Welcome to the ‘Hotel California’ case: The trial over handwritten lyrics to an Eagles classic

NEW YORK — In the mid-1970s, the Eagles were working on a creepy, cryptic new song.

On a lined yellow notepad, Don Henley, with input from band co-founder Glenn Frey, jotted down thoughts about “a dark desert highway” and “a lovely place” with a luxurious surface and ominous undertones. And maybe something on ice. caviar or Taittinger – or pink champagne?

The song ‘Hotel California’ became one of the most indelible rock singles. And nearly half a century later, those handwritten pages of lyrics in the making have become the focus of an unusual criminal trial that starts Wednesday.

Rare book dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski are accused of conspiring to possess and attempt to sell manuscripts of “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits without the right to do so.

The three have pleaded not guilty, and their lawyers have said the men committed no crime with the papers, which they obtained through a writer who had worked with the Eagles. But the Manhattan district attorney’s office says the defendants conspired to cover up disputed ownership of the documents, despite knowing Henley said the pages had been stolen.

Conflicts over valuable collectibles abound, but criminal trials like this are rare. Many disputes are resolved privately, in lawsuits or with agreements to return the items.

“If you can avoid prosecution by turning the thing over, most people just turn it over,” said Travis McDade, a law professor at the University of Illinois who studies disputes over rare documents.

Of course, the case of the Eagles manuscripts is distinctive in other ways as well.

Indeed, the prosecution’s star witness is that: Henley is expected to testify between the Eagles’ tour stops. The non-jury trial could offer a glimpse into the band’s creative process and life in the fast lane of ’70s stardom.

It includes more than 80 pages of draft lyrics from the 1976 blockbuster album ‘Hotel California’, including words from the chart-topping, Grammy-winning title. It features one of classic rock’s most recognizable riffs, its best-known solos and its most quoted – perhaps over-quoted – lines: “You can check out at any time, but you can never leave.”

Henley has said that the song is about “the dark underbelly of the American dream.”

According to entertainment data company Luminate, the broadcast was still streamed more than 220 million times and received 136,000 radio spins in the US alone last year. The album ‘Hotel California’ has sold 26 million copies nationwide over the years, surpassed only by a disc of the Eagles’ greatest hits and Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’.

The pages also contain lyrics to songs like “Life in the Fast Lane” and “New Kid in Town.” Eagles manager Irving Azoff has called the documents “irreplaceable pieces of music history.”

Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinki are charged with conspiracy to possess stolen property and several other crimes.

They are not accused of actually stealing documents. Neither does anyone else, but prosecutors will still have to determine that the documents were stolen. The defense claims this is not true.

Much revolves around the Eagles’ interactions with Ed Sanders, a writer who also co-founded the 1960s counterculture rock band The Fugs. He worked on an authorized Eagles biography in the late 1970s and early 1980s that was never published.

Sanders is not charged in the case. A telephone message seeking comment was left for him.

He sold the pages to Horowitz, who then sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski.

Horowitz has handled major rare book and archive transactions, and he has been embroiled in ownership issues before. One involved papers related to “Gone With the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell. The case was settled.

Inciardi worked on notable exhibitions for the Cleveland-based Rock Hall of Fame. Kosinski was director of Gotta Have It! Collectibles, known for auctioning off celebrities’ personal belongings – so personal that Madonna unsuccessfully sued in an attempt to stop a sale involving her latex panties.

Henley told a grand jury that he never gave the text to the biographer, according to court filings from Kosinski’s lawyers. But attorneys have indicated they plan to investigate Henley’s memory of that time.

“We believe that Mr. Henley voluntarily provided the text to Mr. Sanders,” attorney Scott Edelman said in court last week.

Sanders told Horowitz in 2005 that while he was working on the Eagles book, he got all the papers he wanted from Henley’s home in Malibu, California, according to the indictment.

Then in 2012, Kosinski’s company offered some pages at auction. Henley’s lawyers came knocking. And Horowitz, Inciardi and Sanders, in varying combinations, began searching for alternate versions of the manuscripts’ provenance, the indictment said.

In one story, Sanders found the pages discarded in a backstage dressing room. In other cases, he got them from a stage assistant or while collecting “a lot of material related to the Eagles from different people.” In yet another, he got them from Frey – a story that would “make this go away. once and for all,” Horowitz suggested in 2017. Frey had died the year before.

“He just needs gentle treatment and reassurance that he won’t get caught,” Horowitz emailed Inciardi during a 2012 conversation about converting Sanders’ “statement” into a notice to the auctioneers, according to the complaint.

According to the indictment, Sanders provided or signed several of the various statements, and it is unclear what he conveyed verbally. But apparently he at least rejected the locker room story.

Kosinki forwarded one statement, approved by Sanders, to Henley’s attorney. Kosinski also assured auction house Sotheby’s that the musician had “no claim” to the documents and asked to keep potential bidders in the dark about Henley’s complaints, the complaint said.

Sotheby’s put the lyrics to “Hotel California” up for auction in 2016, but withdrew it after learning that ownership was in doubt. Sotheby’s has not been charged in the case and declined to comment.

Henley privately purchased some drafts of Gotta Have It! for $8,500 in 2012, when he also began filing police reports, according to court records.

Defense attorneys argue that Henley found inflexible prosecutors to take his case instead of filing a civil suit himself.

The district attorney’s office worked closely with Henley’s legal team, and an investigator even sought backstage passes to an Eagles show — until a prosecutor said the idea was “completely inappropriate,” Kosinki’s attorneys said in lawsuits.

Prosecutors have dismissed questions about their motivations as “a conspiracy theory rather than a legal defense.”

Last year they wrote in court filings: “It is the defendants, not the plaintiffs, who are on trial.”