Eagles frontman Don Henley called himself the victim of “blackmail” on Monday at a trial in New York of three men accused of trying to sell about 100 pages of stolen handwritten notes for his 1976 album Hotel California, AFP reported.

The written pages that appeared in the large notebooks were “the product of our work”, “nonsense that we wrote” before reaching the final piece, such as the worldwide hit “Hotel California”, the band’s founder said on the witness stand . The Eagles are currently in the midst of their farewell world tour.

“They were not destined to be seen” and “even today I will not show them,” added the 76-year-old musician.

Three from the collector world are on trial: Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski for possession of stolen property and Glenn Horowitz for attempted murder. They all plead not guilty and deny any wrongdoing, saying they acquired the pages in question legally.

How the bills disappeared

The case goes back to the late 1970s, when a writer hired by a California rock band to write their biography received notes that he never returned. Don Henley considered it a steal. The defense dismissed the charges, citing that the author had no criminal record.

According to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the author eventually sold the pages in 2005 to Glenn Horowitz, a rare book dealer, who then sold them to Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski.

Many years after the breakup of the band, which later reunited, in 2012, the musician saw for the first time how some pages reappeared on the Internet. In the end, the artist bought them himself for $8,500, because it was “the most effective” and “practical”. “to redeem what was mine.”

Other pages will reappear at auction in subsequent years, including thirteen handwritten pages of the song “Hotel California.”

“I’ve been solicited once before,” said Don Henley, who in 2016 went to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which filed the complaint. The process lasts several days.