‘These lyrics had been my property': Don Henley says lyrics to ‘Resort California' shouldn’t have ended up at public sale

The lyrics to “Resort California” and different traditional Eagles songs ought to by no means have ended up at public sale, Don Henley advised a courtroom 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 vendor Glenn Horowitz and rock memorabilia connoisseurs Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski. Prosecutors say the three circulated bogus tales concerning 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 expenses that embrace conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.

Protection attorneys say the boys 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 Nineteen Seventies rock hits, a lot of them from one of many best-selling albums of all time: the Eagles’ “Resort 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 overview 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 looking for touch upon the case. He bought the pages to Horowitz. Inciardi and Kosinski purchased them from the e-book vendor, then began placing some sheets up for public sale in 2012.

Whereas the trial is concerning 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 e-book started in 1979 and spanned the band’s breakup the subsequent yr. (The Eagles regrouped in 1994.)

Henley testified earlier this week that he was disenchanted 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 effectively and could be very humorous up till the top,” in accordance with a letter proven in courtroom Wednesday.

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 observe?”

“I ponder how these feedback will age,” Henley wrote. “Nonetheless, I believe the e-book has benefit and ought to be printed.”

It by no means was. Eagles supervisor Irving Azoff testified final week that publishers made no presents, that the e-book by no means received the band’s OK and that he believed Frey in the end nixed the undertaking. 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.