David Crosby RIP

hullabelew · January 20, 2023

And not to derail, but Emmylou is the finest harmony singer and here she walks another legendary asshole thru this great song. Even he had too much respect for Emmylou, and this powerhouse band, to not show up drunk. I got to see this band back up Emmylou and Ronstadt around this time. Holy shit.

freyguy · January 20, 2023

WhatTheBuck · January 20, 2023

So Jon Lovitz is playing Crosby in the movie?

HamsterHookah · January 20, 2023

David Crosby, the iconoclastic singer-songwriter who died Thursday at 81, once said his infamous arrest in Dallas “pretty much saved my life.”

Rolling Stone and other media outlets reported Crosby’s death in the late afternoon without disclosing the cause. Crosby suffered from decades of addiction, which in 1982 compelled Dallas police to raid his dressing room at Cardi’s, a now-defunct nightclub at Medallion Center.

Cardi’s, which Texas Monthly once pegged as “a down and dirty rock ‘n’ roller’s paradise,” drew a swarm of Dallas police, who described Crosby “free-basing in plain view,” holding in one hand a propane fuel tank and heating a brown bottle in the other.

In 2014, Dallas Morning News writer Michael Granberry caught up with Crosby when he was 73 and described himself as a radically different man. He was headed to the Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie, where he and longtime band mates Stephen Stills and Graham Nash had come to play a Crosby, Stills and Nash reunion show. And what a show it was.

So, was it weird to return to a place where his life took such a sudden, dramatic turn?

“No,” Crosby said by phone, during a tour stop in Memphis. “No, no, no, no, no. You have to look at it from my point of view.”

He paused. “Dallas pretty much saved my life.”

MC Fresh Breath · January 20, 2023

2 hours ago, smuggs said:

He was on Stern in June '21, talking about the end. RIP

Have not listened to Stern in decades. Thanks for that nice and touching clip.

DougO · January 20, 2023

3 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

A cover in the other direction. Crosby, Stills, and Nash first sang together at a party at Joni Mitchell’s place so this is kind of fitting.

Then by CSNY:

Plus the fact that Joni actually wrote the song.

Carl Spackler · January 20, 2023

1 hour ago, Celery Man said:

It occurs to me that people may not understand what all Crosby was involved in and what the importance was. I have a meeting in just a couple but what...

The Byrds
Crosby Stills Nash/Crosby Stills Nash Young
Jefferson Airplane?

The Byrds were one of those Beatles era 60s rock acts, but were very influential/important in popularizing the folk revival of the 60s? Gram Parsons was also a member of the Byrds for an album or so, and is maybe one of the fathers of alt country? Again I don't have time to do this justice but lets reflect on fucking what Crosby did beyond just being one of those guys whose names people unfamiliar know as an old music dude

This. Of those three, I like the Byrds the best. Never really got heavily into the other two. But one cannot deny Crosby's place in musical or cultural history. And he was a very "real" dude -- warts and all. What you saw was what you got when it came to him, both good and bad.

WhatTheBuck · January 20, 2023

7 minutes ago, DougO said:

Plus the fact that Joni actually wrote the song.

No shit! Really?

I posted two examples before of Jefferson Airplane covers of Crosby/CSNY tunes. Triad and Wooden Ships. Woodstock is a CSNY cover of a Joni Mitchell tune. That’s why it’s a cover in the other direction. That’s why I posted Joni’s version first. Duh.

Don Johnson · January 20, 2023

17 hours ago, MAROON said:

The Byrds, CSNY, CSN, drug addiction, prison, car wrecks, sperm donor to Mellissa Etheridge, liver transplant paid for by Phil Collins. That has the making of a great movie.

