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NEW YORK (AP) -- In the mid-1970s, the Eagles were working on a spooky, cryptic new song.
On a lined yellow pad, Don Henley, with input from 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 a half-century later, those handwritten pages of lyrics-in-the-making have become the center of an unusual criminal trial set to open Wednesday.
Rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski 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'd worked with the Eagles. But 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.
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.
The prosecutors' star witness is indeed that: Henley is expected to testify between tour stops.
At issue are over 80 pages of draft lyrics from the blockbuster 1976 "Hotel California" album, including words to the chart-topping, Grammy-winning title cut.Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinki are charged with conspiracy to possess stolen property and various other offenses.
They're not charged with actually stealing documents. Nor is anyone else, but prosecutors will still have to establish that the documents were stolen. The defense maintains that's 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 authorized Eagles biography that was never published.
Sanders isn't charged in the case. He sold the pages to Horowitz, who then sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski.