Three men go on trial in New York over Eagles’ Hotel California manuscript

In the mid-1970s, the Eagles were working on a spooky, cryptic new song.

On a lined yellow pad, Don Henley, with input from his band co-founder Glenn Frey, jotted thoughts about “a dark desert highway” and “a lovely place” with a luxurious surface and ominous undertones. And something on ice, perhaps caviar or Taittinger – or pink Champagne?

The song, Hotel California, became one of rock’s most indelible singles. And nearly 50 years later, those handwritten pages of lyrics-in-the-making have become the centre of an unusual criminal trial due to open on Wednesday.

Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer; Craig Inciardi, a former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator, and Edward Kosinski, a memorabilia seller, are charged with conspiring to own and try to sell manuscripts of Hotel California and other Eagles hits without the right to do so.

The three have pleaded not guilty, and their lawyers have said the men committed no crime with the papers, which they acquired via a writer who had worked with the Eagles. The Manhattan district attorney’s office says the defendants connived to obscure the documents’ disputed ownership, despite knowing that Henley said the pages were stolen.

(From left) Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski in court after being indicted in 2022. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

Clashes over valuable collectibles abound, but criminal trials like this are rare. Many fights are resolved in private, in lawsuits or with agreements to return the items.

“If you can avoid a prosecution by handing over the thing, most people just hand it over,” said Travis McDade, a University of Illinois law professor who studies rare document disputes.

Of course, the case of the Eagles manuscripts is distinctive in other ways, too.

The prosecutors’ star witness is indeed that: Henley is expected to testify between Eagles tour stops. The non-jury trial could offer a peek into the band’s creative process and life in the fast lane of 70s stardom.

At issue are more than 80 pages of draft lyrics from the blockbuster 1976 Hotel California album, including words to the chart-topping, Grammy-winning title cut. It features one of classic rock’s most recognisable riffs, best-known solos and most oft-quoted – arguably overquoted – lines: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Henley has said the song is about “the dark underbelly of the American dream”.

The pages also include lyrics from songs including Life in the Fast Lane and New Kid in Town. The Eagles manager Irving Azoff has called the documents “irreplaceable pieces of musical history”.

Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinki are charged with conspiracy to possess stolen property and various other offences.

They are not charged with actually stealing documents. Nor is anyone else, but prosecutors will still have to establish that the documents were stolen. The defence maintains that is not true.

Much turns on the Eagles’ interactions with Ed Sanders, a writer who also co-founded the 1960s counterculture rock band the Fugs. He worked in the late 70s and early 80s on an authorised Eagles biography that was never published.

Sanders is not charged in the case. A phone message seeking comment was left for him.

He sold the pages to Horowitz, who then sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski.

Horowitz has handled huge rare book and archive deals, and has been entangled in ownership spats before. One involved papers linked to Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind. It was settled.

Sanders told Horowitz in 2005 that while working on the Eagles book, he was sent whatever papers he wanted from Henley’s home in Malibu, California, according to the indictment.

Kosinski’s business then offered some pages at auction in 2012. Henley’s attorneys came knocking. Horowitz, Inciardi and Sanders, in varying combinations, began batting around alternate versions of the manuscripts’ provenance, the indictment says.

In one story, Sanders found the pages discarded in a backstage dressing room. In others, he got them from a stage assistant or while amassing “a lot of material related to the Eagles from different people”. In yet another, he obtained them from Frey – an account that “would make this go away once and for all”, Horowitz suggested in 2017. Frey had died the year before.

Sanders supplied or signed off on some of the varying explanations, according to the indictment, and it’s unclear what he may have conveyed verbally. But he apparently rejected at least the dressing room tale.

Kosinki forwarded one explanation, approved by Sanders, to Henley’s lawyer. Kosinski also assured Sotheby’s auction house that the musician had “no claim” to the documents and asked to keep potential bidders in the dark about Henley’s complaints, the indictment says.

Sotheby’s listed the Hotel California song lyrics in a 2016 auction but withdrew them after learning the ownership was in question. Sotheby’s is not charged in the case and declined to comment.