I must have listened to that album and song 200+ times in high school, literally wearing out the groove on the record. And it never drove me to sacrifice a goat at midnight on a full moon to the Dark Lord while dancing naked and aroused around a pentacle drawn in the dirt with my own blood ...

I do remember when _HC_ came out that some people went off on it being satanic. But these were the same people touted the fact that if you played a record backwards you would hear messages from Satan. And these people are COMPLETE and TOTAL F*CKING MORONS. These people had an agenda, they believed prejudicially that rock music was satanic (since they could not find these songs in their hymnals at church?), and they warped reality to match their beliefs (like God burying dinosaur bones to test our faith.)

Now Henley, the guy who wrote the lyrics, says that this songs is not about Satanism, then I believe him, especially more so than the closed minded morons. I suspect that if Henley wanted to write a song about Satan then he would have been more direct about it, like Judas Priest or Ozzy (both of whom I think did that just to yank the fundamentists chain).