NEW YORK — Seated in a courtroom witness field, Don Henley opened a big brown envelope Tuesday and paged by means of the getting old yellow sheets of a authorized pad.
“Effectively, it is acquired two track titles written on the highest,” he defined when requested what it contained. “ ‘After the Thrill is Gone’ and ‘One in all These Nights.’”
Then got here one other envelope and pad, and one other, and yet one more. They bore Nineteen Seventies drafts of lyrics to 2 different Eagles hits, “The Lengthy Run” and “The Unhappy Cafe.” The 4 pads have been in what Henley recognized as his handwriting and infrequently that of band co-founder Glenn Frey.
It was the primary glimpse in courtroom of a number of the bodily pages on the coronary heart of a trial involving Henley’s decade-long effort to reclaim handwritten drafts of lyrics to songs, together with the megahit “Lodge California.”
After spending Monday telling the New York courtroom about subjects starting from Eagles songwriting to his previous private troubles, the Eagles co-founder underwent additional questioning Tuesday from legal professionals for 3 collectibles consultants who’re on trial.
Henley was requested concerning the writing of “Lodge California” and the way he did not discover for many years that the handwritten pages have been lacking. He was additionally queried about his previous cocaine use — retorting that he was no “drug-filled zombie” — and even a couple of $96 limousine invoice from 1973.
He continued to insist that he by no means voluntarily parted with handwritten sheets from work, together with the Eagles’ 1976 launch “Lodge California,” the third-best-selling album ever within the U.S.
“I believed that my property was stolen,” Henley mentioned.
The album produced considered one of rock’s most enduring hits, the track “Lodge California,” credited to Frey, Henley and guitarist Don Felder. Henley recalled that Felder offered a “very primary” tape with guitar chords and a drum-machine beat. Frey and Henley labored from that to craft the lyrics, and three guitarists — “4, for those who rely the bass” — contributed to the recording, Henley mentioned.
A prosecutor objected that the questions weren’t related, however Choose Curtis Farber allow them to proceed.
“I don’t know the relevance, but it surely’s fascinating,” the decide mentioned to laughter from the courtroom viewers. Farber will resolve the decision, because the defendants selected to not have a jury.
The defendants — Edward Kosinski, Craig Inciardi and Glenn Horowitz — are charged with scheming to hide the lyrics pages’ disputed possession and promote them regardless of understanding that Henley claimed they’d no proper. The defendants have pleaded not responsible to fees together with conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.
They aren’t accused of truly stealing the roughly 100 legal-pad sheets. Horowitz purchased them in 2005 from author Ed Sanders, who had labored with the Eagles many years earlier on a band biography that by no means acquired revealed. Horowitz later offered the paperwork to Inciardi and Kosinski, who then began placing pages up for public sale in 2012.
Sanders is not charged with any crime. He hasn’t responded to messages concerning the case.
Henley purchased again 4 pages of “Lodge California” track lyrics from Kosinski and Inciardi in 2012. He additionally went to authorities then, and once more when extra pages — some from the hit “Life within the Quick Lane” — turned up on the market in 2014 and 2016.
On the trial, Henley has testified that Sanders was allowed to view the pages, and nothing extra.
Henley mentioned Monday that he did not give permission for the “very private, very non-public” lyrics drafts to be faraway from his property in Malibu, California, although he acknowledged that he did not recall everything of his conversations with the author within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties.
In a tape of a 1980 telephone name that was performed in courtroom, Henley mentioned he’d “attempt to dig by means of” his lyrics drafts to be able to help Sanders’ e book.
However Henley mentioned Tuesday that “there isn’t any tape or doc wherever the place I say, ‘Mr. Sanders, you’re free to maintain these things in perpetuity, and also you’re free to promote them.’”
Sanders’ 1979 e book contract with the Eagles mentioned that materials they offered him was their property. Protection legal professionals have urged that Henley is making a legal accusation out of a clause in a contract that they are saying Kosinski, Inciardi and Horowitz knew nothing about.
“The concept that the gadgets have been stolen out of your barn was maybe an overstatement, truthful to say?” protection legal professional Stacey Richman requested Henley. He replied that he did not know.
The protection additionally has sought to indicate that the Eagles offered Sanders with copious insider materials. Lawyer Jonathan Bach famous that Henley’s property caretaker shipped Henley a field; its contents weren’t listed.
Legal professional Scott Edelman pointed to the 1973 car-service receipt, which authorities mentioned they discovered when looking out Sanders’ dwelling. In response to testimony, somebody typed “Don Henley’s offending limousine invoice” on the slip, and Henley stuffed the margins with hand-written feedback that weren’t learn aloud in courtroom.
The protection additionally has questioned how clearly the rock star remembers no matter he informed Sanders in the course of the e book undertaking, which spanned a tumultuous and fast-living time for Henley.
The Eagles broke up in 1980, and Henley was arrested that yr after authorities mentioned they discovered a 16-year-old lady bare and affected by a drug overdose in his Los Angeles dwelling. He was sentenced to probation and a $2,500 advantageous after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor cost of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
He wrote to a probation officer that “my atmosphere has led me to just accept medicine as part of on a regular basis life” and that cocaine had bolstered his braveness “to put in writing songs and put my innermost emotions and feelings on public show,” in keeping with a letter offered in courtroom. Within the undated letter, he mentioned he was giving up medicine.
Requested whether or not he had been utilizing “a big quantity of cocaine” earlier than his arrest, Henley replied: “Vital?”
“You understand, ‘intercourse, medicine and rock ‘n’ roll’ shouldn’t be revelatory,” he mentioned in a voice that grew more and more hoarse as testimony went on. At one level, prosecutors gave him a throat lozenge.
He mentioned he used cocaine “intermittently” all through the Nineteen Seventies however he was all the time lucid when performing or doing enterprise.
“If I used to be some type of a drug-filled zombie, I couldn’t have achieved every little thing I achieved earlier than 1980 and after 1980,” Henley mentioned.
