David Crosby has left us

[pops1]

Just listening to this on the news. David Crosby has left this earth but will remain in our hearts forever. He overcame so much in his life, rest in peace David.

[David Rambo]

RIP David. You are already missed.

[Jim Garber]

Takes me back to college days… CSN on a turntable.

[CarlM]

Here is some mandolin content as well. RIP David.

[Ranald]

I always thought singing "freak flag fly" without tripping over his tongue was quite an accomplishment!

[Jeff Mando]

I always thought singing "freak flag fly" without tripping over his tongue was quite an accomplishment!

One of my favorites! Actually, a lifetime of beautiful songs and harmonies. I was lucky to see CSN in NYC in 1979 at the No Nukes Rally.

RIP, David.

[Mark Gunter]

Another awesome musician RIP

[Ranger Bob]

<Removed by Moderator> Thought he was the poster child for self destructive behavior. But, his music was absolutely wonderful. People like this draw their creativity and music from sources not known to mortals.

[tmsweeney]

I furl my sails

[journeybear]

I'm in denial. Still processing the loss of Jeff Beck. My first concert was The Byrds on the "Turn! Turn! Turn!" tour in 1965. They were one of my favorite bands then and still are. By some odd happenstance, in 1970 I was living in a small town in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, some of his old stomping grounds. (There's a song on his first solo album, "Tamalpais High;" Mt. Tam was on the way up the PCH between San Francisco and Bolinas.) So happens, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane were living there, too. Visited them once by a bit of a fluke. There was an enormous living room, with so many guitars, amps, other instruments, and microphones set up all around it. I realized later that parts of "Blows Against The Empire" were recorded there. That means folks like David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, you name it, had been there at one time or other. No small thrill to have been there, so close to so much greatness. Crosby came here three years ago; great show. Thanks for the music, David Crosby. ❤️ RIP

[Don Grieser]

Wore out all my CSN&Y vinyls back in my high school and college days. Saw CSN&Y with Santana and The Band in Cleveland in the mid 70s. Amazing day of music.

Check out "Remember My Name" on your favorite streaming service. An excellent documentary on Crosby.

RIP David.

[Marcus CA]

Only saw him once --- on the first CSN&Y tour! (Thanks to my mom for taking me to that one, despite her preference for Frank Sinatra and Joan Baez.)

Just discovered If I Only Could Remember My Name ... about ten years ago, when a buddy was rightfully astounded that I had never listened to it. I still joyfully play that album a few times a year.

I second Don's recommendation of that documentary. Croz also gives some good commentary in the Echo in the Canyon documentary from a year or two earlier.

Yeah, he was one of those many major talents with major demons.

Here is my absolute favorite performance of his, all on his own.

[Dagger Gordon]

He did a very interesting interview with Fretboard Journal not so long ago. Talked a lot about early years, with a surprising amount of detail which I was impressed he could remember actually. RIP.
https://www.fretboardjournal.com/fea...and-harmonies/

[BradKlein]

A recent photo posted publicly by 'our own' Sarah Jarosz.
She says she contributed vocal tracks just days ago to an album of Crosby's, in the works.

[CES]

[MikeEdgerton]

I was a fan from day one. I still have this on vinyl. I think it's the first album I ever bought. Rest in Peace.

[pops1]

A friend send me this link for a great article about David, so I thought I'd post it here.

https://apple.news/AyTGgFqWrRkSBaAWkHFlhTQ

[Fretbear]

I got them old "'39 'Bone in the Arm Blues..."

[journeybear]

I'm uncomfortable with the deification of our heroes. I guess it's only natural, somehow, to think they are greater than the rest of us, and this process becomes magnified when one passes on. But they are, or were, human, with strengths and flaws, same as everyone. But because there is something extraordinary about them, some aspect of their existence which we find appealing or admirable or inspiring, we tend to concentrate on that and overlook the rest. This is a little unfair, to them as well as us. If it's at all possible to get as well-rounded an impression of them as one can, it helps to serve the cause of understanding.

