On Decades-Old Taped Call, Eagles Manager Said ‘Pampered Rock Star’ Was Stalling Band Biography

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....