Description

Don Henley wanted a hotel with "a slightly sinister edge". Designer Kosh and photographer David Alexander photographed three candidates before settling on the Beverly Hills Hotel, then shot it from a cherry picker sixty feet above Sunset Boulevard, just before sunset. The high angle and fading light turned a famous pink landmark into a dark silhouette among palm trees, glowing against an orange sky.

The disguise worked almost too well. At first most people did not recognise the building, and when its identity became known the hotel threatened legal action over the use of the image. The neon-style title was another illusion: Kosh designed it as a neon sign, but real neon tubing could not be bent into his script, so airbrush artist Bob Hickson painted the glow by hand.

Inside, the story continues. The back cover shows the empty lobby of the Lido Hotel in Hollywood, and the gatefold shows the same lobby crowded with the band and their friends. "I wanted a collection of people from all walks of life," Henley said. "It's people on the edge, on the fringes of society." A shadowy figure on the balcony above them has fuelled speculation ever since. The album was released by Asylum on 8 December 1976.

Credit

Photography by David Alexander; design and art direction by Kosh; logo airbrushed by Bob Hickson