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Seated at a witness stand in Manhattan court docket on Monday, Don Henley was doing his greatest to comprise himself and what he was feeling. However every now and then, the boldface-name witness in a trial involving allegedly stolen handwritten lyrics to songs from the Eagles’ Lodge California couldn’t assist himself.
Take the second Henley was requested if he recalled sending authorized pads with lyric drafts to author Ed Sanders for analysis of the group’s deliberate Eagles biography greater than 40 years in the past. “I don’t recall providing to ship him lyric pads,” Henley, white-haired and wearing a darkish go well with, tie, and white shirt, shot again. “You realize what? It doesn’t matter if I had pushed them throughout the nation in a U-Haul truck and dumped them at his entrance door. He had no proper to maintain or promote them.”
That second was one among a number of jarring ones within the legal trial, which began in New York Supreme Court docket final week and entails three males accused of conspiring to promote these allegedly stolen lyric notepads. The defendants — Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi, and Edward Kosinski — have pleaded not responsible and have maintained that they had no concept the pads have been purloined. The prosecution contends the boys concocted tales in regards to the provenance of the pads and that Sanders (who has not been charged) violated a contract with the Eagles by not returning the supplies to the band after he had wrapped up his never-published e book.
Within the Seventies, the Eagles have been identified for promoting sufficient albums to fill a fleet of Volkswagen campers and for his or her extraordinarily perfectionist methods within the recording studio. All that — plus a glimpse into the hedonistic way of life related to them and their L.A. rock friends throughout that point — collided in court docket through the trial’s fourth day.
Throughout preliminary questioning from Assistant District Lawyer Aaron Ginandes, Henley (accompanied by three bodyguards on his method into the courtroom) was requested what number of albums the Eagles had offered (“over 150 million albums worldwide”) and detailed the strategy he and his accomplice Glenn Frey employed to jot down songs collectively. The 2 would lease a home in Los Angeles, get up mid-morning, make espresso, and begin exchanging concepts, photographs, and guitar or piano chords. The 2 would additionally use yellow or white pads (purchased at a stationery retailer on Ventura Boulevard, Henley recalled) to form lyrics and melodies.
Requested in regards to the Eagles’ breakup, which was introduced in 1982, Henley stated he was “devastated” and in denial when Frey (the founding father of the band and, in authorized paperwork proven, its “President”) known as him to say it was over. “The band meant the whole lot to me,” Henley stated. “We tried to maintain it a secret,” he continued, including that he and Irving Azoff, the band’s supervisor, “held out hope that Mr. Frey would change his thoughts.”
That confession led to a different of the day’s startling moments when Ginandes abruptly requested Henley, “Have you ever ever been convicted of against the law?” Within the run-up to the trial, protection legal professionals had argued to Decide Curtis Farber for the correct to incorporate questioning about much less flattering features of Henley’s previous. In what felt like an try to neutralize the story, the prosecution introduced it up first. In measured tones, Henley recounted one specific evening in 1980 that has solely sporadically been reported up to now. “I wished to flee the melancholy I used to be in, so I made a mistake,” he stated. He then recalled how, after a gathering at his dwelling with Eagles crew members who then left, he known as a madam. A number of hours later, a younger girl (whom he considered “20 or 21” years previous, he stated) arrived at his Los Angeles dwelling.
Speaking slowly and intentionally, Henley stated the 2 talked, did some cocaine, and ultimately fell asleep. A number of hours later, the younger girl started having seizures, and Henley stated he known as 911 though “she was high-quality by the point they got here.” Police later returned and arrested each Henley and the girl: “They discovered medicine in my dwelling,” Henley replied when requested why. For the reason that girl turned out to be “16 or 17,” as Henley says he heard, he pled no contest to a misdemeanor cost of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, was sentenced to 2 years’ probation, and was fined $2,500. “I made a poor resolution, which I remorse to at the present time,” he stated. “I’ve needed to reside with it for 44 years. I’m residing with it as we speak on this courtroom. Poor resolution.”
With that confession seemingly out of the best way, a minimum of in the interim, questioning turned to the unpublished Sanders e book. For anybody who puzzled how the chief of the East Coast performance-art rock band the Fugs got here to jot down a e book on a band that was its polar reverse, Henley crammed within the blanks. He defined that Sanders had met Frey when the author had moved to Los Angeles in 1969 to jot down a e book on Charles Manson.
