It took three days, but one of the protagonists of the case involving allegedly stolen handwritten lyrics from the Eagles' Hotel California The album was released on Friday. And it wasn't Don Henley or any of the other band members over the decades: It was paper.
On Friday, glimpses of the yellow pads with lyrics in progress from the album's title track emerged during the testimony of Tom Lecky, a former manuscript executive at auction house Christie's. The photos, taken for a Christie's listing that was never uploaded, showed a legal pad with “Hotel Calif” written across the top and others with some of the song's recognizable signature lines penned by Henley. Lecky said he was excited when he first saw the documents, citing the use of the word “colitas” in the draft. “What is it and what did it mean?” he said. “It was a great early release [of the song], processing ideas. It was very exciting.” He said he was in great shape.
The pages came to Lecky's attention in 2015 when Craig Inciardi, then a curator at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, approached him about the possibility of being auctioned by Christie's. Inciardi and rock memorabilia businessman Edward Kosinski had bought the documents from rare book dealer Glenn Horowitz, who in turn had bought them from author Ed Sanders. Sanders had received the materials to research an unpublished biography of the Eagles more than 40 years ago and kept them in his archives in Woodstock, New York.
Inciardi, Horowitz and Kosinski were arrested in July 2022 and charged with conspiracy to possess stolen property — hundreds of pages of lyrics to “Hotel California,” “Life in the Fast Lane” and possibly other tracks from that album. The defendants pleaded not guilty and maintained that they had no knowledge that the pages were allegedly stolen (or that there was a contract between Sanders and the Eagles). The Manhattan district attorney's office alleges the three made up ever-changing stories about the documents' origins.
The revelation of these photos of the legal page was one of several interesting highlights during the second and third day of the criminal trial in New York State Supreme Court. The first day, on February 21, ended with a surprise: Irving Azoff, the band's longtime manager and first witness, was informed of the existence of a recording of Azoff and Sanders, which would be played in court the next day.
On Thursday, the report turned out to be a tape of a phone call between the two men from sometime in the 1980s, apparently made by Sanders. (A spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney's office declined to say how prosecutors obtained the recording.) When first asked by the defendants' lawyers if he could recognize Sanders' voice, Azoff said, “I wouldn't recognize his voice. Ed Sanders now if you'll play me an album.' But after listening to part of the call, Azoff admitted it was his own voice heard on the tape.
On the recording, Azoff was heard praising Sanders' work: “Ed, you were great. The book is about to be released — I just have a pampered rock star here.' He is also heard saying, “It will come out when God Henley says it can. Now it's in God's hand.”
When a lawyer for the defendants asked Azoff to identify the “coddled” star, Azoff quipped, “Probably all of them.”
In testimony, Azoff said it was possible that the late Eagles founder Glenn Frey finally put the kibosh on the book, a purported 900-page tome called The Eagles — An American band. But, Azoff added, “My recollection at the time is that there was a lot of shifting of positions” within the group about the quality of the book. The day before, Azoff had criticized the unpublished biography, calling parts of it “unacceptable”. On Thursday, he reiterated that the book “didn't capture the essence of the band and how important they were. We didn't think it was good for the Eagles … It wasn't the American Dream story we were expecting.”
The contract between the Eagles and Sanders, which gave the writer and poet access to musicians and research material that would remain the property of the band, was terminated several times. In a 1984 letter to Sanders, reporting that the project was over after no publisher would mark the manuscript, Azoff wrote, “I wish you the best of luck with the Fugs,” referring to Sanders' East Village anarchist band. Kosinski's co-lawyer, Scott Edelman, asked if this indicated the band and Sanders were splitting up. “It was a greeting,” not a farewell, Azoff replied. Asked if he or anyone on the Eagles team ever notified Sanders that he needed all the research materials back, Azoff said, “He understood that.”
Lecky, who took the witness stand right after Azoff, recalled Christie's deal with Inciardi to sell the 13 pages of “Hotel California” lyrics, along with a handwritten version of Bob Dylan's “Subterranean Homesick Blues” . (Some of the funniest moments of the trial came when lawyers for both sides stumbled upon the song's title and repeated it until they got it.)
After the deal, Lecky said he “started collecting material and researching” to learn more about the song's history and development. Inciardi himself suggested that Lecky read a biography of the Eagles. To confirm whether the handwriting on the pads was indeed Henley's, Lecky said he would Google phrases like “Don Henley handwriting.” For what would be a private sale, the asking price, Lecky said, would be “in excess” of $700,000. That price was based in part on Christie's selling Don McLean's handwritten lyrics to “American Pie” for over $1 million not long ago.
Lecky said he began working on a draft of a sales brochure for the verse pages, but became concerned when he learned more about the history of the documents. “Having someone work on a book made me think, 'OK, they have access to documents,'” he testified, but he worried that that didn't necessarily mean the party involved owned the file. Lecky cited a case involving George and Ira Gershwin papers offered to Christie that turned out not to belong to the party representing them. The market, Lecky said, can be “incredibly suspicious.”
Ultimately, Lecky said he felt there was “potential danger” with the Eagles' lyrics. After a phone call with Christie's legal team — with Inciardi also on the call, his lawyer added — Christie's decided not to put the documents up for sale and returned them to Inciardi. As reported on the first day of the trial, Inciardi and Kosinski went to Sotheby's, whereupon Henley, who had already bought some of these pages, learned of the larger transaction, nearly 100 pages. When Inciardi and Kosinski offered to split the profits with Henley or have him buy it all for $90,000, Henley went to authorities, resulting in the arrest of the three men in 2022.
Under cross-examination by the defendants' lawyers, Lecky admitted he could not recall any details of his conversation with Christie's lawyers in 2016 about their recommendation to pass, or even the names of those colleagues. When he left Christie's in 2016 to go into business for himself, Lecky stayed in touch with Inciardi and, in an email surfaced Friday, wrote: “Do you still have Hotel California? I might have an idea we can discuss.''
Defense attorneys seized that email as evidence that Lecky was still interested in continuing to sell the allegedly stolen property. When asked by prosecutors to elaborate, however, Lecky said: “I was curious what the situation was. I didn't have a specific idea.”
The trial continues next week, with Henley expected to take the stand on Monday. If convicted, Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinski face up to four years in prison.
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/eagles-hotel-california-lyric-trial-taped-phone-call-god-henley-1234975018/