Seated in a New York courtroom witness field, Don Henley opened a big brown envelope Tuesday and paged by the getting older yellow sheets of a authorized pad.
“Effectively, it is obtained two music titles written on the highest,” he defined when requested what it contained. ” ‘After the Thrill is Gone’ and ‘Considered one of These Nights.'”
Then got here one other envelope and pad, and one other, and yet another. They bore Nineteen Seventies drafts of lyrics to 2 different Eagles hits, “The Lengthy Run” and “The Unhappy Cafe.” The 4 pads had been in what Henley recognized as his handwriting and infrequently that of band co-founder Glenn Frey.
It was the primary glimpse in court docket of among the bodily pages on the coronary heart of a trial involving Henley’s decade-long effort to reclaim handwritten drafts of lyrics to songs, together with the megahit “Resort California.”
After spending Monday telling the New York court docket about matters starting from Eagles songwriting to his previous private troubles, the Eagles co-founder underwent additional questioning Tuesday from attorneys for 3 collectibles specialists who’re on trial.
Henley was requested in regards to the writing of “Resort California” and the way he did not discover for many years that the handwritten pages had been lacking. He was additionally queried about his previous cocaine use – retorting that he was no “drug-filled zombie” – and even a few $96 limousine invoice from 1973.
Seth Wenig / AP
He continued to insist that he by no means voluntarily parted with handwritten sheets from work, together with the Eagles’ 1976 launch “Resort California,” the third-best-selling album ever within the U.S.
“I believed that my property was stolen,” Henley stated.
The album produced certainly one of rock’s most enduring hits, the music “Resort California,” credited to Frey, Henley and guitarist Don Felder. Henley recalled that Felder offered a “very fundamental” tape with guitar chords and a drum-machine beat. Frey and Henley labored from that to craft the lyrics, and three guitarists – “4, when you rely the bass” – contributed to the recording, Henley stated.
A prosecutor objected that the questions weren’t related, however Decide Curtis Farber allow them to proceed.
“I do not know the relevance, but it surely’s attention-grabbing,” the choose stated to laughter from the courtroom viewers. Farber will resolve the decision, because the defendants selected to not have a jury.
In 2016, “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King requested Henley in regards to the which means of “Resort California.”
“Effectively, I all the time say, it is a journey from innocence to expertise. It is probably not about California; it is about America,” Henley stated. “It is in regards to the darkish underbelly of the American dream. It is about extra, it is about narcissism. It is in regards to the music enterprise. It is about loads of totally different. … It may have one million interpretations.”
“‘Intercourse, medication and rock ‘n’ roll’ just isn’t revelatory”
The defendants – Edward Kosinski, Craig Inciardi and Glenn Horowitz – are charged with scheming to hide the lyrics pages’ disputed possession and promote them regardless of figuring out that Henley claimed they’d no proper. The defendants have pleaded not responsible to expenses together with conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.
They aren’t accused of really stealing the roughly 100 legal-pad sheets. Horowitz purchased them in 2005 from author Ed Sanders, who had labored with the Eagles many years earlier on a band biography that by no means obtained revealed. Horowitz later offered the paperwork to Inciardi and Kosinski, who then began placing pages up for public sale in 2012.
Sanders is not charged with any crime. He hasn’t responded to messages in regards to the case.
Henley purchased again 4 pages of “Resort California” music lyrics from Kosinski and Inciardi in 2012. He additionally went to authorities then, and once more when extra pages – some from the hit “Life within the Quick Lane” – turned up on the market in 2014 and 2016.
On the trial, Henley has testified that Sanders was allowed to view the pages, and nothing extra.
Henley stated Monday that he did not give permission for the “very private, very non-public” lyrics drafts to be faraway from his property in Malibu, California, although he acknowledged that he did not recall the whole thing of his conversations with the author within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties.
In a tape of a 1980 cellphone name that was performed in court docket, Henley stated he’d “attempt to dig by” his lyrics drafts with a purpose to support Sanders’ e-book.
However Henley stated Tuesday that “there isn’t a tape or doc anyplace the place I say, ‘Mr. Sanders, you are free to maintain these things in perpetuity, and also you’re free to promote them.'”
Sanders’ 1979 e-book contract with the Eagles stated that materials they offered him was their property. Protection attorneys have recommended that Henley is making a prison accusation out of a clause in a contract that they are saying Kosinski, Inciardi and Horowitz knew nothing about.
“The concept the objects had been stolen out of your barn was maybe an overstatement, truthful to say?” protection lawyer Stacey Richman requested Henley. He replied that he did not know.
The protection additionally has sought to indicate that the Eagles offered Sanders with copious insider materials. Lawyer Jonathan Bach famous that Henley’s property caretaker shipped Henley a field; its contents weren’t listed.
Legal professional Scott Edelman pointed to the 1973 car-service receipt, which authorities stated they discovered when looking out Sanders’ dwelling. In response to testimony, somebody typed “Don Henley’s offending limousine invoice” on the slip, and Henley crammed the margins with hand-written feedback that weren’t learn aloud in court docket.
The protection additionally has questioned how clearly the rock star remembers no matter he instructed Sanders throughout the e-book venture, which spanned a tumultuous and fast-living time for Henley.
The Eagles broke up in 1980, and Henley was arrested that 12 months after authorities stated they discovered a 16-year-old lady bare and affected by a drug overdose in his Los Angeles dwelling. He was sentenced to probation and a $2,500 nice after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor cost of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
He wrote to a probation officer that “my surroundings has led me to simply accept medication as part of on a regular basis life” and that cocaine had bolstered his braveness “to put in writing songs and put my innermost emotions and feelings on public show,” based on a letter introduced in court docket. Within the undated letter, he stated he was giving up medication.
Requested whether or not he had been utilizing “a big quantity of cocaine” earlier than his arrest, Henley replied: “Important?”
“You understand, ‘intercourse, medication and rock ‘n’ roll’ just isn’t revelatory,” he stated in a voice that grew more and more hoarse as testimony went on. At one level, prosecutors gave him a throat lozenge.
He stated he used cocaine “intermittently” all through the Nineteen Seventies however he was all the time lucid when performing or doing enterprise.
“If I used to be some type of a drug-filled zombie, I could not have achieved every part I achieved earlier than 1980 and after 1980,” Henley stated.
In his 2016 interview with Gayle King, Henley stated the band was certainly residing “life within the quick lane” within the Nineteen Seventies.
“Yeah… All people was doing it. It was the ’70s,” Henley stated. “It was what all people was doing, which does not make it proper essentially. And you recognize, wanting again on it, there’s some regrets about that. We in all probability may have been extra productive … though we had been fairly productive, contemplating.”
