Photo: Don Henley | By Jennifer Peltz, Associated Press | Don Henley testified Monday that a “poor decision” led to authorities finding drugs and a 16-year-old sex worker suffering from an overdose at his Los Angeles home in 1980, spurring the Eagles co-founder’s arrest. Henley was asked about the arrest as he testified at a criminal trial surrounding what he says were stolen, handwritten draft lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits.
Henley said he called for a sex worker on a night in November 1980 because he “wanted to escape the depression I was in” over the breakup of the superstar band.
“I wanted to forget about everything that was happening with the band, and I made a poor decision which I regret to this day. I’ve had to live with it for 44 years. I’m still living with it today, in this courtroom. Poor decision,” the 76-year-old testified in a raspy drawl.
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The defendants — rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz and rock memorabilia specialists Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski — have pleaded not guilty. Their lawyers say there was nothing illegal in what happened to the lyric sheets.
At issue are about 100 sheets of legal-pad paper inscribed with lyrics-in-the-making for multiple songs on the “Hotel California” album, including “Life in the Fast Lane,” “New Kid in Town” and the title track that turned into one of the most durable hits in rock. Famed for its lengthy guitar solo and puzzlingly poetic lyrics, the song still gets streamed hundreds of millions of times a year.
The defendants acquired the pages through writer Ed Sanders, who began working with the Eagles in 1979 on a band biography that never made it into print.
He sold the documents to Horowitz, who sold them to Kosinski and Inciardi. Kosinski has a rock ‘n’ roll collectibles auction site; Inciardi was then a curator at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
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Henley helped establish a musicians’ rights group that spoke out in venues from Congress to the Supreme Court against online file-sharing platforms. Some popular services at the time let users trade digital recordings for free. The music industry contended that the exchanges flouted copyright laws.
Henley and some other major artists applauded a 2005 high court ruling that cleared a path for record labels to sue file-swapping services.
Henley also sued a Senate candidate over unauthorized use of some of the musician’s solo songs in a campaign spot. Another Henley suit hit a clothing company that made t-shirts emblazoned with a pun on his name. Both cases ended in settlements and apologies from the defendants.
Henley also testified to Congress in 2020, urging copyright law updates to fight online piracy.
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Read more on this story here:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/eagles-don-henley-set-stand-145628421.html
Photo: Don Henley | From his Facebook page
February 29, 2024| Music-Related Business| Barb Dye