That is what I think this interview of David Crosby illustrates. Conducted by a friend in 2014, he did a good job of asking questions that weren't the same overdone ones, and in so doing, got David to open up. I think it helped that the interviewer is an accomplished musician in his own right, and so understood certain aspects of musicmaking that other journalists might not have done.

So here is a somewhat long but illuminating interview, conducted by Mike Fornatale. It's from his facebook page, so there's a brief preamble.

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David Crosby August 14, 1941 – January 18, 2023

I don't have too many musical heroes that run deeper than David Crosby. I don't have any words right now. So here are some words from a few years back.

I was assigned to interview him on the occasion of his Summer 2014 comeback album, "Croz." I was concerned. There was always a chance, with David, that you could find him combative, uncommunicative, and rude.

OR, on July 27, 2014, you might have the best interview of your whole life. I guess I must have asked the right questions.
------------------------------
TWENTY (well, “around” twenty) QUESTIONS WITH DAVID CROSBY (July 2014)
IS THIS AN ALL-DAY PHONE-INTERVIEW MORASS FOR YOU TODAY?
No, no. They wouldn't dare.
THEY DID IT TO STILLS THE DAY I TALKED TO HIM A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO.
Ha! That's what he told you.
I'M GOING TO TRY TO ASK YOU QUESTIONS YOU HAVEN'T HEARD FOUR OR FIVE TIMES A DAY EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE. SO, DAVID, WHAT'S BOB DYLAN REALLY LIKE?
[laughs] Bob Dylan is a wonderful man. He is absolutely as crazy as a fruitcake, and utterly brilliant, and he likes being mysterious. And I'll never stop admiring him. He fiercely loves music. And he had a work ethic before any of us did, man, he would get up in the morning and sit down at the typewriter and just start cranking it out. Tap, tap, tap, "Visions of Johanna," done!
YOUR VOICE. AFTER ALL YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH, IT'S AS CLEAN AND AS CLEAR AS EVER. WHAT'S YOUR SECRET?
I don't know. I did everything wrong. I guess someone decided there was just more work for me to do.
DO YOU HAVE A WARMUP ROUTINE?
The best thing I know of to warm up is to sing as low a note as you can. That vibrates your cords. That's what works for me. But yes, I do have to warm up. In the CSN set we start off with "Carry On," but the second song is "Marrakesh Express," in which I have the high part. Higher than Nash. Good ####in' luck.
THERE'S THIS IDEA THAT ARTISTS DO THEIR GREATEST WORK WHEN THEY'RE IN THEIR WORST PAIN. AND, TO BE FAIR, YOU'VE BEEN A PRETTY GOOD POSTER BOY FOR THAT CONCEPT AT TIMES. BUT YOU SEEM SO HAPPY AND CENTERED NOWADAYS, AND SONGS ARE STILL POURING OUT OF YOU.
Well, that's because it's not true. The pain isn't when you do your best work. I think some people like to have their lives in disarray. They like to be able to be bad boys, and do hard drugs, and justify it by saying "it's how I get my art, maaan." And it's bullshit. Drugs do not help. Turmoil does not help. Being a shit to other people does not help. Living a shallow and meaningless life doesn't help. It's a load of crap.
WELL, I'M GOING TO SAY WE FOUGHT THIS ONE TO A DRAW, BECAUSE YOU WROTE MY FAVORITE DAVID CROSBY SONG WHEN YOU WERE AT YOUR LOWEST EBB.
Really! Which one?
DELTA.
Ah. Ahh! [long pause] Well, that's true. That was at a very bad time.
SO, AGAIN, THIS ONE'S A DRAW.
Well, maybe not. Here's the thing. "Delta" was the last song I wrote during that whole time. It was all just gone. I didn't write another song for two years, until I got sober, in prison. And then it finally started to come back. And I wrote a few lines that were okay, and I finished a song that wasn't very good, and another one that was a little better, and finally, all of a sudden I wrote "Compass." And I said, "Yes. It's not gone. I can still do it."
The song has to come first. If you don't have the song, then I don't care how much production you do, you're just polishing a turd. And if you don't have the song, you can't take people on that little voyage that you're trying to take them on. That's your job. The singer has to serve the song. Our job is not to set off pyrotechincs and wave a scarf around. Our job is to bring you a song that will take you on a voyage. And if we can't do that, we are cheese.
SPEAKING OF BAD TIMES IN YOUR LIFE -- WHAT DO YOU THINK OF "IF I COULD ONLY REMEMBER MY NAME" NOWADAYS?
I'm very proud of that record. It really holds up for me.
IT'S SO PERSONAL, SO...POST-TRAGIC, I GUESS. WAS IT SOMETHING YOU HAD TO DO? DID IT JUST SPILL OUT? OR AM I THINKING TOO HARD?
Well...you know the story. We were working on "Deja Vu," and I was having a terrible time with it. My girlfriend [Christine Hinton] had just been killed. I had absolutely no mental equipment to deal with that. And I'd end up coming to the studio, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall and crying. Useless. And the studio was the only thing I had. The only place where I even vaguely knew what to do. And I had all these "other" songs. And all these friends. Garcia, Nash, Lesh, Kaukonen, Kantner, Freiberg. And I was stacking up some pretty good harmonies at that point. "Tamalpais High," "Song With No Words." Nobody was doing anything like that. And the song that ends that album [“I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here”] is probably my best piece of music ever, and it was an improvisation.
I'VE HEARD YOU SPEAK OF THAT BEFORE, AND IT'S MIND-BOGGLING THAT THERE WAS NO BLUEPRINT FOR THAT SONG. IT FLOWS LIKE AN ORCHESTRAL PIECE.
It's six vocal parts, two minutes apiece. I think we cut the whole thing in fifteen minutes. I had this strange feeling that [Christine] was there in the room.
IF SHE WASN'T THERE WHEN YOU STARTED, SHE WAS THERE BY THE TIME YOU FINISHED.
Yeah, something happened. Because I transcended myself. I'd never done anything like that before, and I've never been able to do it since.
I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE THAT THE TITLE OF [the new album] "CROZ" IS A DELIBERATE ANSWER TO THE TITLE OF THAT ALBUM.
[laughs]
DID I CATCH YOU?
Yes.
A WORD NEEDS TO BE SAID ABOUT STEPHEN BARNCARD [engineer/producer.] ON SONGS LIKE "TRACTION IN THE RAIN" IT SOUNDS TO ME AS IF I'M SITTING INSIDE YOUR GUITAR.
Yeah! When I met him, he was an assistant engineer. And I said, no, this guy can really do it. He knows how to record an acoustic guitar. And he did a great job and we had a great time. I put him through a very rigorous experience but he really showed up for the deal.

