Don Henley appeared in court earlier this week to testify in the ongoing criminal trial involving around 100 handwritten legal-pad pages related to the recording of Hotel California. The blockbuster 1976 album by the Eagles was written on these pages, which Henley testified as being “very personal” to him and the band.
The testimony did open the door for a darker part of Henley’s past to bubble to the surface. The defense in the trial had been planning to bring up Henley’s more questionable decisions, especially in the wake of his band’s breakup.
Countering it, the prosecution brought up Henley’s arrest in 1980. He pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, according to the AP. Henley was arrested after authorities discovered him with drugs and a naked 16-year-old girl overdosing at his home.
He would be sentenced to probation and fined $2,500, also requesting the chance to take a drug education program to have the possession charges he had against him dismissed.
“I made a poor decision, which I regret to this day,” Henley said in his testimony, noting that he was depressed over the Eagles breakup and sought an escape with a sex worker. “I can’t tell you what I had for breakfast last Friday morning, but I can tell you where we stayed when we played Wembley in 1975 and we opened for Elton John and the Beach Boys.”
Henley also said he didn’t remember all of the conversations he had with writer Ed Sanders, a writer who worked with the band on an unpublished biography and was allowed access to the pages at the time.
He wasn’t given possession of the pages, however, and made clear that they were still the property of the band. “You know what? It doesn’t matter if I drove a U-Haul truck across country and dumped them at his front door,” Henley testified. “He had no right to keep them or to sell them.”