Hotel California is a song with a lot going on. The original recording is layered heavily with guitars, including the signature 12 string guitar that opens the song and plays the chord progression in an arpeggiated manner.

With all of this going on, there is still an underlying basic song structure. You don’t have to play everything perfectly like The Eagles did in order to perform it. In reality, you can use use the basic chord structure and a basic strum pattern to communicate the song.

Sure, it’s fun to go in and study the different guitar parts. There’s a lot to be learned by doing so, but here I will present to you a practical way to play the song that doesn’t require 6 guitar players.

In the intro, you can use just whole notes to play it or you can attempt to arpeggiate the chords as in the recording. Assess your own skill level to determine if you’re going to use the whole note strum or arpeggiate it.

Ultimately, in order to play the song, you’ll need to know how to play 5th and 6th string root barre chords.