And its a very, very fine song that they wrote, so I can’t feel anything other than happiness for their sake, and I feel flattered had they come across that chord sequence. “It’s in a different time signature, different key, different context. It’s just the same chord sequence,” he says. He dismisses the idea that anyone in the Eagles plagiarized “We Used to Know.” Though Anderson has commented on the similarities between the songs over the years, he says he’s always meant his comments as a joke. I had this acoustic 12-string and started tinkling around with it, and those ‘Hotel California’ chords just kind of oozed out.”įelder actually wasn’t a member of the Eagles at the time that the Eagles toured with Jethro Tull, though as a friend of founding member Bernie Leadon, he could have been in attendance at a show where Tull performed “We Used to Know.” Felder has denied having heard the song before writing “Hotel California” and said his main knowledge of Jethro Tull is that Anderson plays flute. “I had a bathing suit on and was sitting on this couch, soaking wet, thinking the world is a wonderful place to be. “I remember sitting in the living room on a spectacular July day with the doors wide open,” he told Guitar World in 2013. The music to “Hotel California” was written by guitarist Don Felder, who recorded a demo of the song at a rented beach house in Malibu. “And maybe it’s just something that they picked up on subconsciously and introduced that chord sequence into their famous song ‘Hotel California’ some time later.”
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“They probably heard us playing, because that would have featured in the set list back then,” he continues. “I don’t think they much liked us and we didn’t like them.”
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“We didn’t interact with them very much because they were countrified, laid-back polite rock and we were a bit wacky and English and doing weird stuff,” Anderson says.