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NEW YORK (AP) — Don Henley testified Monday that a “bad decision” led authorities to find drugs and a 16-year-old sex worker overdosed in his Los Angeles home in 1980, leading to the arrest of co-founder of the Eagles.
Henley was asked about the arrest while testifying at a criminal trial about what he said were stolen and handwritten notes. draft lyrics for “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits.
Henley said he called a sex worker one 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 bad decision that I regret to this day. I’ve had to live with it for 44 years. I still live with that today, in this courtroom. Bad decision,” the 76-year-old man testified in a hoarse voice.
As he has in the past, Henley said he did not know the girl’s age until after his arrest and that he used cocaine and slept with the girl, but never had sexual relations with her.
He said he called the firefighters, who checked the girl’s health, found that she was fine and left, promising to take care of her.
He said she recovered and was preparing to leave with a friend she had asked to call when police arrived hours later.
Authorities said at the time that they found cocaine, quaaludes and marijuana in his Los Angeles home.
Henley pleaded no contest in 1981 to a misdemeanor count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was sentenced to probation and a $2,500 fine, and requested a drug education program to have some possession charges dismissed.
Henley was in the New York courtroom on Monday to talk about something else: his version of how the handwritten pages of the band’s development 1976 smash hit album Decades later, they made their way from his Southern California barn to New York auctions.
But a prosecutor asked about the arrest early on, apparently to do it before defense attorneys could.
The Grammy-winning singer-drummer and vocal artists’ rights activist is prosecutors’ star witness in the trial, where three collection professionals face charges including criminal possession of stolen property.
They are accused of conspiring to conceal disputed ownership of the documents 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. His lawyers say there was nothing illegal about what happened to the lyric sheets.
At stake are about 100 sheets of legal paper with lyrics in progress for several songs from the “Hotel California” album, including “Life in the Fast Lane,” “New Kid in Town” and the title track. which became one of rock’s most enduring hits. Famous for its long guitar solo and disconcertingly poetic lyrics, the song is still played 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 biography of the band that was never printed.
He sold the documents to Horowitz, who in turn sold them to Kosinski and Inciardi. Kosinski runs a rock ‘n’ roll collectibles auction site; Inciardi was then curator of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
In a 2005 email to Horowitz, Sanders said Henley’s assistant had sent him the documents to the biography project, according to the accusation.
Henley, however, testified before a grand jury that he never gave the lyrics to the biographer, according to court documents. He reported them stolen after Inciardi and Kosinski began offering them at various auctions in 2012.
Henley also purchased four pages for $8,500 in 2012. Kosinski’s lawyers have argued that the transaction implicitly recognized his ownership. By contrast, Eagles manager Irving Azoff testified last week that Henley only wanted the material back and didn’t realize, at the time, that more pages were available and would appear in more auctions over the next four years. years.
Musician Don Henley, left, surrounded by security, arrives at the Supreme Court to testify, Monday, Feb. 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Meanwhile, Horowitz and Inciardi began inventing alternative stories about how Sanders obtained the manuscripts, Manhattan prosecutors say.
Among the alternative stories were that they were left backstage at an Eagles concert, that Sanders received them from someone he didn’t remember and that he received them from Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, according to emails recounted in the indictment. frey had died when Horowitz addressed that last option in 2017.
Sanders contributed to or signed some explanations, according to the emails. He has not been charged with any crime and has not responded to messages seeking comment on the case.
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.
Henley has been a fierce defender of artists’ rights to their work.
He clashed with Congress over a 1999 copyright law change that affected musicians’ ability to claim ownership of their old recordings from record labels. After complaints from Henley and other musicians, Congress overturned the change the following 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 allowed users to exchange digital recordings for free. The music industry argued that the exchanges violated copyright laws.
Henley and some other major artists applauded a 2005 high court ruling that paved the way for record labels to sue file-sharing services.
Henley also sued a Senate candidate for unauthorized use of some of the musician’s solo songs in a campaign ad. Another Henley suit hit a clothing company that made T-shirts with a pun on his name. Both cases ended in settlements and apologies from the defendants.
henley too testified before Congress in 2020, urging that copyright laws be updated to fight online piracy.