Don Henley says lyrics to 'Lodge California' and different Eagles songs had been all the time his sole property

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 court docket Wednesday.

“I all the time 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 mentioned on the final of three days of testimony on the trial of three collectibles specialists 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 as a way to attempt to promote them and parry Henley’s calls for for them.

Kosinski, Inciardi and Horowitz have pleaded not responsible to costs that embody conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.

Protection attorneys say the lads rightfully owned and had been free to promote the paperwork, which they acquired by means of 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, a lot of them from one of many best-selling albums of all time: the Eagles’ “Lodge California.”

The case facilities on how the legal-pad pages made their approach from Henley’s Southern California barn to the biographer’s dwelling 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 overview the pages for analysis however that the author was obligated to relinquish them.

In a sequence 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 once they cropped up at auctions.

“I did,” Henley answered every time.

Sanders isn’t charged with any crime and hasn’t responded to messages looking for touch upon the case. He bought the pages to Horowitz. Inciardi and Kosinski purchased them from the guide 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 attorneys examined his interactions with Henley, Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey and Eagles representatives.

Work on the licensed guide started in 1979 and spanned the band’s breakup the following 12 months. (The Eagles regrouped in 1994.)

Henley testified earlier this week that he was upset 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 most recent draft “flows properly and may be very humorous up till the tip,” based on a letter proven in court docket Wednesday.

However the letter went on to muse about whether or not it is likely to be higher for Henley and Frey simply to “ship one another these bitter pages and let the guide finish on a barely gentler be aware?”

“I ponder how these feedback will age,” Henley wrote. “Nonetheless, I believe the guide has benefit and must be revealed.”

It by no means was. Eagles supervisor Irving Azoff testified final week that publishers made no presents, that the guide by no means received the band’s OK and that he believed Frey in the end nixed the mission. Frey died in 2016.

The trial is anticipated to proceed for weeks with different witnesses.

Henley, in the meantime, is returning to the highway. The Eagles’ subsequent present is Friday in Hollywood, Florida.