Manuscripts of Eagles hit ‘Hotel California’ at center of New York trial for alleged theft

New York justice has been looking into a tortuous case for several days, which saw the leader of the group Eagles, Don Henley, testify at the bar on Monday.

The manuscripts of one of the most famous rock songs in the world, Hotel California, were they stolen almost half a century ago? New York justice is handling a strange case, which saw the leader of the group Eagles, Don Henley, come to testify in court in Manhattan on Monday.

The scribbled pages, appearing in large notebooks, were “the product of our work“, “the stupid things we wrote” before arriving at the definitive work, declared the singer and drummer of the group, the only founder still active within the group in the middle of a farewell world tour.

Not guilty plea

“They were not meant to be seen” And “I still won’t show them today“, added the 76-year-old musician, suit and tie, white hair, before the judge presiding over the trial at the Manhattan court. In front of him, three sixty-year-olds, who gravitate in the world of collectors, appear in the dock: Craig Inciardi, former curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland (Ohio), Glenn Horowitz, rare book dealer, and Edward Kosinski, are accused of having acquired then attempted to resell the manuscripts at auction, while they knew their doubtful origin.

“Although they knew the documents were stolen“, the three defendants”attempted to sell the manuscripts, fabricated false provenance documents, and lied to auction houses, potential buyers, and law enforcement about the origin of the documents“, said prosecutor Alvin Bragg, during their indictment. They pleaded not guilty, saying they had legally acquired the disputed pages.

“Hand-written”

The affair dates back to the end of the 1970s. The rock group Eagles was at the height of its glory, after the release of its first compilation, Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), then an album, Hotel California (1976), two of the three best-selling records of all time in the United States with Thriller by Michael Jackson. To write an album, confides Don Henley, “we rented a house“with Glenn Frey, one of the other founders of Eagles now deceased, and every day, after a late morning,”we wrote all our texts by hand” in large notebooks.

The group eventually broke up in 1980.”I was devastated“, said the musician. In court, he also had to reconsider his conviction in court at the time for “incitement to delinquency” of a minor, a 16-year-old girl found unconscious at home, after a night spent taking cocaine.

Shortly before the breakup, Ed Sanders, a jack-of-all-trades author, poet, activist, musician, was hired to write a biography of Eagles. He is entrusted with handwritten notes which were used to write the lyrics of several songs on the album Hotel Californiaincluding the eponymous hit, which became cult for its final guitar solo that all aspiring rockers one day wanted to play.

Return to charge

The biography will never be released and Sanders will never return the writings. A flight for Don Henley. Not for the defense, who emphasizes that Ed Sanders is not being prosecuted at trial. According to Manhattan prosecutors, Ed Sanders eventually sold the pages in 2005 to Glenn Horowitz, a rare book dealer, who then sold them to Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski.

During the 2010s, Eagles reformed, and Don Henley saw lots of his handwritten pages come back several times on the internet or at auctions. The first time, in 2012, he ended up purchasing them himself, for $8,500. It was the way”the most efficient” And “practical” to recover his property, he justifies. The defense sees this as proof that the pages no longer belonged to him.

Other handwritten notes will flourish again in the following years. In 2016, Don Henley turned to the Manhattan prosecutor’s office. “I had already been extorted once“, he slips. According to the prosecution, the value of the manuscripts amounted, at the time of the indictment in 2022, to more than a million dollars. The trial continues this week.