Eagles’ Don Henley Testifies in ‘Hotel California’ Stolen Lyrics Trial

Don Henley and Glenn Frey followed a routine while writing some of the most emblematic and enduring songs of the 1970s.

The men, who co-founded the Eagles, would rent a house and bring in a piano and guitars. The two would rise in late morning — “musician time,” Mr. Henley testified in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday. They would make coffee, then have “philosophical” conversations and begin trying out riffs and discussing “song titles, subject matters, concepts,” he said.

Mr. Henley paid particular attention to lyrics, crafting and refining them on legal pads. The pages came to have a deeply personal meaning, and Mr. Henley said he saved them inside a barn on his organic farm in Malibu, Calif.

Now they are at the center of an unusual prosecution in State Supreme Court. A rare-book dealer, Glenn Horowitz, is accused along with two other men of conspiring to possess stolen property — some 100 pages of Mr. Henley’s handwritten notes and drafts for hits like “New Kid in Town,” “Hotel California” and “Life in the Fast Lane.”

Prosecutors say the notes were stolen decades ago by an author who had signed a contract in the late 1970s to write a book about the Eagles. The author, Ed Sanders, has not been charged. He sold the documents in 2005 to Mr. Horowitz, who in turn sold them to the two other defendants, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which began investigating after complaints by Mr. Henley.

Testifying during a break from what the Eagles have billed as their final tour, Mr. Henley said that he was alarmed in 2012 when he first learned that a few pages of his “Hotel California” notes had been put up for auction online.

“They are basically the detritus, if you will, left over from song writing,” he said. “Those are things nobody is supposed to see.”

Wearing a charcoal suit, white shirt and black tie, Mr. Henley, 76, moved creakily at times and occasionally asked that a question be repeated, saying that his hearing had been “impaired” because of his profession.

During his testimony Mr. Henley spoke about how the Eagles operated and gave his impressions of Mr. Sanders, whom he referred to as “an eccentric fellow.”

Prosecutors have said that Mr. Sanders, who co-founded a New York counterculture band called the Fugs in the mid-1960s and later wrote a book about Charles Manson, obtained the lyrics as source material after agreeing with the Eagles to write about the band.

Mr. Henley said that idea came from Mr. Frey, who had gotten to know Mr. Sanders when he was in California researching his Manson book.

Mr. Sanders’s book, to which the Eagles controlled the rights, was completed but never published. Mr. Henley said that he was disappointed after reading a 100-page excerpt that Mr. Sanders provided in 1980.

“I didn’t think it was very substantial,” he testified. “There was a lot of beatnik jargon that seemed anachronistic and corny.”

That summer, Mr. Henley said, he gave Mr. Sanders access to the barn on his farm where he kept records including the songwriting notepads, hoping those would provide insights into the Eagles that would strengthen the book.

Nearly 20 years ago, according to an indictment, Mr. Sanders wrote in an email that an assistant for Mr. Henley had mailed him some of the material he had examined “at Henley’s place in Malibu.”

Defense lawyers have said that if prosecutors cannot prove Mr. Sanders stole that material, then their clients cannot be convicted. Prosecutors have said that the material became “stolen” when Mr. Sanders did not return it.

While being cross-examined, Mr. Henley said that he did not know whether Mr. Sanders might have obtained Eagles-related documents from someone working for Mr. Henley. He also acknowledged that he had not asked Mr. Sanders to return any draft lyrics. Still, the songwriter insisted that he had never given up ownership of that material.

In 2005, prosecutors said, Mr. Sanders sold a collection of Eagles documents to Mr. Horowitz, a book dealer with offices in Manhattan and East Hampton, N.Y.

Mr. Horowitz sold the material in 2012 to Craig Inciardi, a curator with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Edward Kosinski, owner of an online auction site, prosecutors said. The men sought to resell some of it through Mr. Kosinski’s site and the Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses.

On the stand Monday, Mr. Henley identified pages of lyrics that were entered into evidence, some written in cursive and others in block lettering. Certain sentences were scrawled, as if written in a rush. Red ink was used in places to make what appeared to be annotations, and some passages were crossed out.

All the handwriting was his, Mr. Henley testified, except for some by Mr. Frey at the top of one page.

Prosecutors also prompted Mr. Henley to discuss a salacious episode 44 years ago that ended in his arrest on a charge of giving cocaine to a minor, an apparent attempt to bring up damaging information before defense attorneys could.

Mr. Henley said that after spending hours drinking beer with members of the Eagles road crew and discussing the breakup of the band, he had arranged with “a madam” to send a woman to his home to assuage his depression.

Mr. Henley said he found out later that the woman was actually a teenager, and said that he did not have sexual intercourse with her. Instead, he said, they took drugs and discussed the band’s collapse and her poor relationship with her family. Later, he said, he heard a crash in the bedroom, found the girl having a seizure and called 911.

Henley was sentenced to probation and a $2,500 fine.

“I made a poor decision which I regret to this day,” Mr. Henley said.

Mr. Henley said he had been plunged into despair when Mr. Frey, his longtime collaborator, informed him in 1980 that he was leaving the Eagles to start a solo career.

“I was devastated,” he said. “The band was everything to me.”