I remember that happening and everyone kind of like "WTF?". Did not know until just now that the child, Beckett, died two years ago from an opioid addiction.

https://variety.com/2020/music/news/beckett-cypher-melissa-etheridge-son-dead-dies-1234605991/

horn4life · January 20, 2023

I can still remember sitting around listening to "Our House" as 6th or 7th grader off their Deja Vu album and 8 miles high by the The Byrds, We had some eclectic taste back then, probably as our albums were mostly hand me downs from older kids, or our parents. I remember a rotation of Deja Vu, Emerson Lake and Palmer Targus(?) David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars, Genesis (can't remember the album), Jimmy Hendrix, The Experience Album, as well as a sprinkling of Stones, Beatles, Zepplin and whatnot.

The two songs that are burned into my soul from that time period of youthful uncertainty was "Our House," and "Suffragette City" (probably my all time favorite). I didn't know until this weekend that David Bowie offered Mott the Hoople "Suffragette City" to keep them together when he heard they were about to break up. Instead they chose, "All the Young Dudes." Another of my favorite songs, and I saw Alejandro Escovedo close with it at Continental last weekend.

I know that somewhere out there, Crosby is likely rolling a joint... Still Smiling...

Edited January 20, 2023 by horn4life

Celery Man · January 20, 2023

this documentary is one I was trying to remember the name of

to expand a bit on what I was saying earlier, I think if you have a vague familiarity of early/mid 60s hits but not much understanding of the context beyond that, you might underrate the importance of The Byrds. But they were right up in that whole folk revival scene, they were a band that the cool kids listened to, etc.

Gil Bang · January 20, 2023

5 hours ago, Don Johnson said:

I remember that happening and everyone kind of like "WTF?". Did not know until just now that the child, Beckett, died two years ago from an opioid addiction.

https://variety.com/2020/music/news/beckett-cypher-melissa-etheridge-son-dead-dies-1234605991/

He sired a girl for Melissa as well.

Pato del Muerto · January 21, 2023

8 hours ago, Carl Spackler said:

This. Of those three, I like the Byrds the best. Never really got heavily into the other two. But one cannot deny Crosby's place in musical or cultural history. And he was a very "real" dude -- warts and all. What you saw was what you got when it came to him, both good and bad.

Roger mcguinn had a 12 string guitar

it was like nothing I’d ever heard.

and since we are spreading our reach a little and they’ve been named, here’s this just because.

Gil Bang · January 21, 2023

Gil Bang · January 21, 2023

does anybody else REALLY want to hear Drew Barrymore's story about her relationship with Crosby? That's gotta be pretty, pretty, pretty interesting.

Hate · January 21, 2023

Can't believe this one hasn't been posted yet, but I always loved it.

stupidgringo · January 21, 2023

Music writer Wayne Robins wrote on his substack about an interview he did with Crosby in 1985. It's a good read:

August, 1985. I met David Crosby for an interview in the restaurant of his Manhattan hotel. It may have been the nadir of a life of self-destruction. The interview was to promote a Crosby, Stills, and Nash performance at the Jones Beach Theater on Long Island the night the story ran in Newsday Aug. 16, 1985.

But Crosby was also full of regret, and self-loathing for the situation in which he had put himself. He had left a New Jersey rehab before he was ready for discharge a few months earlier. He was on probation in Texas, where he faced a potential prison term for gun and drug possession.

Late in the interview, Crosby, who was sitting facing the street, suddenly excused himself and went out through the fire door to which we were adjacent. When he came back to lunch, he was unable to pretend nothing had happened.

=======

DAVID CROSBY'S TIME TO FACE THE MUSIC

by Wayne Robins

David Crosby rambled down to lunch displaying his latest acquisition: a walkie-talkie.

"This is my new weapon," Crosby said animatedly. "It's a great bluff. It doesn't have any batteries." He had purchased it the night before, in case he was accosted while carrying cash to Western Union to wire to a friend. "I thought, 'hey, I can't carry a weapon. But if I [speak into the walkie-talkie] say, 'Charlie, I got a situation here,' they don't know what I'm talking about."

The suggestion that the walkie-talkie might make the portly long-haired Crosby looked like an undercover cop brought a wry half-smile to his face. But his mood––cheerful and expansive as he talked about the longevity and vitality of Crosby, Stills, and Nash––soon darkened as he talked about his 15-year-struggle with drugs, his anguished attempts to end his addiction, and the frightening prospect of spending five years in a Texas prison.

