"Plenty of Room in the Hotel California"

Can't say I've ever been a big Eagles fan, but I've always enjoyed their music. Where would the soundtrack of the 70's be without the Eagles? Their songs, for me, are definitely not in the "switch to another station when it comes on" category, other than (maybe: would depend on the mood) "Witchy Woman." And "Take It To The Limit" is one of my favorite 70's tunes.

So I liked the Eagles enough that the legal Eagles news of late has definitely caught my interest.

The story is this:

A week or so ago, three men went on trial in NYC for a conspiracy to sell 100 or so pages of Don Henley notes that show the development of the lyrics for "Hotel California" and a couple of other Eagles hits. One of the accused was Glenn Horowitz, a big-deal dealer who had been involved in the sales of the papers of the likes of Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Vladimir Nabokov, and Bob Dylan. Pretty heady company for the yellow pads of the likes of Don Henley.

Horowitz had purchased the trove in 2005 from Ed Sanders. And the presence of Ed Sanders is where the story to me gets all the more interesting.

Sanders was a beat poet (who once won a Guggenheim, so he was legit) and co-founder of the anti-war counterculture band, the Fugs. In the early 1970's, Sanders wrote The Family, a best-seller about the Manson murders. He then turned to a milder topic, and scored a deal to write a book about the Eagles. So he hung around them for a while in the late 70's, doing extensive interviews. According to Sanders, the yellow pads were shipped to him by an admin who worked for the Eagles. Sanders was never told that the Henley notes weren't his, so he hung on to them for couple of decades, then sold them to Horowitz for $50K. And, by the way, his Eagles book was never published. 

Sanders isn't on trial for the conspiracy or theft of the Henley notes. (The prosecutors do allege that those notes were "originally stolen," but there's no evidence that he's been charged or even "identified as an unindicted co-conspirator.")

But he is implicated:

Mr. Sanders acquired the material for a book, prosecutors say in a court filing, but “the lyrics became ‘stolen’ and Sanders committed a larceny once he failed to return the lyrics to the Eagles within a ‘reasonable’ period following the contract’s termination.” (Source: NY Times)

Horowitz and his co-defendants (Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski), however, are on trial, and have found themselves in what the Fugs might have called a river of shit. (Note: "River of Shit" is the one and only Fugs song I know.)

Horowitz says that he acquired the notes legitimately and had no reason to believe that they had been stolen. And on top of that, after hanging on to the Henley notes for a while and despite his illustrious, big buck credentials (Nabokov! Mailer!), he only made $15K on the sale. 

Lawyers for all three defendants said their clients had done nothing wrong and that prosecutors lacked evidence that the notes had ever been stolen.

The defense largely rests on this:

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

Hmmm. If the notes are considered stolen, but Sanders hasn't been charged as a theif, what the fug? Is Sanders actually a witness for the prosecution...

There's is plenty of ammo on the side of the prosecution, especially considering that the charges are conspiracy to sell documents they knew were stolen, not the theft itself. 

When Inciardi and Kosinski tried to unload the notes that they'd acquired from Horowitz, Don Henley "told them that it had been stolen and demanded it back. Eventually, Mr. Inciardi and Mr. Kosinski went to the auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s with some of the material."

So, they'd been told that the material was stolen and still tried to sell it (unsuccessfully: no way Christie's and Sotheby's were going to get involved with documents of such dubious provenance). Not a good look, I would think.

Then there's the fact of the defendants attempt to create a fake provenance that would "prove" the notes weren't stolen. No stolen goods, no conspiracy to sell stolen goods. 

An indictment described what prosecutors said were Mr. Horowitz’s efforts to create a bogus history for the material, which included the idea that it had come from the Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, who had recently died, rather than from 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,” the indictment said.

Oh, the old dead-man-dunnit defense.

Alas for the guys on trial, there's a Sanders email that indicates that he aquired the notes while “staying at Henley’s place in Malibu.”

So, they knew. So, no Glenn Frey defense.

I'll be looking for the outcome of this one.

The indicted co-conspirators may find themselves checking into some place other than the Hotel California. 

Meanwhile, it looks like Ed Sanders will, like the river of shit, flow on.