On Monday, Don Henley sat on the witness stand in a Manhattan court, doing his best to control himself and his emotions. But every now and then, the bold-faced witness in a trial involving allegedly stolen handwritten lyrics to songs from the Eagles’ “Hotel California” couldn’t help himself.
For example, when Henley was asked whether he remembered sending writer Ed Sanders pads of draft text more than 40 years ago to research the group’s planned Eagles biography. “I don’t remember offering to send him text blocks,” replied the white-haired Henley, who was wearing a dark suit, tie and white shirt. “You know what? It doesn’t matter if I drove them across the country in a U-Haul truck and dumped them on his doorstep. He had no right to keep them or sell them.”
That moment was one of several harrowing moments in the criminal trial that began last week in New York Supreme Court involving three men accused of conspiring to sell those allegedly stolen blocks of text. The defendants – Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski – have pleaded not guilty, claiming they did not know the blocks had been stolen. Prosecutors allege the men made up stories about the blocks’ origins and that Sanders (who was not charged) violated a contract with the Eagles by not returning the material to the band after he completed his never-published book.
In the 1970s, the Eagles were known for selling enough albums to fill a fleet of Volkswagen RVs and for being extremely perfectionistic in the recording studio. All of that – and a glimpse into the hedonistic lifestyle associated with them and their fellow LA rockers during that time – collided in court on the fourth day of the trial.
During initial questioning by Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes, Henley (who was accompanied by three bodyguards on the way into the courtroom) was asked how many albums the Eagles had sold (“over 150 million albums worldwide”) and explained the method he and his partner Glenn Frey used it to write songs together. The two rented a house in Los Angeles, woke up in the middle of the morning, made coffee and began exchanging ideas, pictures and guitar or piano chords. The two also used yellow or white pads (which they bought at a stationery store on Ventura Boulevard, Henley recalls) to form lyrics and melodies.
When asked about the Eagles’ dissolution, announced in 1982, Henley said he was “devastated” when Frey (the band’s founder and, according to legal documents, its “president”) called him and told him it was over. “The band meant everything to me,” Henley said. “We tried to keep it a secret,” he continued, adding that he and Irving Azoff, the band’s manager, “held out hope that Mr. Frey would change his mind.”
That confession led to another startling moment of the day when Ginandes abruptly asked Henley, “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” Ahead of the trial, defense attorneys had asked Judge Curtis Farber for the right to ask questions about less flattering aspects of the case to confront Henley’s past. In an attempt to neutralize the story, prosecutors brought it up first. In a measured tone, Henley recounted a particular night in 1980 that had received only sporadic coverage in the past. “I wanted to escape the depression I was in and made a mistake,” he said. He then remembered calling a brothel mother after meeting with members of the Eagles crew who then left. A few hours later, a young woman (who he thought was 20 or 21 years old) showed up at his home in Los Angeles.
Talking slowly and deliberately, the two talked, took some cocaine and finally fell asleep. A few hours later, the young woman started having seizures, and Henley said he called 911 even though “she was fine when they came.” Police later returned and arrested both Henley and the woman: “They found drugs in my apartment,” Henley replied when asked why. Since the woman turned out to be “16 or 17 years old,” as Henley says, he pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting the delinquency of a minor, was sentenced to two years’ probation and had to pay a $2,500 fine. “I made a bad decision that I regret to this day,” he said. “I had to live with it for 44 years. I live with it in this courtroom today. Bad decision.”
With that confession seemingly out of the way, at least for now, the questioning turned to Sanders’ unpublished book. Anyone wondering how the leader of East Coast performance rock band The Fugs came to write a book about a band that was the exact opposite of him was proven wrong by Henley. He explained that Sanders met Frey when the writer moved to Los Angeles in 1969 to write a book about Charles Manson.
