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She came from Providence, the one in Rhode Island
Where the old world shadows hang heavy in the air.
She packed her hopes and dreams like a refugee,
Just as her father came across the sea.
She heard about a place people were smilin',
They spoke about the red man's way, how they loved the land.
And they came from everywhere to the Great Divide
Seeking a place to stand or a place to hide.
Down in the crowded bars out for a good time,
Can't wait to tell you all what it's like up there.
And they called it paradise, I don't know why.
Somebody laid the mountains low while the town got high.
Then the chilly winds blew down across the desert,
Through the canyons of the coast to the Malibu
Where the pretty people play hungry for power
To light their neon way and give them things to do.
Some rich man came and raped the land, nobody caught 'em,
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes and, Jesus, people bought 'em.
And they called it paradise, the place to be,
They watched the hazy sun sinking in the sea.
You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina
Just like the missionaries did so many years ago.
They even brought a neon sign 'Jesus is Coming',
Brought the white man's burden down, brought the white man's reign.
Who will provide the grand design, what is yours and what is mine?
Cause there is no more new frontier, we have got to make it here.
We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny and in the name of God.
And you can see them there on Sunday morning
Stand up and sing about what it's like up there.
They called it paradise, I don't know why.
You call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye.
Where the old world shadows hang heavy in the air.
She packed her hopes and dreams like a refugee,
Just as her father came across the sea.
She heard about a place people were smilin',
They spoke about the red man's way, how they loved the land.
And they came from everywhere to the Great Divide
Seeking a place to stand or a place to hide.
Down in the crowded bars out for a good time,
Can't wait to tell you all what it's like up there.
And they called it paradise, I don't know why.
Somebody laid the mountains low while the town got high.
Then the chilly winds blew down across the desert,
Through the canyons of the coast to the Malibu
Where the pretty people play hungry for power
To light their neon way and give them things to do.
Some rich man came and raped the land, nobody caught 'em,
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes and, Jesus, people bought 'em.
And they called it paradise, the place to be,
They watched the hazy sun sinking in the sea.
You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina
Just like the missionaries did so many years ago.
They even brought a neon sign 'Jesus is Coming',
Brought the white man's burden down, brought the white man's reign.
Who will provide the grand design, what is yours and what is mine?
Cause there is no more new frontier, we have got to make it here.
We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny and in the name of God.
And you can see them there on Sunday morning
Stand up and sing about what it's like up there.
They called it paradise, I don't know why.
You call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye.
Lyrics submitted by Demau Senae
Track duration: 07:24
"The Last Resort" as written by Bruce C/brown Bouton
Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Given that this song is on "hotel california" my takeaway is that its core subject is California in Henley's time, which is to him a loss from his younger and perhaps happier days.
As to "call some place paradise, kiss it good bye" I wonder if it's a reference to something that Time magazine started to do in the 70's or 80's. It began these features "What's the best place to live in America" and they'd list why. The exodus to San Diego, conicidentally or not, began in the 1970's and to say "call this place paradise, kiss it good bye" encapusulates what happened to San Diego CA is an understatement. (Talk about overdevelopment ... )
Fast forward about 15 years form this song's release, and see what had happened to Austin Texas, which also made the Time Magazine "Best place to live in America" win, and it's a bit eerie. Seattle as well.
Become "the place to be, the place to go" and too many people show up, too fast and so you get destsructive growth. The ugly boxes could be anywhere, California or not. Pepperdine seems just an example of his larger observation.
Go back to Henley, and the people coming across the Great Divide, I read that as a poetic description of the post WW II exodus to California from various points east. California, called paridise, or the the "it place to go" is being kissed good by by Don Henley, who dearly loved/loves California, and is sorry to have lost the California he knew. He's stuck with the California he has now, hence his reference to the Hawaii migration, another place people overdeveloped, and in so doing "kissed paradise goodbye."
We gotta make it better here, you can't just keep on running to the next paradise if where you are has too many shadows/things you don't like as much. (See the lyric in the opening phrase about the gal from Rhode Island.)
You can run but you can't hide.
1) If you listen to the song, and the inflection of his voice as he sings the lyrics, it is obvious that his use of Jesus in "Jesus people" is expletive
Listening to it, it comes off like this:
Some rich men came and raped the land,
Nobody caught 'em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes,
and Jesus -- people bought 'em!
The tone of the voice of the is an expressing of combined dismay, surprise, disgust, and even disbelief that they'd by those ugly boxes.
2. For a similar message, about how change isn't always beneficial, see Joni Mitchell's "Pave Paradise, put up a parking lot."
Henley is feeling the same sense of loss that Mitchell presents in
Don't it always seem to go
that
You don't know what you've got, till it's gone
Pave paradise, put up a parking lot!
Same idea, different angle, and a shorter, more upbeat song.
