In this song, reference is made to ‘pink champagne on ice’ and I remeber reading somewhere that this was a drug for treatment of schizophrenia, that had to be injected cold or it was too thick to go through the hypodermic needle. Can anyone tell me the name of the drug?
MODERATOR COMMENT: Please note that this thread is from 2008, until revived in Jan 2014 in Post #38. – CKDH
Or it could be just a reference to pink champagne, on ice.
“Pink” champange is a cheap knock-off of real champange, and works well as a metaphor for the surface sophistication but essential emptyness of the “California life style.”
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
It makes you forget about the warm smell of colitis.
Since this may turn into a discussion of Cecil’s take on the song, let’s link to the column and move it to CoCC. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_001.html
samclem GQ moderator
Usually when a liquid is made colder, it gets thicker. Why would this liquid have to be cold or it’s too thick?
“Mirrors on the ceiling depict champagne on ice” were the lyrics on the karaoke discs I used when I did that as a second job.
I had colitis once. Musta been on the can for two weeks. Believe you me, no amount of cheap champagne will mask that smell.
I just did a search for the lyrics to the song and looked at a bunch of different sites. All of them list the line as “The pink champage on ice,” although none of them are Don Henley or any of the other Eagles. They could very well have all copied bad lyrics from each other.
http://www.lyricshotelcalifornia.com/
http://www.metrolyrics.com/hotel-california-lyrics-the-eagles.html
http://www.mp3lyrics.org/e/eagles/hotel-california/
http://www.lyrics007.com/Eagles%20Lyrics/Hotel%20California%20Lyrics.html
I just listened to the album version cranked up loud, and he distinctly says “the pink champage on ice.” When my girlfriend is done watching X-Files, I’ll listen to the live version of the song and see if they change the lyrics up, but it seems the people who made the karaoke version didn’t listen to the original version of the song. (Well, admittedly, my copy is from the Greatest Hits, so it may not be the original?)
Oh and wanted to add:
http://www.rareexception.com/Garden/Eagles/hotel.php
That site does a close study of the lyrics (although they aren’t Don Henley either so could be wrong)
Wikipedia offers some alternatives to the colitas reference and some other lyrics in the song:
I accept the band’s asertion that “colitas”, in this song, refers to the desert plant. Partly because of location (dark desert highway) and partly because the word is plural. But, colita was a popular nickname for marijuana bud around that time. Largely because of it’s turd like shape.
I might add that the guitar solo in this song is the most beautiful in rock. There are about a million solos in second place.
Peace,
mangeorge
You might want to delete that bracket after ‘html’. 
So the $400 I paid for a bottle of Krug Rosé was a waste of money? :smack:
Actually, according to one of the articles I referenced above, pink champagne is considered a luxury item.
*Californian * pink champange was hardly a luxury item in the Seventies. The song isn’t “Hotel Montagne de Reims” after all.
I just wanted to step in and say I was hired (on a rush basis, no less) to do the lead sheets for the entire original Hotel California album for copyright purposes. Unfortunately, I did not keep a copy of the music I wrote. Too bad, because the lyrics I used for lead sheets were typically supplied by the writer(s) – I encouraged this practice because many lyrics were too hard to understand and my guesses wouldn’t contribute to the accuracy. I even charged more if the lyrics were not supplied to me (on paper) when I got the recordings.
So I guess this is useless info, just a bit o’ trivia. Sorry!
It was certainly a luxury in Hong Kong bars in the Sixties. 
Why are we capitalizing decade names?
And your aging, stuffed, filled-to-capacity brain cannot remember what the lyrics were??? :eek:
I don’t know about the lyrics given in any of the cites. But I just played Hotel California from the Hotel California album, from the Hell Freezes Over album, from the Greatest Hits album, and from the Eagles Live CD. I hear the same thing every time. Maybe it’s just my poor ears, but I hear
…mirrors on the ceiling,
pink champagne on ice…
I do not hear any “there” or “there’s” before “pink”. Same for “depict”. In a couple of the versions I hear what might be a sound, but might not.