Henley said he didn’t know what to think of Sanders, especially when Sanders stayed at Frey’s apartment for a while and asked her to stay awake all night, in shifts and with a gun, in case Members of the Manson Family came “through the window”. Henley said he still had doubts about Sanders’ suitability for the project: “He was a self-proclaimed beatnik of the old school and claimed to have been at the founding of the counterculture. He didn’t seem like the right person to write about a West Coast band.”
According to testimony, in 1980 Sanders submitted about 100 pages of the band’s in-progress biography for review and approval. Henley admitted he was “disappointed” by what he read. “I didn’t think it was substantive,” he said. “Some of it was cartoonish” and contained “beatnik jargon that sometimes seemed anachronistic and cheesy.” Desperate for it to be a better book, Henley agreed to give Sanders access to the text blocks so that the author could delve deeper into the band’s creative methods. The blocks were then stored in a barn on Henley’s organic farm in Malibu, along with gardening tools and record sales plaques.
What happened next is the crux of the trial. According to a contract signed by the band and Sanders in 1979, the Eagles owned any materials they provided to him for his research. As for the text blocks, Henley claimed: “These materials were private and personal and were not intended to be seen by the public or anyone else… The text blocks are a work product. They’re basically the trash, if you will, that’s left over from songwriting, and those are the things you don’t want anyone to see.” He claimed he never gave Sanders permission to “keep” them.
Henley claimed he only learned of the missing blocks of lyrics in 2012, when several pages on Kosinski’s Gotta Have Rock and Roll website were put up for auction. Kosinski and Inciardi had purchased the blocks from the respected rare book dealer Horowitz, who in turn paid Sanders for them. This discovery prompted Henley to call his lawyer and file a police report. “I believe there was a theft on my property,” he said, adding, “and that Ed Sanders stole them.”
Henley thought it was the most practical and expedient way to put the matter behind him and said he bought the pages for $8,500. However, Henley said he declined to purchase additional pages that appeared on Sotheby’s website in 2014 and 2016, which some of the defendants helped arrange. While Henley admitted he could afford the $90,000 to purchase the second, larger lot, he said, “I had been blackmailed before and didn’t want to do it again and buy back my own property… I realized that There had to be a lot more material out there.”
During cross-examination by defense lawyers, Henley was not asked about that night in 1980 – at least not yet – but was shown copies of an encouraging letter he had sent to Sanders in the early 1980s (“the book is valuable and should be published,” it said in part). He was also given headphones to listen to a recording of a telephone conversation between him and Sanders. “I’m hard of hearing because of my job, but I’ll do my best,” Henley, 76, said. On the tape recovered by authorities from Sanders’ apartment, Henley could be heard telling the writer that he had “a lot of this shit” in the form of pads for Sanders to examine.
Henley was also shown pages he had edited from Sanders’ book draft, which defense attorney Jonathan Bach said refutes Henley’s earlier claims. “Nowhere does it say that these pages are not intended for the public and cannot be included in the book,” Bach said. “You don’t say, ‘They can’t leave my property – give them back.'”
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You guys need a secretary”: Don Henley fumes and confesses in trial over stolen Eagles song lyrics
Henley was also shown a receipt for a supposedly 21-pound box that was sent to Sanders’ home, although the contents of that box were not disclosed. Henley said he wanted to send Sanders a collection of articles and reviews about the Eagles’ work for his research. The musician was also repeatedly asked by Bach whether he or anyone from the Eagles camp had ever asked Sanders to return the material after the book was finished. Henley said he could not recall such requests.”
This back-and-forth made clear the arguments of the prosecution (that Sanders allegedly kept and sold the papers without the Eagles’ permission) and the defense (that, among other things, the papers were not “stolen” since no charges were filed for over 40 years). explained. Henley’s testimony is expected to continue Tuesday, with those in the courtroom potentially getting further insight into his covert reticence. When shown a draft of Sanders’ work on Monday, Henley shot back: “The second half of the manuscript is upside down. You guys need a secretary”.