Book project factors in lyrics case
Biographer sold notes to 1 of 3 defendants
NEW YORK — The Eagles’ manager once told their authorized biographer that his book wasn’t getting published because of friction from “a pampered rock star,” according to a recording played in court Thursday.
“It’s gonna come out when God Henley says it can,” Irving Azoff said in the same years-old phone call, apparently referring to band co-founder Don Henley. “Now it’s up to God.”
The recording emerged at the criminal trial of three collectibles experts charged with conspiring to hang onto and sell sheets of handwritten, draft lyrics to the megahit “Hotel California” and other Eagles favorites.
The biographer, Ed Sanders, isn’t charged in the case, but he factors in it because he sold the roughly
100 pages to one of the defendants. Henley and prosecutors contend that the documents were stolen, saying Sanders obtained them from Henley’s home to research the book and was obligated to return them to the Eagles.
Defendants Edward Kosinski, Craig Inciardi and Glenn Horowitz have pleaded not guilty.
The never-published book is a side player in the legal case. But testimony about the book has shed light on the Eagles’ interpersonal dynamics and reputational aims around the time of the group’s 1980 breakup.
And Thursday offered a behindthe-scenes look at music-business wheeling and dealing, and at the longtime manager whom Henley once called — affectionately — “our Satan.”
Azoff has been the personal manager of the Eagles, one of the most successful bands in rock history, since about 1973. He’s managed many other big-name musicians, produced the classic 1982 teencomedy “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and was CEO of Ticketmaster for a time.
In 1979, as the Eagles were closing out the decade that brought them superstardom, they hired Sanders to pen a biography. The writer, who also co-founded the ’60s counterculture rock band the Fugs, had authored a noted book about murderous cult leader Charles Manson.
Azoff testified Wednesday that when Sanders turned in the Eagles manuscript in the early 1980s, Henley and Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey were “very disappointed.” Azoff said he found the draft’s discussion of the Eagles’ breakup “unacceptable” and the band never authorized publication because the book “wasn’t very good.”
Then one of Kosinski’s lawyers played a recording of Azoff proclaiming he was “phenomenally, absolutely happy” with the book.
Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinski are accused of deceiving auction houses, and trying to fend off Henley, by crafting bogus explanations of how Sanders got the documents.
Horowitz, a rare-book seller who has brokered deals to place major archives at institutions, bought the Eagles lyrics drafts from Sanders for $50,000 in 2005.
Horowitz later sold them for $65,000 to Inciardi, who was then a rock Hall of Fame curator, and Kosinski, who owns a rock memorabilia auction site.