Frank Ocean photo by Erez Avissar

UPDATE: Okkervil River's Will Sheff has written a response to Henley for Rolling Stone. "I guess the song won't exist," he writes. "Wish you could hear it. I'm proud of it."

A few years ago, Frank Ocean was nearly sued over the song "American Wedding" from his Nostalgia, Ultra. mixtape, which included a sample of the Eagles' "Hotel California". Writing on his Tumblr, Ocean said, "Ain’t this guy rich as fuck? Why sue the new guy? I didn’t make a dime off that song. I released it for free. If anything I’m paying homage."

Now, the Eagles' Don Henley has talked about the incident in an interview with Sydney's Daily Telegraph, in which he accuses Ocean of "stealing." (Via Consequence of Sound).

"Mr Ocean doesn’t seem to understand US copyright law," Henley said. "Anyone who knows anything should know you cannot take a master track of a recording and write another song over the top of it. You just can’t do that. You can call it a tribute or whatever you want to call it, but it’s against the law. That’s a problem with some of the younger generation, they don’t understand the concept of intellectual property and copyright."

"I heard it," Henley said of "American Wedding". "I was not impressed. He needs to come up with his own ideas and stop stealing stuff from already established works."

Henley added, "(Mr. Ocean) was quite arrogant about it. We tried to approach him calmly to talk reason to him via his managers and his attorneys and he wouldn’t listen. So finally we threatened to bring legal action against him. He was clearly in the wrong. I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that. What kind of ego is that? I don’t understand it."

Similarly, Okkervil River were forced to remove a cover of Henley's "The End of the Innocence" from their website, where they'd released it for free as part of their Golden Opportunities 3 mixtape.

Speaking about that, Henley took more umbrage with the fact that Okkervil River had altered the original lyrics to his song. (Rather than stripping them out entirely, as Ocean did.) "You can’t re-write the lyrics to somebody else’s songs and record it and put it on the internet," he said. "I’m sorry, but it wasn’t an improvement. We were not impressed. So we simply had our legal team tell them to take it down and they got all huffy about it."

He added: "I don’t know how they’d react if I took one of their songs and re-wrote the lyrics and recorded it, I don’t know if they’d like that. Maybe they wouldn’t care but I care. We work really really hard on our material. We spend months writing it and years recording it. You don’t go into a museum and paint a moustache on somebody else’s painting. Nobody would think of doing that."

Henley clarified that he has no problem with people covering his songs, as long as it's done legally and with his permission. "If you respect somebody you ask their permission to diddle around with their work. You don’t just go and do it."

The Daily Telegraph pointed to an interview Okkervil River's Will Sheff gave with The Music earlier this year, in which he took offense to Henley's offense. "I really love 'The End Of The Innocence' sincerely, and it’s a real dick move, man. I guess he’s an old fashioned guy who doesn’t understand," Sheff said then. "I mean the fucking thing was free! I don’t really get what his issue with it was, it’s not like I was making money – I figure that’s all he fucking cares about anyway, know what I mean? It’s not like I was making money off it, but he still made me take it down."

This morning, Sheff clarified his comments on Twitter and directly responded to Henley:

Watch Frank Ocean perform "American Wedding" at Coachella: