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NEW YORK (AP) — The lyrics to “Lodge California” and different basic Eagles songs ought to by no means have ended up at public sale, Don Henley informed a courtroom Wednesday.
“I at all times knew these lyrics had been my property. I by no means gifted them or gave them to anyone to maintain or promote,” the Eagles co-founder stated on the final of three days of testimony on the trial of three collectibles experts charged with a scheme to hawk roughly 100 handwritten pages of the lyrics.
On trial are rare-book seller Glenn Horowitz and rock memorabilia connoisseurs Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski. Prosecutors say the three circulated bogus tales in regards to the paperwork’ possession historical past to be able to attempt to promote them and parry Henley’s calls for for them.
Kosinski, Inciardi and Horowitz have pleaded not responsible to prices that embrace conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.
Protection legal professionals say the lads rightfully owned and had been free to promote the paperwork, which they acquired via a author who labored on a never-published Eagles biography a long time in the past.
The lyrics sheets doc the shaping of a roster of Seventies rock hits, lots of them from one of the best-selling albums of all time: the Eagles’ “Lodge California.”
The case facilities on how the legal-pad pages made their method from Henley’s Southern California barn to the biographer’s house in New York’s Hudson Valley, after which to the defendants in New York Metropolis.
The protection argues that Henley gave the lyrics drafts to the author, Ed Sanders. Henley says that he invited Sanders to assessment the pages for analysis however that the author was obligated to relinquish them.
In a collection of rapid-fire questions, prosecutor Aaron Ginandes requested Henley who owned the papers at each stage from when he purchased the pads at a Los Angeles stationery retailer to after they cropped up at auctions.
“I did,” Henley answered every time.
Sanders isn’t charged with any crime and hasn’t responded to messages in search of touch upon the case. He offered the pages to Horowitz. Inciardi and Kosinski purchased them from the e book seller, then began placing some sheets up for public sale in 2012.
Whereas the trial is in regards to the lyrics sheets, the destiny of one other set of pages — Sanders’ decades-old biography manuscript — has come up repeatedly as prosecutors and protection legal professionals examined his interactions with Henley, Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey and Eagles representatives.
Work on the approved e book started in 1979 and spanned the band’s breakup the following yr. (The Eagles regrouped in 1994.)
Henley testified earlier this week that he was disillusioned in an preliminary draft of 100 pages of the manuscript in 1980. Revisions apparently softened his view considerably.
By 1983, he wrote to Sanders that the newest draft “flows nicely and may be very humorous up till the tip,” based on a letter proven in courtroom Wednesday.
Musician Don Henley, middle, arrives to courtroom in New York, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. Three collectibles-world professionals are on trial within the felony case involving roughly 100 legal-pad sheets from the event of the Eagles’ 1976 “Lodge California” album. They’re charged with scheming to hide the pages’ disputed possession and promote them regardless of realizing that Henley claimed that they had no proper to take action.. (AP Photograph/Seth Wenig)
However the letter went on to muse about whether or not it may be higher for Henley and Frey simply to “ship one another these bitter pages and let the e book finish on a barely gentler word?”
“I’m wondering how these feedback will age,” Henley wrote. “Nonetheless, I believe the e book has benefit and ought to be revealed.”
It by no means was. Eagles supervisor Irving Azoff testified final week that publishers made no provides, that the book never got the band’s OK and that he believed Frey finally nixed the mission. Frey died in 2016.
The trial is predicted to proceed for weeks with different witnesses.
Henley, in the meantime, is returning to the street. The Eagles’ subsequent present is Friday in Hollywood, Florida.
