MARCH 6, 2024:
NEW YORK (AP) — New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their criminal case midtrial Wednesday (March 6, 2024) against three men who had been accused of conspiring to possess a cache of hand-drafted lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits.
Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Aaron Ginandes informed the judge at 10 a.m. that prosecutors would no longer proceed with the case, citing newly available emails that defense lawyers said raised questions about the trial’s fairness. The trial had been underway since late February.
“The people concede that dismissal is appropriate in this case,” Ginandes said.
The raft of communications emerged only when Eagles star Don Henley apparently decided last week to waive attorney-client privilege, after he and other prosecution witnesses had already testified. The defense argued that the new disclosures raised questions that it hadn’t been able to ask.
“Witnesses and their lawyers” used attorney-client privilege “to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging,” Judge Curtis Farber said in dismissing the case.
The case centered on roughly 100 pages of legal-pad pages from the creation of a classic rock colossus. The 1976 album “Hotel California” ranks as the third-biggest seller of all time in the U.S., in no small part on the strength of its evocative, smoothly unsettling title track about a place where “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
The accused had been three well-established figures in the collectibles world: rare books dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi, and rock memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski.
Prosecutors had said the men knew the pages had a dubious chain of ownership but peddled them anyway, scheming to fabricate a provenance that would pass muster with auction houses and stave off demands to return the documents to Eagles co-founder Don Henley.
The defendants pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property. Through their lawyers, the men contended that they were rightful owners of pages that weren’t stolen by anyone.
The defense maintained that Henley gave the documents decades ago to a writer who worked on a never-published Eagles biography and later sold the handwritten sheets to Horowitz. He, in turn, sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who started putting some of the pages up for auction in 2012.
Henley, who realized they were missing only when they showed up for sale, reported them stolen. He testified that at the trial that he let the writer pore through the documents for research but “never gifted them or gave them to anybody to keep or sell.”
The writer wasn’t charged with any crime and hasn’t taken the stand. He hasn’t responded to messages about the trial.
FEBRUARY 29, 2024:
NEW YORK (AP) — The lyrics to “Hotel California” and other classic Eagles songs should never have ended up at auction, Don Henley told a court Wednesday (Feb. 28, 2024).
“I always knew those lyrics were my property. I never gifted them or gave them to anybody to keep or sell,” the Eagles co-founder said on the last of three days of testimony at the trial of three collectibles experts charged with a scheme to peddle roughly 100 handwritten pages of the lyrics.
On trial are rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz and rock memorabilia connoisseurs Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski. Prosecutors say the three circulated bogus stories about the documents’ ownership history in order to try to sell them and parry Henley’s demands for them.
Kosinski, Inciardi and Horowitz have pleaded not guilty to charges that include conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.
Defense lawyers say the men rightfully owned and were free to sell the documents, which they acquired through a writer who worked on a never-published Eagles biography decades ago.
The lyrics sheets document the shaping of a roster of 1970s rock hits, many of them from one of the best-selling albums of all time: the Eagles’ “Hotel California.”
The case centers on how the legal-pad pages made their way from Henley’s Southern California barn to the biographer’s home in New York’s Hudson Valley, and then to the defendants in New York City.
The defense argues that Henley gave the lyrics drafts to the writer, Ed Sanders. Henley says that he invited Sanders to review the pages for research but that the writer was obligated to relinquish them.
In a series of rapid-fire questions, prosecutor Aaron Ginandes asked Henley who owned the papers at every stage from when he bought the pads at a Los Angeles stationery store to when they cropped up at auctions.
“I did,” Henley answered each time.
Sanders isn’t charged with any crime and hasn’t responded to messages seeking comment on the case. He sold the pages to Horowitz. Inciardi and Kosinski bought them from the book dealer, then started putting some sheets up for auction in 2012.
While the trial is about the lyrics sheets, the fate of another set of pages — Sanders’ decades-old biography manuscript — has come up repeatedly as prosecutors and defense lawyers examined his interactions with Henley, Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey and Eagles representatives.
Work on the authorized book began in 1979 and spanned the band’s breakup the next year. (The Eagles regrouped in 1994.)
Henley testified earlier this week that he was disappointed in an initial draft of 100 pages of the manuscript in 1980. Revisions apparently softened his view somewhat.
By 1983, he wrote to Sanders that the latest draft “flows well and is very humorous up until the end,” according to a letter shown in court Wednesday.
But the letter went on to muse about whether it might be better for Henley and Frey just to “send each other these bitter pages and let the book end on a slightly gentler note?”
“I wonder how these comments will age,” Henley wrote. “Still, I think the book has merit and should be published.”
It never was. Eagles manager Irving Azoff testified last week that publishers made no offers, that the book never got the band’s OK and that he believed Frey ultimately nixed the project. Frey died in 2016.
The trial is expected to continue for weeks with other witnesses.
Henley, meanwhile, is returning to the road. The Eagles’ next show is Friday in Hollywood, Florida.
FEBRUARY 27, 2024:
NEW YORK (AP) — Don Henley has resumed testifying in a trial surrounding handwritten drafts of lyrics to Eagles hits including “Hotel California” and his decade-long effort to reclaim the pages. The Eagles co-founder returned to the witness stand Tuesday (Feb. 27, 2024) after a full day of testimony Monday. Three collectibles-world professionals are on trial in the criminal case involving roughly 100 legal-pad sheets from the development of the Eagles’ 1976 “Hotel California” album. They are charged with scheming to conceal the pages’ disputed ownership and sell them despite knowing that Henley claimed they had no right to do so. The men have pleaded not guilty.
FEBRUARY 26, 2024:
NEW YORK (AP) — Don Henley testified Monday that a “poor decision” led to his arrest in 1980, when authorities said they found drugs and a 16-year-old sex worker suffering from an overdose at his Los Angeles home.
Henley was asked about the arrest as he testified at a criminal trial surrounding what he says were stolen, handwritten draft lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits.
Henley said he called for a sex worker on a night in November 1980 because he “wanted to escape the depression I was in” over the breakup of the superstar band.
“I wanted to forget about everything that was happening with the band, and I made a poor decision which I regret to this day. I’ve had to live with it for 44 years. I’m still living with it today, in this courtroom. Poor decision,” the 76-year-old testified in a raspy drawl.
As he has in the past, Henley said he didn’t know the girl’s age until after his arrest and that he did cocaine with and went to bed with the girl, but never had sex with her.
“I don’t remember the anatomical details, but I know there was no sex,” he said.
He said he called firefighters, who checked the girl’s health, found her to be OK and left, with him promising to take care of her. The paramedics, who found her in the nude, called police, authorities said at the time.
Henley said Monday (Feb. 26, 2024) that she recovered and was preparing to leave with a friend she’d had him call, when police arrived hours later.
Authorities said at the time that they found cocaine, quaaludes and marijuana at his Los Angeles home.
Henley pleaded no contest in 1981 to a misdemeanor charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was sentenced to probation and a $2,500 fine, and he requested a drug education program to get some possession charges dismissed.
Henley was in the New York courtroom Monday to talk about something else — his version of how handwritten pages from the development of the band’s blockbuster 1976 album made their way from his Southern California barn to New York auctions decades later.
But a prosecutor asked about the arrest early on, apparently to do so before defense lawyers could.
The Grammy-winning singer and drummer and vociferous artists’-rights activist is prosecutors’ star witness at the trial, where three collectibles professionals face charges including criminally possessing stolen property.
They’re accused of colluding to veil the documents’ questioned ownership in order to try to sell them and deflect Henley’s demands for their return.
The defendants — rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz and rock memorabilia specialists Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski — have pleaded not guilty. Their lawyers say there was nothing illegal in what happened to the lyric sheets.
