This is still one of the unsurpassed masterpieces of my generation! It was truly a sensation when it first came out and its reputation has not diminished in the intervening years. The creativity that is exhibited by making so much out of a single repeated chord progression is still amazing! I have often used the final guitar solo section as an example of how the same progression can yield a multitude of different solo lines. No one line is ever repeated exactly. While I know the solo back and forth was planned out in advance between the two lead guitarists, it always retained the feel of a "live" call and response guitar battle!
A quick related story: When my youngest son first took up the guitar as a freshman in high school, it was after years of resisting all our efforts to get him to learn a band instrument. After about 3 months of his taking a guitar class at school, I came home one day to hear the solos from the end of Hotel California playing in our basement. I assumed that Andrew had the radio on listening. I was wrong. When I walked down in the basement he was playing them verbatim with the biggest grin on his face I have ever seen! Needless to say, the guitar has been his instrument of choice ever since!
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