Crosby was arrested in April, 1982, at a nightclub in northwest Dallas. Police found him with a .45-cal automatic pistol and a quarter-gram of cocaine. "A quarter-gram," Crosby said. "That's enough to cover your index fingernail. In California, they would have laughed. In Texas, five years. Imagine a [judge's] mouth saying these words: 'I find you guilty, David Crosby. I sentence you to five years in the Texas State Penitentiary.'"

The conviction was at first overturned. The prosecutor appealed, and the conviction reinstated. Texas authorities released him on the condition that he check into a drug treatment program. Crosby checked into Fair Oaks Hospital, a drug and rehabilitation center in Summit, N.J. But after six or seven weeks, Crosby prematurely checked out on Feb. 24, 1985. Two days later, Crosby was arrested in New York for possession of a small amount of cocaine. He spent a week at the Rikers Island (New York City) prison hospital; he was released when he agreed not to fight extradition to Texas. Crosby remains free under appeal. [According to Ultimate Classic Rock magazine, the appeals were unsuccessful: on March 6, 1986, Crosby began serving his sentence. He was released on parole five months later, on Aug. 8. Despite his fears, Crosby later thanked the judge, crediting the jail stay with forcing him to detox from cocaine.]

Crosby admits that leaving Fair Oaks [now known as Summit Oaks], known for its celebrity clientele at the time, was not the wisest move. "It was a terrible mistake," Crosby said. "When you're kicking 15 years of chemical dependency––I had enough money to make that a real problem." Crosby said he had been using both cocaine and "the other drug." When I asked him if he meant heroin, Crosby said: "Yes."

Complicating Crosby kicking cocaine was the development of a new delivery system for taking the drug: freebasing, which Crosby understood as burning off the impurities and smoking the pure drug. Crack. "I was a drug PhD, man. But freebasing. It's a new thing and it's devastating. If it did that to me, imagine what it would do to a kid taking drugs for the first time. It was kind of like walking into an ambush blind-folded."

Unfortunately, his treatment at Fair Oaks wasn't successful. "I was in the center of this cyclone, man. I was going through the most turbulent, violent kind of re-arrangement of my psycho-chemical and physical-chemical structure. At that point, I was not sane. I was trying to do the right thing, but I was crazy. I couldn't hack it."

Crosby was bitter about not being allowed to play music in the rehab. He said that Graham Nash had sent him a synthesizer and tape machine, but he was not allowed to use it. Crosby said he told the doctors: "You don't understand. Music is my life, it is more of a tonic than anything they could possibly give me. They wouldn't even let me have a Walkman. I asked to play live music with a member of the staff who played drums, but they said it was against the rules." Putting on the mock-officious voice of a hospital administrator, he said they called playing music 'distracting from the prescribed course of actions." He added, though: "Music is the one thing that keeps me from missing drugs. I was mad. They were unfair and short-sighted. I walked out. I regret it."

I called Lisa Bensen, the assistant director of public relations at Fair Oaks, who said: "It is hospital policy not to comment on anyone's stay here."

The mood changed again as Crosby considered the enduring appeal of his music with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.

"Face it," Crosby said, smiling again. "I'm 43 years old. I've been doing this for 16 years with CSN and before that, four years with the Byrds. It should be geriatric rock by now. But our audience span is 15 to 50, with a third to half of it being kids, teenagers. I can give you no logical explanation. How do they know the words? It bodes well for us. It bespeaks an incredible longevity. We are in Fat City. It means there are people who want to hear us who we can sing to for years to come."

Crosby spoke about what gave CSN's songs, almost all from 1969 and 1970, with a few outliers, their durability. "Hearts were elated, broken, people lived and died. Real worry cut real lines in real faces. Loyalty, pride, very real stuff. That's what we drew the songs out of."

