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A never-published biography of the Eagles delved into the classic rock superstar’s 1980 breakup, their longtime manager testified Wednesday, saying co-founders Glenn Frey and Don Henley were “very disappointed” in the manuscript.
The book never found a publisher. But four decades later, it is part of another story: a criminal trial that opened on Wednesday and includes approximately 100 pages of handwritten lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits.
The defendants (rare book dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and memorabilia dealer Edward Kosinski) obtained the documents through Ed Sanders, a prominent poet and writer of non-fiction who also co-founded the avant-garde rock group. the Fugos.
Sanders is not accused of anything, but a key question is whether he had the right to sell the pages of lyrics he obtained while researching the biography.
Manhattan prosecutors say Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinski sold the pages knowing their ownership history was shaky at best. Then, prosecutors say, they conspired to thwart Henley’s efforts to recover what he says are stolen pieces of his estate.
María Altaffer / AP
“All of these lyrics are very personal to him, they’re part of musical history, and it was just unacceptable to him that someone else would steal them,” Eagles manager Irving Azoff said during testimony. He said he had never seen Henley part with any of the notepads on which he, along with Frey, wrote some of the rock songbook’s best-known lyrics.
Defense attorneys say Henley voluntarily turned over the documents and pressured prosecutors to try to get them back.
“They have charged three innocent men with a crime that never happened,” Inciardi’s attorney, Stacey Richman, told Judge Curtis Farber during opening arguments. Farber will decide the verdict, as the defendants opted to dispense with a jury.
Lyrics and meaning of “Hotel California”
The documents include developing lyrics to songs from 1976’s “Hotel California,” the third best-selling album in U.S. history.
Frey and Henley worked them out in a Beverly Hills house rented for the purpose, since the tidy Henley’s tendency to pick up after Frey “would drive them crazy” if they worked on their own homes, Azoff testified.
Henley wrote most of it, he added, and Frey leaned in to make suggestions like the line “Life in the Fast Lane,” which became the title of a hit single.
The pages in dispute include lyrics from that song, from “New Kid in Town” and, of course, from “Hotel California,” the six-plus-minute-long, somewhat mysterious musical story about a hedonistic but ultimately dark place where “You can leave whenever you want, but you can never leave.”
In 2016, co-host of “CBS Mornings” Gayle King asked Henley. about the meaning of “Hotel California.”
“Well, I always say it’s a journey from innocence to experience. It’s not really about California; it’s about America,” Henley said. “It’s about the darkest part of the American dream. It’s about excess, it’s about narcissism. It’s about the music business. It’s about a lot of different things… It can have a million interpretations.”
Although dismissed by some as an overexposed ’70s artifact, the Grammy-winning song remains a touchstone on classic rock radio and many personal playlists. Entertainment data company Luminate tallied more than 220 million streams and 136,000 radio plays of “Hotel California” in the United States last year.
“He had inside knowledge”
The case was filed in 2022, a decade after some of the pages began appearing at auction and Henley was offended. He purchased four pages for $8,500, but also reported the documents stolen, prosecutors said.
At the time, the scores were in the hands of Kosinski and Inciardi, who had purchased them from Horowitz for $65,000. His company had purchased them from Sanders for $50,000 in 2005.
A friend of Frey, he was hired in 1979 to write a biography of the band for $25,000 and enjoyed wide access. But Azoff testified that the co-founders did not like the resulting manuscript and that, “for me personally, everything about the breakup of the Eagles was unacceptable.”
When the project stalled, a frustrated Sanders asked Azoff in a 1982 letter for “a substantial amount of money,” saying he had “behaved with great reserve” in not approaching a major magazine with a story about the split. of the Eagles.
That worried them.
“He had inside knowledge,” Azoff said, and with Frey and Henley cultivating solo careers, “we didn’t want some ugly story to come out about the Eagles breaking up.”
They ultimately paid Sanders about $75,000 and agreed to let him find a publisher, convinced that any book would still need the band’s approval under their 1979 contract, Azoff said.
Sanders did not respond to a phone message seeking comment on the case. The emails sent to him were recovered.
Sanders told Horowitz in 2005 that Henley’s assistant had mailed him all the documents he wanted for the biography, although the writer worried that Henley “might be upset” if they were sold, according to an email shown in court.
“It cast significant doubt on whether Sanders actually owned the Henley lyric notes or had the right to sell them,” Deputy District Attorney Nicholas Penfold said in opening remarks.
Sanders’ contract said the Eagles owned any materials they provided to Sanders for the book. Defense attorneys said their clients knew nothing about the contract until they were charged.
Don Henley expected to testify
Prosecutors say that once Henley’s lawyers claimed the documents were stolen, Inciardi and Horowitz gave changing accounts of how Sanders obtained them.
According to emails recounted in the indictment, those explanations spanned the next five years, from when Sanders found them abandoned in a backstage dressing room until Frey, who died in 2016, gave them to him.
There was some input and consent from Sanders, but he also rejected some, including the behind-the-scenes rescue story, according to the emails.
Horowitz’s lawyer, Jonathan Bach, said the messages were not suspicious efforts to cover tracks, but rather an effort by Horowitz and Inciardi to obtain “a simple statement from Ed Sanders to refute an allegation that they know is baseless.”
Kosinski sent one of several explanations to Henley’s lawyer and then told an auction house that the rocker “had no right” to the documents, the indictment says. He also asked auctioneers not to inform potential bidders about the property dispute.
His attorney, Matthew Laroche, said Kosinski was truthful with everyone and “acted diligently and appropriately.”
Henley is expected to testify. Defense attorneys have indicated they plan to question how clearly he remembers his dealings with Sanders and the lyrics at a time when the rock star was living “life in the fast lane.”
In 2016, Henley told Gayle King that the band were indeed living that lifestyle in the 1970s.
“Yeah… Everybody did it. It was the ’70s.” henley said. “It was what everyone was doing, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right. And looking back, there are some regrets about that. We probably could have been more productive… although we were pretty productive, considering.”