Singer-songwriter-guitarist David Crosby, a founding member of two popular and highly influential ’60s rock units, the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash (later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), has died. He was 81 years old.
His wife has issued a statement Varietywriting, “It is with great sadness that our beloved David (Crose) Crosby has passed away. He was lovingly surrounded by his wife and soul mate Jan and son Django. He is no longer with us, his humanity and kind spirit guide us and will inspire. His legacy will live on through his legendary music. Peace, love and harmony to David and all he touched. We will miss him greatly. At this time, we respectfully and graciously ask for privacy as we grieve and cope with our profound loss. We try. Thanks for the love and prayers.”
Along with bandmates Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke, Crosby set the template for ’60s LA folk-rock in The Byrds during his whirlwind 1964-67 tenure in the group.
Amidst the glow of LA’s late-’60s Laurel Canyon scene with Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills and Graham Nash of the Hollies, Crosby started CS&N, whose multi-platinum 1968 debut inaugurated rock’s supergroup era.
The addition of another volatile member, Steele’s former Buffalo Springfield colleague Neil Young, added to the commercial brilliance of the act. However, a constant clash of egos within Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, fueled by the era’s rock excesses, brought the act to a standstill during the ’70s, although its members would sporadically regroup over the years as a recording and touring unit. Crosby’s most stable relationship was with Nash: the pair recorded and toured regularly into the new millennium.
Although never the lead songwriter in either the Byrds or CSN&Y, Crosby was an integral part of the densely layered harmony front line that launched both of those acts’ multiple chart hits.
A hedonistic figure of the ’60s sex-drugs-and-rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, he had been mired in addiction for many years. His sensational 1982 arrest on drug and weapons charges in Texas led to a five-month prison sentence in 1986. Suffering from years of cocaine and alcohol abuse, he underwent liver transplant surgery in 1994.
Although he never returned to the popular eminence of his early years, Crosby had a record and profitable tour in the 2000s.
He was twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of the Byrds (1991) and Crosby, Steele and Nash (1997).
Crosby was a child of Hollywood privilege. He was the son of cinematographer Floyd Crosby, who won an Oscar for his work on FW Murnau’s 1931 feature “Tabu.” Raised in LA and Santa Barbara, he was an apathetic student who gravitated to acting and music at an early age.
Dropping out of Santa Barbara City College to pursue a career in music, he became involved in the professional folk music scene through a brief membership in Les Baxter’s Balladeers, a limelight-style unit organized by the famous composer-arranger.
He began working LA folk clubs as a solo act; During a set at the Troubadour, his crisp tenor voice caught the attention of Jim Dixon, house engineer at Richard Buck’s LA label World Pacific Records. Dixon began featuring Crosby as a solo artist, but those sessions eventually led to the formation of the band.
LA’s nascent singer-songwriter scene was then coalescing around the Folk Den, the front room of the Santa Monica Boulevard club Troubadour. One evening in 1964, the headstrong Crosby inserted himself into a jam session featuring two well-traveled young folk singers. McGuinn (then known by his birth name, Jim; he soon changed his name to Roger after joining the spiritual movement Subud) had previously worked with urban folk outfits the Limeliters and the Chad Mitchell Trio, and had met Crosby during a visit to Santa Barbara. Stop from previous actions. Clark was a member of another clean-cut folk act, the New Christy Minstrels.
Although McGuinn was wary of Crosby’s extroverted, opinionated persona, he was influenced by the Beatles and envisioned the formation of a new group; Crosby’s access to free studio time at World Pacific led to the first sessions with McGuinn, Crosby and Clark under the collective handle Jet Set.
Under the name The Beefeaters, the trio released a flop single on Elektra Records, but soon reformed themselves as a full-fledged rock act reflecting the influence of The Beatles’ ’64 debut feature “A Hard Day’s Night.” The lineup was rounded out by the addition of neophyte bassist Chris Hillmen, formerly mandolinist with the bluegrass-oriented World Pacific group The Hillmen, and the unskilled but photogenic drummer Michael Clarke.
Renamed the Byrds in apparent imitation of the Fab Four, the act was signed to Columbia Records in late 1964 based on promotional efforts by Dixon, who was now managing the band. Momentarily, the well-connected Dixon asked his act to cover a new song written by one of his friends, folk star Bob Dylan.
Released as the Byrds’ first single, Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” jumped to No. 1 on the US singles chart in early 1965; The eponymous debut album peaked at number 6. By that time, the group was the reigning attraction of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, thanks to a high-profile residency at Ciro’s. For the next two years, Crosby’s group would reign as American pop’s answer to the Beatles, and would influence a host of similarly styled folk-rock acts. All of their Columbia albums during that period reached the US Top 25.
Although Crosby’s pure, booming voice was a key part of the unit’s sound, he took a back seat as a writer to bandmates McGuinn and Clarke, who were responsible for the group’s hit originals. Crosby-penned singles “Lady Friend” and “Why” failed to catch fire. The emotionally unstable Clark’s departure from the group in 1966 only exacerbated the tension between McGuinn and Crosby.
In 1967, a feud within the Birds erupted. In June, the band appeared at the historic Monterey Pop Festival in Northern California; The politically outspoken Crosby angered McGuinn with some of his onstage comments and angered his bandmate by sitting through most of their set with Buffalo Springfield. In a move that could be considered payback, McGuinn vetoed the release of a new Crosby composition, “Triad”, about a trois’s sexual relationship; The song would eventually find a home on Crown’s San Francisco friends Jefferson Airplane’s 1968 album “Crown of Creation.”