<<<CONT'D>>>

[journeybear]

<<<CONT'D>>>

I'LL ASK YOU JUST ONE QUESTION ABOUT THE ORIGINAL BYRDS. TELL ME HOW IT FELT WHEN YOU FIRST HEARD SONGS LIKE "PSYCHODRAMA CITY" AND "IT HAPPENS EACH DAY" CRAWLING OUT OF THE VAULTS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN DECADES.
Mmmmm...embarrassing. You know, we left that stuff off of the albums for a reason.
I'M GOING TO DISAGREE. "IT HAPPENS EACH DAY" IN PARTICULAR IS, I THINK, A LOT BETTER THAN YOU REMEMBER.
Well, you're welcome to. [laughs] No, I mean, it just wasn't as good in our minds as the stuff that actually made it onto the record. Now I'm gonna have to go listen to it again.
ON THAT SUBJECT -- AT THIS LATE DATE, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE 1973 BYRDS REUNION ALBUM?
That's a very underrated album, I think.
I'M HAPPY TO HEAR YOU SAY THAT. A LOT OF FANS TURN THEIR NOSES UP AT IT, BUT I LOVE THAT RECORD.
I do too. I think a big part of the problem was...well, me. By that time I had been a gigantic success, and I think I just threw my weight around in the studio more than I should have. If I had given Roger more of a free hand, more support to be "the leader," it would've been a better record. The Byrds' chemistry really worked best when Roger was in charge.
AND YOU HAD THE BAND RE-DO "LAUGHING." DID YOU JUST WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER CRACK AT IT, OR HAD YOU ALWAYS HEARD IT AS A SONG FOR THE BYRDS?
No, it was them. They liked it. I think it was Gene who chose it.
NOW. THE 1974 CSN&Y TOUR. IT'S LEGENDARY. IT WAS THE FIRST REAL "STADIUM TOUR." BUT NONE OF YOU SEEM TO HAVE VERY GOOD MEMORIES OF IT. YOU, FAMOUSLY, REFERRED TO IT AS "THE DOOM TOUR."
Well, let me put it in context. When I said that, I was talking about the management, the agents, the money, and the egos, and the politics, and the huge size of it. None of which had anything to do with the music. The music on that tour was just -- brave.
SO MANY PREVIOUSLY-UNHEARD SONGS, AND A SET LIST THAT CHANGED EVERY NIGHT.
And that's what I loved about it. And you can hear on the new album, now, just how brave it was. Someone would come up with a new song, play it once, and then the next night a couple of us would be out there singing harmonies.
I really loved, especially, two of Neil's songs. "Don't Be Denied," and "Pushed It Over the End."
I THINK THIS IS MY FAVORITE VERSION OF "DON'T BE DENIED."
Mine too. And "Pushed It Over the End," you get two different versions of. The one on the DVD is pretty amazing. But the other one, the audio one, is maybe the most intense musical experience I've ever had.
IT WAS NASH AND JOEL BERNSTEIN THAT PLOWED THROUGH ALL THE TAPES, RIGHT?
Yeah, and Stanley Johnson, the engineer. He did an unbelievably good job making it all sound like it was recorded in the same acoustic environment, which it definitely was not. And Nash and Bernstein worked on this thing for literally years.
I'm intensely proud of it. It pushes the envelope. It doesn't play it safe. I don't like music that plays it safe. Maybe I just heard too much jazz when I was a kid.
NO, DAVID, I THINK YOU HEARD EXACTLY ENOUGH JAZZ WHEN YOU WERE A KID.
Ha ha! Thank you, man.