It would have been fine to end the story and the interview right there. But Crosby saw someone he knew outside the hotel, and he abruptly excused himself, said he'd be right back, as he went out the emergency exit door next to us. He came back about 15 minutes later. He seemed embarrassed, confused. He started to cry. "I just picked up, man," he told me between sobs. I did not ask what he took: he probably had enough time to have a few tokes from a crack pipe, or sniffs of coke.

My newspaper had just expanded from Long Island to compete in the New York newspaper market. I was ambitious. Rock Star Relapses! What a scoop! The other tabloids would have been chasing us for days. But David Crosby was not some avatar: he was a wounded human being. Reporting this relapse could have resulted in the prison door slamming on him. I did not include it in the story. I think I made the right decision. The only reason I tell it here, of course, is the David Crosby died Thursday, January 18, 2023, having somehow survived until age 81. Here's the end of the 1985 story, once Crosby retained a bit of his composure.

"I'm here trying to make my life––and other lives––better by singing songs. If I lose the next appeal, they're gonna put me in prison. I feel like I want to contribute. I'm not some destructive kind of criminal, I'm not. I don't think it's fair they put me in jail. I hope they don't." His voice breaking again, he said: "I'm real scared."

Crosby realizes that he brought much of his situation on himself, and that even if the legal battles are resolved, he still must summon the strength to conquer his other demons. "You know the phrase raison d'etre?" he asked. "It means reason for being. I have such a strong reason. Look at what they gave me to do here!" referring to his music and talent. "I ought to be down on my hands and knees thanking Him. If I incapacitate myself, or kill myself, I will be a chump and an ungrateful one. I will have disappointed so many people."

Rimbo · January 21, 2023

Note the timing on Crosby's tweet -- 4 days after EVH passed away.

needles to slay, as a lifelong van halen fanatic, i will not be terribly mournful here

ztejas · January 21, 2023

redacted

Edited January 21, 2023 by ztejas

Bama Llama · January 21, 2023

Maybe he’ll be the one who achieves communication from the World of Coming Attractions. That’d be just like him. Hope it happens in the middle of a big pharma ad.

“Almost . . . (perfect pause) . . . cut my haiiiyyyairrrrrr . . .”

I ‘spect he wouldn’t really want to rest in peace, so dear Mr. Crosby, whom I never met but whose musical collaborations helped get me through high school, college, wimmens, psilly this, lysergic that, shakeups and breakups, saludos monfrere, you had that swing and je ne sais quoi. Rock on, motherfucker, a Sixties Soul for Eternity.

G650 · January 21, 2023

6 hours ago, Hate said:

Can't believe this one hasn't been posted yet, but I always loved it.

Probably my favorite CSN song ever

G650 · January 21, 2023

5 hours ago, Rimbo said:

Note the timing on Crosby's tweet -- 4 days after EVH passed away.

needles to slay, as a lifelong van halen fanatic, i will not be terribly mournful here

I mean, Eddie Van Halen pretty much lapped David Crosby in the shitty human competition

Celery Man · January 21, 2023

2 hours ago, G650 said:

I mean, Eddie Van Halen pretty much lapped David Crosby in the shitty human competition

Generational talent

WhatTheBuck · January 21, 2023

There’s a lot of this stuff out there. Crosby, Paul Kantner (Jefferson Airplane), and David Freiberg (Quicksilver) were friends back in the early days even before The Byrds were a band. They used to hang out and get stoned on Venice Beach. Later all these bands used to record at Wally Heider’s studio in San Francisco. The Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra was the name given by Kantner to the group of musicians that jammed and recorded together. Some of that became Crosby’s solo album. Some of it sat around for years. Some was later re-recorded and used for other projects, some was eventually released as the PERRO Sessions. I’m not familiar with more than a little bit of it. Some of that consortium...Kantner, Freiberg, and Grace Slick...went on to form Jefferson Starship. They may have used some of the material but I’m not sure about that.

This is good Saturday morning drinking-your-coffee music. Just David and Jerry.