At issue are about 100 sheets of legal-pad paper inscribed with lyrics-in-the-making for multiple songs on the “Hotel California” album, including “Life in the Fast Lane,” “New Kid in Town” and the title track that turned into one of the most durable hits in rock. Famed for its lengthy guitar solo and puzzlingly poetic lyrics, the song still gets streamed hundreds of millions of times a year.
The defendants acquired the pages through writer Ed Sanders, who began working with the Eagles in 1979 on a band biography that never made it into print.
He sold the documents to Horowitz, who sold them to Kosinski and Inciardi. Kosinski has a rock ‘n’ roll collectibles auction site; Inciardi was then a curator at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
In a 2005 email to Horowitz, Sanders said Henley’s assistant had sent him the documents for the biography project, according to the indictment.
Henley, however, testified Monday that he only gave the biographer access to the documents, not possession of them, and that he never wanted them to become public.
They contain, he said, “some of the stupid stuff we wrote down before we got to the final lyrics of the songs.
“It just wasn’t something that was for public viewing. It was our process. It was something very personal, very private,” he said. “I still wouldn’t show that to anybody.”
He reported them stolen after Inciardi and Kosinski began in 2012 to offer them at various auctions.
Henley also bought four pages back for $8,500 in 2012. He testified that he resented having to buy back what he contends was his own property. But he said he saw it as “the most practical and expedient” way to get the auction listing, which contained photos of the lyrics sheets, off the internet.
Kosinski’s lawyers, however, have argued that the transaction implicitly recognized his ownership.
Meanwhile, Horowitz and Inciardi started ginning up alternate stories of how Sanders got hold of the manuscripts, Manhattan prosecutors say.
Among the alternate stories were that they were left behind backstage at an Eagles concert, that Sanders received them from someone he couldn’t recall, and that he got them from Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, according to emails recounted in the indictment. Frey had died by the time Horowitz broached that last option in 2017.
Sanders contributed to or signed onto some explanations, according to the emails. He hasn’t been charged with any crime and hasn’t responded to messages seeking comment about the case.
Kosinski forwarded one of the various explanations to Henley’s lawyer, then told an auction house that the rocker had “no claim” to the documents, the indictment says.
Henley has been a fierce advocate for artists’ rights to their work.
He tangled with Congress over a 1999 copyright law change that affected musicians’ ability to reclaim ownership of their old recordings from record labels. After complaints from Henley and other musicians, Congress unwound the change the next year.
Meanwhile, Henley helped establish a musicians’ rights group that spoke out in venues from Congress to the Supreme Court against online file-sharing platforms. Some popular services at the time let users trade digital recordings for free. The music industry contended that the exchanges flouted copyright laws.
Henley and some other major artists applauded a 2005 high court ruling that cleared a path for record labels to sue file-swapping services.
Henley also sued a Senate candidate over unauthorized use of some of the musician’s solo songs in a campaign spot. Another Henley suit hit a clothing company that made t-shirts emblazoned with a pun on his name. Both cases ended in settlements and apologies from the defendants.
Henley also testified to Congress in 2020, urging copyright law updates to fight online piracy.
FEBRUARY 20, 2024:
Extended version:
JULY 13, 2022:
NEW YORK (AP) — A rock memorabilia dealer and two other men are charged with scheming to sell allegedly ill-gotten, handwritten lyrics to “Hotel California” and other hits by the Eagles. The men pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges, which between the three of them include conspiracy, criminal possession of stolen property and attempted criminal possession of stolen property. Their lawyers insist the three are innocent, characterizing it as a “civil dispute” over ownership. The trove of documents included Henley’s notes and lyrics for “Hotel California” plus two others from that Grammy-winning 1976 album: “Life in the Fast Lane” and “New Kid In Town.” The Eagles’ longtime manager thanked prosecutors for bringing the case.
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