'Hotel California' Proving Centers for Handwritten Eagles Lyrics

In the late 1970s, a writer working on a book about the Eagles that would never be published was given a hundred pages of notes and lyrics related to the multiplatinum album “Hotel California.”

The papers contain handwritten lyrics by the band's songwriter and drummer, Don Henley.

Decades later, according to court documents, the writer, Ed Sanders, sold the treasure to a prominent rare manuscript dealer who had placed the papers of Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe in college libraries and worked to sell Bob Dylan's archive for a estimated amount. up to $20 million.

In 2022, prosecutors in Manhattan said the manuscript dealer, Glenn Horowitz, and two other men had been charged with conspiring to possess stolen property worth more than $1 million, including embryonic versions of hits such as “Hotel California,” “New Kid in Town'. ' and 'Life in the Fast Lane'.

On Wednesday, the three men will go on trial in an unusual proceeding that may include testimony from Mr. Henley, who told a grand jury that the material was stolen. The trial is decided by the judge, not a jury.

Before his arrest, Mr. Horowitz had established himself at the confluence of literature and finance in New York, dealing in vast sums of money and equally vast reputations.

After working in the rare book room of The Strand bookstore in Greenwich Village, he struck out on his own at age 23 and built a thriving business with offices in Manhattan and East Hampton, NY, bringing gallery-style glitz to the musty world of archives and books. antiquarian parts.

His sale of Vladimir Nabokov's literary estate to the New York Public Library in 1992 was widely considered the first archive deal worth more than $1 million. Those who knew Mr. Horowitz saw him as a true hustler. Rick Gekoski, a bookseller who did business with him, was quoted in 2007 describing him as “a great combination of a scholar and a con artist.”

In addition to Mr. Henley, who co-founded the Eagles and was instrumental in creating the breezy, melodic country-rock sound that sold millions of records, witnesses may include Mr. Sanders, a minor musical celebrity in his own right.

In the mid-1960s, he co-founded the Fugs, a Lower East Side proto-punk folk rock group known for sometimes-literary-sometimes-scatological imagery. Mr. Sanders described himself in 1970 as “a poet, songwriter, head Fug, peace creeper and yodeler.”

He then became a successful author with “The Family,” a 1971 book about Charles Manson and his murderous cult. Later in the decade he signed a contract to write about the Eagles.

Although the book was never published, Mr. Sanders described the manuscript in a 1994 interview with Seconds magazine as an “exhaustive” account in four parts, which included what the interviewer described as “sex-and-drugs type stuff.” .

“I put a few years into it,” he said at the time. “I was paid very, very well.”

In the indictment against Mr. Horowitz and his co-defendants, Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski, prosecutors said the Eagles material was “originally stolen” by an author hired to write the band's biography. Later court documents identified the author as Mr. Sanders.

However, there are no records showing that he has been charged in the case or identified as an unindicted co-conspirator. Mr. Sanders could not be reached for comment.

Defense lawyers wrote in one of their briefs that if prosecutors do not consider Mr. Sanders a thief, the material cannot be considered stolen and the judge should dismiss the case.

Mr. Sanders acquired the material for a book, prosecutors say in a lawsuit, but “the texts were 'stolen' and Sanders committed theft when he failed to obtain the texts within a 'reasonable' period after the termination of the contract to give back to the Eagles. .”

Prosecutors say Mr. Sanders sold the Eagles documents to Mr. Horowitz in 2005. The conspiracy began seven years later, when Mr. Inciardi, who has worked as a curator for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Mr. Kosinski, the owner of an online music memorabilia auction website, purchased at least some of the material from Mr. Horowitz.

When they in turn tried to sell some of the material, prosecutors said, Mr. Henley told them it had been stolen and demanded it back. Ultimately, Mr. Inciardi and Mr. Kosinski took some of the material to the auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's.

However, no sales took place, and in 2016 the district attorney's office seized 16 pages left at Sotheby's, as well as 85 pages stored in Mr. Kosinski's New Jersey home.

An indictment detailed what prosecutors said were Mr. Horowitz's efforts to create a fake history for the material, including the idea that it came from the Eagles' co-founder Glenn Frey, who recently had died, in place of Mr. Henley. Mr. Horowitz wrote to Mr. Sanders in 2017 that identifying Mr. Frey as the source would “make this go away once and for all,” according to the complaint.

But according to the complaint, Mr. Horowitz seemed to quickly realize that that claim would conflict with another story Mr. Sanders had given in an email 12 years earlier.

In that 2005 email, the indictment says, Mr. Sanders to Mr. Horowitz said he had gone through a plethora of Eagles archival material while “staying with Henley in Malibu.”