(1970)
Kids and dogs
written by David Crosby
This song is an outake from the great Crosby's album ''If I could only remember my name'' (1971). Perro, or Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra, was the name given to the group of musicians who played, recorded and jammed together in the early 70′s. They were, essentially, members of Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Edited January 21, 2023 by WhatTheBuck

TexPx · January 21, 2023

From FB

“Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past 24 hours you know David Crosby died yesterday. I thought I would share a memory from April 1982.

I was a 25 year old living in an apartment complex called Lands End off Eastridge Drive in Dallas. It was located near the intersection of 3 main streets (NW Highway, Skillman, Abrams). Between my apartment and NW Highway was Don Carter’s bowling alley (Carter was the original owner of the Dallas Mavericks). Across NW Highway from the bowling alley was the Medallion Shopping Center. The tenants had included a seafood restaurant called The Spanish Galleon (seemed like most of the waitresses lived in my complex), a bar I frequented called The Abbey Inn, and a Rock and Roll club called Cardi’s.

Cardi’s booked a lot of interesting shows that year including The Guess Who, Rick Derringer, U2, Bob Weir, David Johansen, Dave Edmonds, Dave Mason, Wishbone Ash, The Plasmatics, and on April 12 of ‘82 a gentleman named David Crosby.

I was a huge CSN, CSNY, Neil Young, and Cosby/Nash fan. The idea that one of them was going to be playing at a club practically walking distance from my apartment was mind blowing. Seems like the place only held a couple of hundred people (Mark McCullough please correct me if I’m wrong). As soon as the show was announced me and a few friends, mostly from my apartment complex, bought tickets.

The night of the show we had our version of a tailgate party where various liquids were drank and various non-liquids were ingested. My goal was to get as close to the stage as possible so I headed over early. Most of my other friends were more interested in meeting equally buzzed females and finding a momentary love connection (hey, let’s get out of here. My place is 5 minutes away).

The club was already filling up when I arrived but not so densely packed that I was able to weave myself right against the stage. With a couple of longneck beers. I had seen CSN before and knew their usual format was to come out and play an acoustic set, then after an intermission finish with an electric set. I assumed Crosby would do the same.

By the time he started the place was packed and, being a rock and roll club in 1982, in a party mood. David didn’t disappoint by playing a long acoustic set. He was playing a prototype guitar made in Japan and kept cracking himself up by quoting the guitar makers in a heavy Japanese accent. One word he comically kept saying was symmetrical (say it out loud switching the L and the R) “symmelicat”.

The crowd kept shouting for Rock & Roll which was irritating Crosby. Near the end of the set he tried to placate the crowd by saying that after the next song he was taking a short break and coming back out to rock the place. The audience loudly approved. Then he did something odd.

Crosby backed away from his microphone and gestured for quiet. He started singing/chanting what sounded like a centuries old Irish song a cappella. The more he gestured for quiet the more boisterous the crowd got. He walked off stage.

The house music came up loud. I didn’t want to lose my spot but I desperately needed a beer and had no idea where my friends were so I made my way to the bar. Rehydrated and restocked I pushed my way back to the front of the stage where I waited for the second half of the show. And waited and waited. Finally the house music came down. I figured the second half was about to begin. Then a voice came over the PA. “Mr. Crosby is ill and cannot continue the show.” The house music cranked back up. I headed towards the door and found a couple of my friends. We talked about what had just happened. My theory was that David had gotten pissed at the end of the Acoustic set and simply refused to continue.

On the positive side, my friends had met some ladies, who, after the show ended like it did, were invited over to the apartment complex to listen to CSNY records. (Good thinking fellas)

The next morning (after the late night party it was more like the next afternoon) I read what really happen in the newspaper.

Cardi’s, which Texas Monthly once pegged as “a down and dirty rock ‘n’ roller’s paradise,” drew a swarm of Dallas police, who described Crosby “free-basing in plain view,” holding in one hand a propane fuel tank and heating a brown bottle in the other.

Dallas cops arrested Crosby for felony possession of cocaine. Tucked inside the green bag next to the singer was a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun, which added to the charges against him. Crosby said he had armed himself after the 1980 shooting death of John Lennon.”