SPEAKING OF WHICH, THERE ARE TWO PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE THAT I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT. FIRST, YOUR FATHER. [Academy Award-Winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby]
My dad was a very interesting guy. Born in 1900, went through the Wall Street crash in 1929, went through the depression. Commissioned directly into the Army Air Corps at the beginning of the war, and spent five entire years in a B-24 bomber, because he was a cinematographer who could properly film things. He was part of a generation that was very stoic. It was not cool to express your emotions at all. I do not remember him ever saying the words "I love you." Ever. But an ethical guy, a stand-up guy. Much to be admired, in hindsight. When I quit being an idiot, and started paying attention. Pretty wonderful man.
AND THE OTHER PERSON I'M GOING TO ASK YOU ABOUT IS [the late guitarist] MICHAEL HEDGES. BECAUSE HE SEEMS TO HAVE FALLEN OFF OF OUR COLLECTIVE RADAR.
God, how can that be? He's influenced so many guitar players. He was one of my best friends. And I met him in the most wonderful way. He was in the parking lot at a 7-11 store in Mill Valley, in a Volkswagen van, and he saw me go in. So he waited. And when I came out, he was just sitting there, with the sliding door open, playing [his song] "Aerial Boundaries."
AHHH, GOOD MOVE.
And as I walked past, I looked over, and my first thought was, "where's the other guitar player?" And I walked over there with my bag of groceries, and just watched him, thinking, "How...what the...how is he...what the ####?" [laughs] So I asked him his name, and we were best friends from that moment on.
HERE'S SOMETHING INTERESTING I NOTICED YESTERDAY. HAVE YOU GOOGLED YOURSELF LATELY?
No.
THEN YOU'LL BE INTERESTED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TYPE IN "DAVID CROS..." THE FIRST SUGGESTION IS, OF COURSE, "DAVID CROSBY." THE SECOND SUGGESTION IS "DAVID CROSBY NET WORTH."
[laughs] Oh! Yeah! I have seen that one! I'm supposed to be worth $240 million! One of the richest men on Earth! God, that is so funny.
I DIDN'T EVEN LOOK UP THE ANSWER. I JUST FOUND IT INTERESTING THAT THAT WAS THE SECOND MOST POPULAR SEARCH. FOLLOWED BY "DAVID CROSBY TOUR" AND "DAVID CROSBY HEALTH." "DAVID CROSBY DRUGS" IS WAY DOWN THE LIST.
And that one is sooo much more important! [laughs] I really wish the second one were true!
But no, right now I'm struggling to hold on to my house. I drive a 2004 Ford truck. I had to sell my boat, and I'd had it for fifty years. It's just how life works. Money wasn't what I came to the party for, and I couldn't have cared less. I spent it, gave it away, donated it. Money came so easily, and I just never paid any attention. I cared about music, and love, and family, and -- you know -- real shit.
PERFECTLY SAID. AND NOW I'M GOING TO ASK YOU THE SAME TWO FINAL QUESTIONS I ASKED STILLS.
Go.
TELL ME SOMETHING WONDERFUL ABOUT NEIL YOUNG.
He loves to push the envelope, and he's set the bar so extremely high. He's written so many of the best songs I've ever heard. "Old Man" being one of my most favorite. He sees his own life, and then he lets you see it. And he's so empathetic to the old man in the song.
TELL ME SOMETHING AWFUL ABOUT NEIL YOUNG.
[laughs] He's selfish.

