Checking Into Hotel California, Part 1

Erlandson: I think we're all very proud of it.

Auf Der Maur: So proud.

Erlandson: Yeah. You can't really make an album like that and not be proud of it.

Love: I think the genesis is definitely us. The germ of it. But it's out of my hands. There's things in it now that I regret. There's a couple of noises that I Iet people get with and didn't really do that Milos Forman thing and be a visionary director. It was incredibly collaborative at a certain point, definitely the vision was ours. It's in the hands of destiny. It really is. I'm proud of it. But I almost feel like I don't have much to do with it anymore. I have a lot of personal feelings about it that I wouldn't share publicly, but I feel like it sort of came from another place and was given to us, really.

Erlandson: A gift.

Love: A gift.

ATN: It took a lot of guts to make that album. What I mean by that is soundwise, it's definitely a departure from the last album. You must have known that making such a dramatic change in the sound would open you up to possible criticism from various people. But then I assume you don't care about that.

Love: No, we do not care one bit about that.

Auf Der Maur: And also, remember, because the process was so long, I don't think there was even a moment where we took that next step and said, "Ooh. We just made a ..."

Love: [adopting exaggerated tone] "Ooh, I wonder what people will think ..."

Auf Der Maur: It took four years. It seemed very natural to me. Even looking [from the] outside, I would have thought that it seemed like a natural evolution, if you watched the evolution of this band.

"I think that we've always been basically rock critics to a certain degree, which can be self-defeating when you're a musician," Love said.

Love: Yeah. If you discounted us or if you looked at us as ... or you looked at me in particular -- and you skipped these two -- as a vulgarian. Sometimes I would see lyrics translated into German and they would take it and they'd make it look like sort-of low-end Lydia Lunch, when in fact, there was a lot -- even back in the first two records -- a lot of craft and a lot of detail, lots and lots of detail. And I think that that's a really American and Western trait as well. God is in the details. And I don't mean micromanaging everything to death. I mean the ability to allow things to flow and things to be free. And to let Korean radio stay on there and all the great flaws that are on Led Zeppelin 4 records and all the Albini aesthetic of 'Let it breathe here and there.' But then 'Don-Henley' it out here.

Whatever. I think that we've always been basically rock critics to a certain degree, which can be self-defeating when you're a musician. And I've seen it happen to people my generation. We're so musically isolated ... and the stuff I like in my head and I reference in my head and we all reference in our heads, that I think if you low-balled us as sort of like 'Courtney's screaming.' [Then] you know what I mean? You won't notice what Eric's doing or you won't notice what she was doing or what Patty was doing, contributing. And you weren't noticing my references.

Probably 'cause my persona stuff just really took over in a weird, loud way. Do you know what I mean? And the persona stuff was supposed to do that? I always wanted it to? I'm doing this movie about Andy Kaufman and I'm playing this woman who I talked to. And she told me that when Andy Kaufman went through his wrestling phase, he thought that people understood it was a joke. Or it was a thing, it was a thing he was engaged in but it had another level to it. And I told her, well, that was on TV, of course people are gonna be stupid. But I think it happened to me too. This seems blunt and vulgar and stupid, but really there are so many references and there's so much nuance and there's so much id and superego within this. Does that make sense?

ATN: Yeah.

Love: I know I'm rambling but ...

ATN: No, I'm not trying to say that the previous album wasn't a good album.

Love: Oh, it was a great album.