David Crosby story from SMU Adjunct Professor Joe Pirro

GhostOfTomJoad · January 21, 2023

4 hours ago, G650 said:

Probably my favorite CSN song ever

Same here. And of course, Crosby didn't even sing on it. That's Timothy B. Schmit and Mike Finnigan backing Stills and Nash.

NTVTXN · January 21, 2023

On 1/19/2023 at 9:50 PM, dcbc said:

Surly motto worthy.

Exactly. “Surly Username-✔️” 😂

Rimbo · January 21, 2023

5 hours ago, G650 said:

I mean, Eddie Van Halen pretty much lapped David Crosby in the shitty human competition

um what? no.

Hagbard Celine · January 21, 2023

13 hours ago, stupidgringo said:

Music writer Wayne Robins wrote on his substack about an interview he did with Crosby in 1985. It's a good read:

August, 1985. I met David Crosby for an interview in the restaurant of his Manhattan hotel. It may have been the nadir of a life of self-destruction. The interview was to promote a Crosby, Stills, and Nash performance at the Jones Beach Theater on Long Island the night the story ran in Newsday Aug. 16, 1985.

But Crosby was also full of regret, and self-loathing for the situation in which he had put himself. He had left a New Jersey rehab before he was ready for discharge a few months earlier. He was on probation in Texas, where he faced a potential prison term for gun and drug possession.

Late in the interview, Crosby, who was sitting facing the street, suddenly excused himself and went out through the fire door to which we were adjacent. When he came back to lunch, he was unable to pretend nothing had happened.

=======

DAVID CROSBY'S TIME TO FACE THE MUSIC

by Wayne Robins

David Crosby rambled down to lunch displaying his latest acquisition: a walkie-talkie.

"This is my new weapon," Crosby said animatedly. "It's a great bluff. It doesn't have any batteries." He had purchased it the night before, in case he was accosted while carrying cash to Western Union to wire to a friend. "I thought, 'hey, I can't carry a weapon. But if I [speak into the walkie-talkie] say, 'Charlie, I got a situation here,' they don't know what I'm talking about."

The suggestion that the walkie-talkie might make the portly long-haired Crosby looked like an undercover cop brought a wry half-smile to his face. But his mood––cheerful and expansive as he talked about the longevity and vitality of Crosby, Stills, and Nash––soon darkened as he talked about his 15-year-struggle with drugs, his anguished attempts to end his addiction, and the frightening prospect of spending five years in a Texas prison.

Crosby was arrested in April, 1982, at a nightclub in northwest Dallas. Police found him with a .45-cal automatic pistol and a quarter-gram of cocaine. "A quarter-gram," Crosby said. "That's enough to cover your index fingernail. In California, they would have laughed. In Texas, five years. Imagine a [judge's] mouth saying these words: 'I find you guilty, David Crosby. I sentence you to five years in the Texas State Penitentiary.'"

The conviction was at first overturned. The prosecutor appealed, and the conviction reinstated. Texas authorities released him on the condition that he check into a drug treatment program. Crosby checked into Fair Oaks Hospital, a drug and rehabilitation center in Summit, N.J. But after six or seven weeks, Crosby prematurely checked out on Feb. 24, 1985. Two days later, Crosby was arrested in New York for possession of a small amount of cocaine. He spent a week at the Rikers Island (New York City) prison hospital; he was released when he agreed not to fight extradition to Texas. Crosby remains free under appeal. [According to Ultimate Classic Rock magazine, the appeals were unsuccessful: on March 6, 1986, Crosby began serving his sentence. He was released on parole five months later, on Aug. 8. Despite his fears, Crosby later thanked the judge, crediting the jail stay with forcing him to detox from cocaine.]

Crosby admits that leaving Fair Oaks [now known as Summit Oaks], known for its celebrity clientele at the time, was not the wisest move. "It was a terrible mistake," Crosby said. "When you're kicking 15 years of chemical dependency––I had enough money to make that a real problem." Crosby said he had been using both cocaine and "the other drug." When I asked him if he meant heroin, Crosby said: "Yes."