The songs beginning. I always just thought was a way to set the scene of where the song begin.
*She came from Providence, the one in Rhode Island*
Through out the comments. I have already heard ppl mentions how on Hell freezes over they say "Everyone's heard of how the West was won, well this is about how the West was lost." Well the first to lines to me says she started from the Rhode Island and just like her father traveled across the sea from Europe to settle she traveled west. because she heard about to amazing place..
*And they came from everywhere to the Great Divide* *Down in the crowded bars, out for a good time,*
Then I think the following line is also significant because it says they came from everywhere …we over populated the land. Then it mentions bars are crowed because over populated and there
*through the canyons of the coast, to the Malibu. Where the pretty people play, Hungry for power
to light their neon way and give them things to do* *Some rich men came and raped the land,
Nobody caught 'em*
Once again over crowded. It became about Hollywood, movie stars, and money hungry people.
That rich people came and “raped” our land by building concrete structures over an amazing land that has, now became a concrete jungle
*They watched the hazy sun, sinking in the sea **You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina*
Here its telling us that you can leave the west and sail to the next place. Which they are calling Lahaina. I think it could really refer to any land that we have not destroyed by building mass structures over it so we can have a great vacation spot or another concrete jungle.
Who will provide the grand design? What is yours and what is mine? 'Cause there is no more new frontier We have got to make it here
I think here is telling us we have destroyed what God has made with the things we have done to the land. We fight over who it belongs to and are selfish. We are destroying things to the point that there is no more land to grow to and we got to make it where we are now because we have destroyed what we had.
*We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds, in the name of destiny and the name of God *
This is think pretty point blank. People are constantly needy, even when they have more then could ever want especially in richly areas and have a stream of excuse for their bad deeds and still claim to be followers of god. As I am sure many people reading this knows what its like to be someone who preaches about god but are hypocritical
*And you can see them there, On Sunday morning They stand up and sing about what it's like up there
They call it paradise I don't know why You call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye*
And the famous ending. You see these hypocritical people in church every Sunday. Preaching about things they don’t follow in a land they use to call paradise and they destroyed it. People who pretend to be caring, giving, and productive to the world god has given us.
For anyone who thinks this song has an anti-Christian meaning. I got to say that I think you are wrong. I think this song is about how we have become money hungry and selfish. That we have destroyed the land that god gave us. If any thing this song is anti organized religion and just because you don‘t believe in organized religion doesn‘t mean you don‘t believe in god.
Although we tend to think of the Dream as "success," that is only part of it. According to Eric Sevareid in his essay “The American Dream,” the dream is “rebirth,” “starting over,” leaving the past and the sins/mistakes of the past behind. It has its basis in Christian mythology. Called by some “The Myth of Edenic Possibilities,” the idea is that to Europeans, the New World was the new Eden, a place where people could leave their pasts behind. With the slate wiped clean, in this New Eden, America, anyone could start over—“as clean as God’s fingers” (as one of the characters in The Crucible puts it). Here “Adam” can return to Eden/Paradise, and, this time, stay away from the darned apple tree. American writers such as Cooper, Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Penn Warren, and, yes, Henley, etc.) have wrestled with this naïve idea for two hundred years. They tend to reject it because—new Eden or not—they realize it is the still the same old Adam who still carries within him whatever it is/was (original sin, human nature) that caused him to lose paradise in the first place. Our writers, and I am including Henley here, seem to believe that the first thing Adam (and Eve, of course) would do, if given a second chance at Eden, would be to build an applesauce factory—(powered, perhaps, with dirty coal!).
Now to the song itself: It starts on the east coast. The reference to Rhode Island, and particularly to the “Old World Shadows,” is very interesting. “Old World shadows” have no place in the New World. The image contradicts the whole idea of America as a place to start anew. The fact that there are "Old World shadows" in Providence (which there are, by the way, or at least were the last time I was there—narrow cobbled streets, for example) reinforces the idea that the American Dream is an illusion. We carry our pasts with us. (Two good literary images of this idea are the character who carries her parents' bones in a bag on her back (Garcia Marques: 100 Years of Solitude) and the use of the name “Burden” (one character is even named Calvin Burden (the "burden" of our Puritan past) in the works of Faulkner and Penn Warren — but I digress. It is also interesting that the speaker finds it necessary to point out that “she” comes from the Providence “in Rhode Island”—not the other “Providence” (the will of God or God Himself)—a second double meaning in the song.
“Her” father came, like so many others, from Europe (apparently to Providence), but “she” is not satisfied to remain there. “Her hopes and dreams” can apparently not be fulfilled in Providence, so she is heading west (the mythic direction of the American Dream) to a “place people [are] smiling.” These people rhapsodize about “the Red Man’s ways” and “how they [love] the land.” They envision a new virtual “Paradise,” and crowd in. (“She” disappears in the crowd, by the way, and we hear no more about her.) In their pursuit of “Paradise,” however, these seekers destroy it — they lay “the mountains low” while their towns grow high. Instead of staying and cleaning up their mess, however, they continue to move west, seeking yet another paradise. (One is reminded here of the Mad Tea Party!)
