Freak, Asshole, and Forever Icon

“To be creative, you have to be unapproachable and secretive. Not necessarily violent and ugly, just unfriendly and distracting.” Bob Dylan told me last month. “You are self-sufficient and you are always focused.”

That is David Crosbywho died on Thursday at the age of 81, after a lifetime of not searching for fame and fortune, but the elusive spark of creativity that Dylan spoke of.

After his death, Crosby was remembered for so many things – myths, anti-symbols, Boomer symbols, killers and even assholes – all of which emphasized precisely the life path that he took. he chose: one of the real creators and collaborators, and not some others. the mere dead. Freak flags, like a writer put it, is flying at half a foot. It all fits and looks nice (even the asshole part), and is sure to make the typical bubbly Crosby laugh to his very distinctive chuckle.

I first met Crosby after a gig by Crosby, Stills & Nash, the group he co-founded and occasionally featured Neil Young, over 30 years ago. To put it bluntly, the performance was less than excellent. But Crosby had lived several lives by then—creative, sure, but also wild, hedonistic, and often cursed. He topped the charts with The Byrds and CSNY, and played Woodstock and toured stadiums at a time when that was unheard of. But he was also more than once the cause of his groups collapsing and burning, burial a soul mate, overdosed countless times, and ended up hard time in prisonstereotype, for better or worse, of what comes later in rock ‘n’ roll.

But I really got to know Crosby about a decade ago, when I interviewed him about box set recorded CSNY’s big 1974 tour. When he greeted me at the door of his hotel room, he looked me up and down, narrowed his eyes, then smiled and said, “I’m not a reporter. You are one of us, man!

I explained that I’m actually a musician, but with days of being able to do just that, and that alone, long ago, I started writing about what I love.

“Tell me, man,” he exclaimed, clearly angry at the idea of ​​not being able to make a living with music. “These are dark times.”

He invites me in, before rushing to his laptop to finish his latest Twitter brawl—something he loves almost as much as composing music. I was promised 20 minutes with Crosby, but more than three hours later, because he was late for a sound check for his performance at New York’s Beacon Theater that night, we were still over there. We had a long discussion about his hit albums with The Byrds. (His favorite is 1967 Younger Than Yesterday. “That was when we were adults,” he said.) We also discussed his 1988 memoir, Absence for a long time, his addiction problems, his fractured relationships with various band mates, and what excites him is the new music he’s making, which he’s already playing. raw mixes from my laptop. But when the clock ticked, I started packing.

“Hey, man, are you coming to the show tonight?” he asked as I walked out the door. Then he caught himself.

“You know, you barely ask about CSNY,” he said.

I told him I wasn’t really a fan; that I grew up in punk and old-school soul, and that, while I love certain genres of music, I also consider the group to be the ancestor of the dark side of the music industry, on the one hand. culminating in the sensitive “profit beyond art” of Eagles.

He narrowed his eyes at me intently. For a second, I thought Crosby might attack me; Of course, his reputation for being hot-tempered predates him long ago. But then he let out a big, long laugh.

“I get it, man,” he said, with a wide smile on his face. “Let’s continue this soon. I think we have more to talk about.”

I know I made friends, and I wasn’t wrong. Over the next decade, I interviewed Crosby several times. Sure, he’s bubbly and obstinate, but he never gets upset; never played a rock star’s game promoting his latest project. He always says what he thinks – what kind of person Trump is name heheKanye is a pretenderJim Morrison was “simply hooked”—but in such a frank and refreshing way that, even as we disagreed and fought, I found Crosby to be nothing short of endearing and utterly attached. .

This was all during his career renaissance. While his peers racked up endless rounds of victories, Crosby, never known as a musician, released a new series of albums that peaked during the Byrds and His CSNY. In fact, in 2021 Free of chargeCrosby’s most recent studio album, live album and concert film with his Lighthouse Band, Live at the Capitol Theaterfrom last year, continuing a hot series that started with Crozi in 2014 and further adopted Lighthouse (2016), trail in the sky (2017), and Here If You Listen (2018). Perhaps often sounding more like his beloved Steely Dan than CSNY, Crosby’s recent work offers songs that are more varied, poignant and elegant than even his most famous work. What’s more, he seems to be having a better time doing it than at any other point in his career that can only be called both genre-shaping and turbulent.