Finally, in October 1967, McGuinn and Hillman drove their Porsches to Crosby’s Beverly Glen home and drove him away from the Birds.
Amidst the then-burgeoning musical colony in LA’s lush Laurel Canyon, the newly minted Crosby began jamming with his friends Stephen Stills, whose LA-based band Buffalo Springfield had recently been caught in the middle of internecine strife, and Graham Nash, who had met the other two. A 1966 tour of America with his Manchester, England group The Hollies. After a deal brokered by David Geffen released the three musicians from their outstanding contractual obligations, Crosby, Stills and Nash signed to Atlantic Records.
The group’s self-titled album was released in May 1969; It featured three notable Crosby compositions – the ballad “Guinevere” (a love song inspired by his girlfriend Christine Hinton and her former lover Joni Mitchell, who later entered into a relationship with Nash), the apocalyptic “Wooden Ships” (co-written by Stills and Paul Kantner with, and Kantner’s group Jefferson Airplane) and the whirlwind “Long Time Gone” cover the same year.
The harmonious album vaulted to number 6 on the US charts, and eventually certified sales of over 4 million copies. In August 1969, already ubiquitous on the American airwaves, the group made their second concert appearance – with new member Neil Young in tow – before half a million people at the Woodstock Music Festival in Bethel, NY.
The addition of Young to a lineup now billed as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young added to the group’s already powerful commercial influence. The superstar quartet’s 1970 album “Déjà Vu” rocketed to No. 1 and eventually sold 7 million copies; 1971’s “4-Way Street,” a two-LP live set drawn from their later American tour, also claimed the top spot and went quadruple-platinum.
However, Crosby’s personal problems continued to grow at the height of CSN&Y’s popularity. Already an avid user of cocaine, Hinton turned to heroin after he was killed in a 1970 car accident. Although by no means a stranger to drug use himself, Young was appalled by Crosby’s behavior and the constant tension and disorder within the group, and withdrew to focus on his solo career, although he would return to tour with the other members in 1974.
Despite his poor condition, Crosby released a debut single in 1971, “If I Could Only Remember My Name”, which reached number 12 in 1971; He received all-star support from Nash, Young, Joni Mitchell and members of Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Santana.
In 1972, a reunion of the original Byrds lineup of Crosby, McGuinn, Clark, Hillman and Clark was engineered by David Geffen for his Asylum label, and McGuinn, who led the act after Crosby’s exit, disbanded the then-current version. group. However, although the 1973 release “Byrds” managed to reach number 20 on the US album chart, the set was largely dismissed by critics, and the members went their separate ways. No other new material was ever released under the Byrds name.
Graham Nash was Crosby’s reliable partner and constant collaborator in the 70s: together they recorded “Graham Nash/David Crosby” (No. 4, 1972), “Wind on the Water” (No. 6, 1975) and “Whistle Down the Wire”. (No. 26, 1976).However, what began as a 1976 CSN&Y studio reunion featured the odd man out: their vocals were omitted from the project, which was released in 1976 as “Long May You Run,” billed to the Stills-Young Band.
However, CS&N managed to bury the hatchet long enough to record “CSN” (No. 2, 1977) and “Daylight Again” (No. 4, 1982). But the year after the second album was released, Crosby’s personal life became more public.
In April 1982, he was arrested in a Dallas nightclub and charged with possession of a .45-caliber handgun and a pipe used to freebase cocaine. Convicted in 1983, he eventually served five years in prison with five months left in 1986 — the year after another drunken bust in Northern California. He later credited the Texas Convict for ending his cocaine addiction. (His run-ins with the law continued in later years. He was convicted and fined for possession of marijuana and a firearm in 2004. In 2015, he hit a jogger with his car in Santa Ynez, California, but was not charged in the incident.)
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunited in 1985 for a performance at Pharm Aid. In 1986, they appeared seven times as headliners at the Bridge School Concert, a benefit hosted by Neil Young and his then-wife Peggy. A Northern California school serving disabled children.
Crosby continued his solo career with “Oh Yes I Can” (No. 104, 1989) and “A Thousand Roads” (No. 133, 1993). Her most unusual collaborative effort, the drollly named CPR, was founded in 1996, when she reunited with her son, pianist James Raymond, who was born in 1962 and given up for adoption by his mother after a brief relationship with Crosby. The band, which also included guitarist Jeff Paver, released four independent albums from 1998–2001. Crosby and Nash released a pair of self-titled cuts in 2004, reaching number 142.
His last solo recording, “Croz,” was released in 2014.
Crosby returned to acting in the 90s, appearing in “The Joan Larroquette Show” (as the star’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor) and “Roseanne,” and the films “Hook” and “Thunderheart.” He also voiced two cartoon cameos on “The Simpsons.”
With Carl Gottlieb, he wrote two memoirs, “Long Gone” (1988) and “Then: How I Lived and Survived” (2007). In 2000 he published “Stand and Be Counted,” a history of activism in music with David Bender.
Crosby is survived by his wife Jan Dance, his son Django, son James Raymond, and two daughters, Erica and Donovan, from previous relationships. In 2000, it was revealed by singer Melissa Etheridge that Crosby was the biological father of two children born to Etheridge’s then-partner Julie Cypher via artificial insemination.