Henley stated he didn’t know what to make of Sanders, particularly when Sanders crashed for a interval in Frey’s condo and requested them to remain awake all evening, in shifts and with a pistol, in case crazed Manson Members of the family got here “by way of the window.” Henley stated he nonetheless harbored doubts about whether or not Sanders was a great match for the undertaking: “He was a self-described old-line beatnik and, once more, claimed to be there on the founding of the counterculture. He didn’t strike me as the correct individual to jot down a few West Coast band.”
In 1980, based on testimony, Sanders submitted about 100 pages of the in-progress biography to the band for its perusal and approval. Henley admitted he was “disenchanted” in what he learn. “I didn’t suppose it was substantial,” he stated. “A few of it was cartoonish,” and contained “beatnik jargon which appeared anachronistic and corny at occasions.” Determined to “make it a greater e book,” Henley stated he agreed to offer Sanders entry to the lyric pads in order that the creator may delve deeper into the band’s inventive strategies. The pads have been then saved in a barn on Henley’s Malibu natural farm together with, he stated, gardening instruments and record-sales plaques.
What occurred subsequent is the crux of the trial. In line with a 1979 contract signed by the band and Sanders, the Eagles owned any supplies they gave to him for his analysis. As for the lyric pads, Henley maintained, “These supplies have been non-public and private and never purported to be seen by the general public or anybody else … The lyric pads represent work product. They’re principally the detritus, if you’ll, that’s left over from songwriting and people are the issues no one is meant to see.” He maintained he by no means gave Sanders permission to “hold them.”
Henley claimed he solely grew to become conscious of the lacking lyric pads in 2012, when a number of pages have been provided for public sale on Kosinski’s Gotta Have Rock and Roll web site. Kosinski and Inciardi had purchased the pads from esteemed rare-books seller Horowitz, who in flip paid Sanders for them. That discovery led Henley to name his lawyer and for a police report back to be filed. “I consider against the law of theft had occurred on my property,” he stated, including, “and that Ed Sanders stole them.”
Feeling it was “probably the most sensible and expedient strategy to get previous the matter,” Henley stated he purchased these pages for $8,500. However Henley acknowledged he declined to buy additional pages that appeared on the Sotheby’s web site in 2014 and 2016, which a few of the defendants had helped organize. Whereas admitting he may afford the $90,000 to purchase the second, bigger lot, Henley stated, “I’d already been extorted as soon as and I wasn’t about to do it once more and purchase my very own property again … I began to comprehend there have to be much more materials on the market.”
Throughout cross examination by protection attorneys, Henley was not requested about that evening in 1980 — a minimum of not but — however was proven copies of an encouraging letter he despatched to Sanders within the early Eighties (“the e book has benefit and ought to be revealed,” it learn partly). He was additionally given headphones to hearken to a recording of a telephone name between him and Sanders. “I’m listening to impaired however due to my occupation however I’ll do my greatest,” Henley, 76, stated. On that tape, which was seized by authorities from Sanders’ dwelling, Henley was heard telling the author that he had “a number of that shit” when it comes to pads that Sanders may study.
Henley was additionally proven pages of modifying he had carried out on Sanders’ e book draft, which protection lawyer Jonathan Bach stated countered Henley’s earlier claims. “Nowhere do you say that these usually are not for public consumption, don’t embody them within the e book,” stated Bach. “You don’t say, ‘These aren’t supposed to go away my property — give them again.’”
Henley was additionally proven a receipt for a supposed 21-pound field despatched to Sanders’ home, though the contents of that field weren’t disclosed. Henley stated he wished to mail Sanders a group of articles and opinions of the Eagles’ work for his analysis. The musician was additionally requested, repeatedly by Bach, whether or not he or anybody within the Eagles camp had ever requested Sanders to return the supplies as soon as the e book work was carried out. Henley stated he had “no recollection” of such requests.
These again and forths clearly laid out the prosecution’s case (that Sanders allegedly saved and offered the papers with out the Eagles’ permission) and the protection’s (that, amongst different issues, the papers weren’t “stolen” since no police report was filed for over 40 years). Henley’s testimony is predicted to proceed Tuesday, when these within the courtroom could obtain extra glimpses of his contained testiness. Proven a draft of Sanders’ work on Monday, Henley shot again, “The second half of the manuscript is the other way up. You guys want a secretary.”
