founding member Don Henley told author Marc Eliot. “We were getting an extensive education, in life, in love, in business.”
It also focused on the way the city of Los Angeles had influenced them.
“Beverly Hills was still a mythical place to us,” Henley said. “In that sense, it became something of a symbol and the ‘Hotel’ the locus of all that L.A. had come to mean for us. In a sentence, I’d sum it up as the end of the innocence, round one.”
They felt a great deal of pressure to produce a good album. Their 1975 album One of These Nights reached No.1 on the charts.
“We were under the microscope,” founding member Glenn Frey said. “Everybody was going to look at the next record we made and pass judgment. Don and I were going, ‘Man, this better be good.’”
The album was a success. It picked up the Grammy nominations and also spent eight weeks at the top of the charts.
The Eagles accepted the Grammy years later
In 2016, decades after the release of Hotel California, The Eagles finally accepted their Grammy. Jackson Browne joined the remaining members of the band to perform a tribute to Frey, who died that year.
As they exited the stage, the show’s producer, Ken Ehrlich, presented them with their trophy. Per The Hollywood Reporter, he described it as “one of the best albums ever made.”