Complicating Crosby kicking cocaine was the development of a new delivery system for taking the drug: freebasing, which Crosby understood as burning off the impurities and smoking the pure drug. Crack. "I was a drug PhD, man. But freebasing. It's a new thing and it's devastating. If it did that to me, imagine what it would do to a kid taking drugs for the first time. It was kind of like walking into an ambush blind-folded."

Unfortunately, his treatment at Fair Oaks wasn't successful. "I was in the center of this cyclone, man. I was going through the most turbulent, violent kind of re-arrangement of my psycho-chemical and physical-chemical structure. At that point, I was not sane. I was trying to do the right thing, but I was crazy. I couldn't hack it."

Crosby was bitter about not being allowed to play music in the rehab. He said that Graham Nash had sent him a synthesizer and tape machine, but he was not allowed to use it. Crosby said he told the doctors: "You don't understand. Music is my life, it is more of a tonic than anything they could possibly give me. They wouldn't even let me have a Walkman. I asked to play live music with a member of the staff who played drums, but they said it was against the rules." Putting on the mock-officious voice of a hospital administrator, he said they called playing music 'distracting from the prescribed course of actions." He added, though: "Music is the one thing that keeps me from missing drugs. I was mad. They were unfair and short-sighted. I walked out. I regret it."

I called Lisa Bensen, the assistant director of public relations at Fair Oaks, who said: "It is hospital policy not to comment on anyone's stay here."

The mood changed again as Crosby considered the enduring appeal of his music with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.

"Face it," Crosby said, smiling again. "I'm 43 years old. I've been doing this for 16 years with CSN and before that, four years with the Byrds. It should be geriatric rock by now. But our audience span is 15 to 50, with a third to half of it being kids, teenagers. I can give you no logical explanation. How do they know the words? It bodes well for us. It bespeaks an incredible longevity. We are in Fat City. It means there are people who want to hear us who we can sing to for years to come."

Crosby spoke about what gave CSN's songs, almost all from 1969 and 1970, with a few outliers, their durability. "Hearts were elated, broken, people lived and died. Real worry cut real lines in real faces. Loyalty, pride, very real stuff. That's what we drew the songs out of."

It would have been fine to end the story and the interview right there. But Crosby saw someone he knew outside the hotel, and he abruptly excused himself, said he'd be right back, as he went out the emergency exit door next to us. He came back about 15 minutes later. He seemed embarrassed, confused. He started to cry. "I just picked up, man," he told me between sobs. I did not ask what he took: he probably had enough time to have a few tokes from a crack pipe, or sniffs of coke.

My newspaper had just expanded from Long Island to compete in the New York newspaper market. I was ambitious. Rock Star Relapses! What a scoop! The other tabloids would have been chasing us for days. But David Crosby was not some avatar: he was a wounded human being. Reporting this relapse could have resulted in the prison door slamming on him. I did not include it in the story. I think I made the right decision. The only reason I tell it here, of course, is the David Crosby died Thursday, January 18, 2023, having somehow survived until age 81. Here's the end of the 1985 story, once Crosby retained a bit of his composure.

"I'm here trying to make my life––and other lives––better by singing songs. If I lose the next appeal, they're gonna put me in prison. I feel like I want to contribute. I'm not some destructive kind of criminal, I'm not. I don't think it's fair they put me in jail. I hope they don't." His voice breaking again, he said: "I'm real scared."

Crosby realizes that he brought much of his situation on himself, and that even if the legal battles are resolved, he still must summon the strength to conquer his other demons. "You know the phrase raison d'etre?" he asked. "It means reason for being. I have such a strong reason. Look at what they gave me to do here!" referring to his music and talent. "I ought to be down on my hands and knees thanking Him. If I incapacitate myself, or kill myself, I will be a chump and an ungrateful one. I will have disappointed so many people."

plaintext for darkmode

Spoiler