[jmagill]

CSN & CSNY were pivotal in my development as a musician.

I never got to meet Crosby, but I did get to spend some time on his boat in Key West when my band was playing at Sloppy Joe's back in the early '80s.

Thanks for the music, David.

[journeybear]

Well, now! I think this is the first time I've seen anyone else here has had a Key West sojourn in his or her history. That was before my time, though - my first venture here was winter of 1988. Were you playing mandolin in that band? I've long held out hope I was the first to play mandolin at Sloppy Joe's (one of the top venues here).

[jmagill]

Rick Bouley and I were a duo called Hot Shandy with Rick on guitar and me on mandolin. In the late ‘70s we were part of the vibrant music scene around Chapel Hill that also included Mike Cross, the Red Clay Ramblers, the Bluegrass Alliance, Tony Williamson, Touchstone et al.

In ’79, some nurses we knew rented a house in Key West for the winter, so, with a place to stay, we headed south.

We started our careers busking on Mallory Square for Sunset, but soon got daily gigs at Billie’s and Pepe’s Cafe on the weekends. For a while we were a four-piece with Clay Buckner (of the Red Clay Ramblers) on fiddle, and Zan McLeod (of Touchstone) on guitars and bass. Soon we were one of the house bands at Sloppy Joe’s and we played there every winter for five years.

For more about Hot Shandy and our recordings see this page. I used a 1980 Monteleone Grand Artist model that John built for me on both albums.

Sorry for the diversion, folks.

[CarlM]

Here is Leland Sklar's memories of David he posted today. In it he says they were scheduled to tour together later this year. It contains some of David's more recent work, some of it quite a bit different than what we are used to hearing and covering a broader range of style.

[catmandu2]

I was a young rocker but upon hearing Four Way Street I bought an acoustic and set upon the canon.