The article explains that the Eagles’ 1977 song ‘The Last Resort’ was partly inspired by a drug dealer known as ‘The Count’, whom band member Don Henley encountered in Los Angeles. It argues that the figure embodied the excess, exploitation and moral decay that the song criticises, making him a small but telling influence on one of the band’s most politically minded tracks.

Released on the Eagles’ album *Hotel California*, ‘The Last Resort’ examines environmental destruction, commercial development and the loss of idealism in California. Henley has described the song as a response to people seeking paradise only to spoil it, while ‘The Count’ represented the darker side of the city’s wealthy, hedonistic culture during the 1970s.