“They” cross the desert and end in California — where they settle, “hungry for power / To light their neon way [and] / Give them things to do.” The “power” comes, of course, from electricity with all the problems associated with it (pollution, brownouts, etc.) “Power,” like “The Last Resort” and “Providence,” has a double meaning.)
The speaker becomes more harsh and blunt here: “rich men...rape” the virgin land and apparently get away with it, putting up “a bunch of ugly boxes,” and the speaker is stunned and horrified to note that “Jesus! People [have actually] bought ‘em!” (Not "Jesus-People, by the way!)
The next image is of the sunset — an archetype of death or an ending — “hazy” with the pollution that the hunger for “power” has produced. This is the end of the road — the end of the westward journey — there is no clean, unspoiled place left to go. “They” have reached the far edge of the continent where they stand watching the sun go down.
Well, that’s not quite true. “You can leave it all behind [and] / Sail to Lahaina,” but Lahaina is not pristine anymore either. The “missionaries” took care of that “many years ago” when they “brought the White Man’s burden” and “the White Man’s reign” down on the native Hawaiians. (One interesting aspect of Lahaina that I noticed there was how much the buildings resemble those of New England whaling towns whence came those missionaries.) (At one time at least, there actually was a sign in Lahaina that read “Jesus is coming.” I don't know if it is still there.)
Now the speaker makes his point: “There is no more New Frontier.” We cannot continue to trash one “paradise,” then move west in pursuit of another. At the Mad Tea Party, eventually all the teacups are dirtied. “We have got to make it here.” In other words, instead of leaving “it all behind,” we need to stay put and clean up our mess! (As Phil Collins says in “Age of Confusion,” “This is the world we live in / And these are the hands we’re given.”)
The speaker’s indictment of white America comes next. The idea of Manifest Destiny was the peculiar 19th century notion that it was God’s will (the other “Providence”) that white Americans possess the continent “from sea to shining sea.” Naturally, of course, anyone who tried to stand in our way was going against the will of God and therefore deserved to be annihilated. Hence:
We satisfy our endless needs [for beautiful, unspoiled land, for wealth, for a new Paradise, for a second chance]
And justify our bloody deeds [Duh....does this need explication?]
In the name of [Manifest] destiny
And in the name of God.
Then the speaker echoes an earlier section with a twist:
You can see them [good “Christians”] there [in church] on Sunday morning
Stand up and sing about what it’s like up there. [Not the Rockies this time]
They call it Paradise, I don’t know why
Call someplace paradise; kiss it goodbye.
Obviously, the speaker is not suggesting that if we go to heaven, we will trash the place. He means, I think, that the earth has been given to us in trust; we are its stewards, and like those in the Bible story of the Talents, if we do not fulfill our obligation and take care of what we have been given, when the Master returns and demands of us what we have done with it, we will not hear, “Well done, though good and faithful servant.” Instead, like the third steward in the parable, because we have buried our “one talent” (under a mountain of trash and “ugly boxes”), it will be taken from us, and we will be cast out. We can “kiss” Paradise “goodbye” because we won’t be going there.
For what it’s worth.
If you look at the lyrics, they are very, very distilled. Every word has impact, imagery. Off this last listen, the reference to an "evangelical" neon sign saying Jesus is Coming had me flash on the well meaning but then seedy side of LA where the Eagles where living at the time. A freeway overpass or dirty sidewalk running past a rescue mission or modern day revivalist hall. Neon indeed. Such tightly packed lyrics. This song honestly blows my mind.
It's thick, beautiful, and quite painful.
Thank you Don Henley.
For me, it is the Eagles standpoint on American history from its first colonizers to the brutal suburbanization of southern California.
Europeans left in hope of a promised land ("packed their hopes and dreams") and arrived in Rhode Island. They heard about this place called paradise that the natives cherished and they wanted to experience this. The first two verses are about how the colonizers decided to move westward in search of paradise. There were too many of them ("the crowded bars").
Then Southern California becomes the focus of the next two verses. How rich people came in and bought the land from the missionaries and ranch owners, put up ugly suburban homes and promised the packaged American Dream for all. "The hazy sun" is even a reference to the pollution so integral to suburban living.
What started out in the name of God, finished in the name of money (the real men of God, the missionaries, left some time ago). And the boundaries between these two phenomenon, in southern California at least, are very blurred. Which is what he is alluding to the very final verses.
The grass is always greener on the other side from where you're sitting now, but I wouldn't take the chance of sacrificing where I am now just to get some place better when I don't know if it will really be better.