California is a state that’s ripe for inspiration, and some iconic bands have taken note in their songs about the West Coast state. Over the course of their careers, Weezer, The Beach Boys, and The Eagles all penned tracks about The Golden State. Keep reading for the stories behind three of those songs.
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“Beverly Hills” by Weezer
With a “piece of crap” car and dreams of living “like a king,” Weezer captured every struggling artist’s idealized version of Beverly Hills with their 2005 song of the same name.
In a track-by-track breakdown of their album, Make Believe, Weezer band members explained the origins of the now-iconic song.
“I was at the opening of the new Hollywood Bowl, and I flipped through the program, and I saw a picture of Wilson Phillips,” Rivers Cuomo recalled. “And for some reason I just thought how nice it would be to marry, like, an ‘established’ celebrity and live in Beverly Hills and be part of that world.”
“It was a totally sincere desire. And then I wrote that song, ‘Beverly Hills’,” he continued. “For some reason, by the time it came out and the video came out, it got twisted around into something that seemed sarcastic. But originally it wasn’t meant to be sarcastic at all.”
All the guys were fans of the track, with Brian Bell recalling, “When I first heard the song, it was Rivers’ demo of it, and I think I called him and said, ‘Congratulations, you wrote a hit song.’”
Indeed, he did. “Beverly Hills” peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for both a GRAMMY and an MTV VMA.
“California Girls” by The Beach Boys
Decades before Katy Perry sang about “California Gurls”, The Beach Boys delivered an anthem to “California Girls“. Released in 1965, Brian Wilson came up with the idea for the track while tripping on hallucinogens for the first time.
“I was thinking about the music from cowboy movies. And I sat down and started playing it, bum-buhdeeda, bum-buhdeeda. I did that for about an hour. I got these chords going,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 2007. “Then I got this melody, it came pretty fast after that. And the rest was history, right?”
The next day, Mike Love came by, and the men finished the song together.
“It was line-for-line, back and forth between us. That’s what happened,” Wilson said. “Everybody loves girls, right? Everybody loves California and the sun. That’s what I wanted from the song. And to mention all the parts of the country, that’s fun, people will like that.”
Wilson knew he had a hit on his hands immediately.
“It was special, I knew that would become the theme song of the Beach Boys. It’s an anthem,” he said. “That song went to No. 3 in the country. I think if anything, that song speaks louder than ever. Everyone knows about California girls, and that song is the reason.”
The song did indeed peak at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. That’s not the song’s only claim to fame. The recording of the song was also inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included it as one of 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.
“Hotel California” by The Eagles
“Hotel California”, The Eagles’ GRAMMY-winning and chart-topping masterpiece, was released in 1976. Don Felder wrote the music for the song while luxuriating in a Malibu beach house. Later, Don Henley and Glenn Frey came in and wrote the lyrics.
“All of us kind of drove into L.A. at night,” Henley told Howard Stern in 2008, per Far Out. “Nobody was from California, and if you drive into L.A. at night…you can just see this glow on the horizon of lights, and the images that start running through your head of Hollywood and all the dreams that you have, and so it was kind of about that… what we started writing the song about.”
In a separate conversation with author Marc Eliot, Henley explained (per Rolling Stone), “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. We were getting an extensive education, in life, in love, in business.”
“Beverly Hills was still a mythical place to us. 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,” he continued. “In a sentence, I’d sum it up as the end of the innocence, round one.”
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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