He’s excited about the reception to his recent recordings, as his solo work is often omitted (with the possible exception of the 1971 recordings). If I could only remember my name, has long been a favorite of indie and Americana artists). Unusually modest about it all, Crosby says it’s the skill he feels has truly marked his career: the ability to collaborate.

“It is something that I am capable of,” he explained when we said in 2021. “That’s something I have a following. I can see the chemical reaction as it’s happening. I know when a chemical reaction occurs. I have an antenna that only receives that, which is huge. And when I get the chance to do it with someone who can do it, I cherish that, work on it, try to befriend them, and try to be available in any way that I can to make it happen. out with them. Because it’s like two painters: If you have seven colors on your palette and then you team up with someone who has seven other colors, then you have 14. It would be a better picture. That person will always think about something that you don’t think about. And so there’s more depth, more spread, more ideas, more structure, more stuff.”

After that first meeting, Crosby and I remained connected without recording. We’ve been texting and chatting about everything from his love of Joni Mitchell to political injustices to the latest music industry rumors. He often complains about his inability to foresee a creative reconciliation with his “musical brothers” Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman of The Byrds, whom he holds dearly.

He told me in 2021, it’s obviously heartbreaking to think about: “I don’t think there’s going to be a close relationship, man.” “I have repeatedly asked those people to sing with me and they always refuse me. I asked them maybe 10 times. And they always say no.”

He is less troubled by his irreconcilable differences with Neil Young, Stephen Stills, and especially Graham Nash that has recently appeared in the press.

“It’s getting smaller,” he said in 2017, clear. “I mean, what was the last CSN record that you thought was great? But if Neil comes in and says, ’10 million dollars a guy, I need two months.’ Strong. I can pay off the house. I will do it. I am an adult. I understand what is at stake. But there is no joy there.”

In many of our conversations, however, he expressed nothing but respect for Young, and never missed an opportunity to praise his musical talent and record-making skills. Stills great sound. However, he did not have time for Nash. The man who, from the outside, stood by Crosby in his darkest times hardly deserves a mention.

“That’s because he’s from another place, man,” Crosby said, his voice rising bitterly. “He was in a pop band, so that was really his direction: to be an important, successful pop star in the world. I love that guy, but his book is where things go awry. It is a book of considerable dishonesty. He makes himself look great, but whenever he needs… something wild to push the story forward, he uses my stories. It is not cool. It’s not okay; and all that was known, anyway. But he did it from a different point of view, where he added everything to make him look great and I looked terrible.”

But, again, it’s Crosby. He feels offended, he has the bill, and he won’t ignore or say nothing. Scored or not, he never misses an opportunity to fight injustice. From Nash to the “greedy assholes” at Spotify to his ever-present Trump bag, I’ve always known where Croz — as anyone who knows him even a little bit calls him — stands.

“I knew I was coming to the end of my life,” he tells me in 2021. “So you end up looking at it and you don’t know if you have two weeks or 10 years. You really don’t. But did you know that what you do with your time is what matters. That’s where the rubber meets the road. How do you use that time? You spend it waiting to die? No. You spend it making as much art as you can, because it’s your gig and it’s the only contribution you can make to the world. And the damn world needs it. It’s a damn grim place. It takes a lift, and music a lift, man. It makes everything better. So whenever I have time, I like to spend it making things better. I want to spend it creating good works of art that will outlast me.”

And he made it.

“Crosby is a colorful and unpredictable character, dressed in Mandrake the Magician robes, doesn’t get along with too many people, and has a wonderful voice—an architect of harmony,” Dylan writes of Crosby. in his 2004 book Chronicles: Volume One. “He can terrify an entire neighborhood by himself. I like him very much.”

Me too. Rest in peace, David. Fly high.