Don Henley, the co-founder and lead singer of the Eagles, testified on Monday, February 26, 2024, in a criminal trial involving the ownership of handwritten draft lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles songs. Henley accused three men of stealing his lyric pads from his barn in Colorado in the late 1970s and trying to sell them for millions of dollars.
The three defendants are Craig Inciardi, a former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator, Edward Kosinski, a memorabilia seller, and Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer. They are charged with grand larceny, conspiracy, and fraud. They claim that they obtained the lyric pads legally from a writer named Marc Eliot, who worked with the Eagles on an unpublished biography in 1978.
Henley, who appeared in court via video link from his home in Los Angeles, said that he never gave permission to Eliot or anyone else to take his lyric pads, which he considered his personal property and creative process. He said that he was shocked and angry when he learned that the lyric pads were being offered for sale by Christie’s auction house in 2015, and that he immediately contacted his manager, Irving Azoff, to stop the sale.
Henley also revealed that he was arrested in 1977 for cocaine possession and that he made a phone call to Eliot from jail, asking him to retrieve some items from his barn, including a guitar and a tape recorder. He said that he did not mention the lyric pads in the phone call, which was recorded by the police and played in court. He said that he did not know that Eliot had taken the lyric pads until years later, when he saw them in a book by Eliot called “To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles”.
Henley said that he confronted Eliot about the lyric pads in 1998, and that Eliot apologized and promised to return them. However, Henley said that he never received the lyric pads from Eliot, and that he later learned that Eliot had sold them to Inciardi for $100,000 in 2001.
Henley’s testimony was the highlight of the trial, which began last week and is expected to last until March. The trial has also featured testimonies from Azoff, who called Henley “God Henley” in an email, and Tom Lecky, a former Christie’s executive, who said that he was suspicious of the provenance of the lyric pads. The trial has also revealed some details about the Eagles’ history, such as their 1980 breakup and their 1994 reunion.
The lyric pads, which contain handwritten drafts of songs such as “Hotel California”, “Life in the Fast Lane”, “New Kid in Town”, and “The Long Run”, are considered valuable and rare artifacts of rock history. They offer a glimpse into the creative process of one of the most successful and influential bands of all time, who have sold over 200 million records worldwide and won six Grammy Awards.