Did the Eagles Get the “Hotel California” Chords from Jethro Tull? | Guitar World
From Ian Anderson:
“It’s not plagiarism. It’s just the same chord sequence,” he says. “It’s in a different time signature, different key, different context. And its a very, very fine song that they wrote, so I can’t feel anything other than happiness for their sake, and I feel flattered had they come across that chord sequence.
It’s difficult to find a chord sequence that hasn’t been used and hasn’t been the focus of lots of pieces of music. Harmonic progression—it’s almost a mathematical certainty that you’re gonna crop up with the same thing sooner or later if you’re strumming a few chords on a guitar.”