Long Time Gone

I've commented a lot about David Crosby, who died this past week at 81, on this blog, and despite my occasional criticism of some of the things he's said and done, I've probably been fairer to him his detractors (and you know he had a lot of them) have been.

Crosby could be mean and vindictive, as his fallouts with Graham Nash and Neil Young proved, but if you caught him on a good day, he could be the nicest man you'd ever met.  His brutal honesty was his biggest asset, like when he dismissed the idea of Kanye West as a genius musician (the world has since discovered that he's neither), but it could also be his biggest liability, as we discovered when he played art critic and dissed a fan who painted a picture of Crosby as a token of his esteem.  

Inevitably, we have to judge Crosby's legacy by his music, and when you look at his inventive guitar tuning, his masterful singing and harmonizing, he looks pretty good.  And while Nash, Young and Stephen Stills were better and more consistent songwriters than Crosby was, songs such as "Guinnevere," "Long Time Gone," "Laughing," "Page 43," "Bittersweet" and "Shadow Captain" proved that he was hardly a bad songwriter; in fact, the Crosby songs I just mentioned are among the greatest in the Crosby, Stills and Nash and Crosby/Nash canons.

In his final years, Crosby was more comfortable with himself as a musician, and he knew exactly how he wanted to spend the last days of his life - with family, music and love.  I'm only sorry that he was unable to reach a rapprochement with his former groupmates in CSNY while he was alive.  Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young had a magic quality to them, and the silencing of Crosby only reminds us that such magic will never come this way again.  RIP.    

Foolish Man

That's the title of a song David Crosby wrote about himself.  It appears on his and Graham Nash's 1976 LP Whistling Down the Wire.  The song describes him well, for over the weekend he was whistling out of his rear end.

A fan of Crosby's on Twitter, operating under the name D.J.B. Sackett, showed Crosby this painting he did of the folk-rock legend on Crosby's Twitter account.  "Hope you are doing well," he said.  "Did a picture of you . . . thanks for the music."

Crosby's reply was anything but appreciative.  "This is the weirdest painting of me I have ever seen," he said.  "Don't quit your day job."

I like it.  What's wrong with it?  Okay, this Sackett guy is no Joni Mitchell, but then, who is?  

Crosby's callous disregard for a fan's token of esteem ranks right up there with Madonna's refusal to sign autographs for a pair of girls, saying to them, "Who are you?  You're nothing."  (She and Crosby were both born in the middle of August, so treating your admirers like dirt must be a Leo thing.)  It only underlines what a nasty, contemptible person he is.  It also makes me reconsider my theory that Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell only wrote their 1991 book The Worst Rock n Roll Records of All Time" as an excuse to say rotten things about David Crosby.  If that was the case, it was certainly justified.  

Crosby's nastiness is nothing new.  Behind that pure singing voice is one of the most unbearable personalities in all of rock and roll.  Chris Hillman, his former bandmate in the Byrds, remembered how Crosby would demand that Hillman be in perfect tune on their harmonies and would lash out at anyone who threatened him or whomever he perceived as a threat - except fellow Byrd Gene Clark, who was bigger than he.  "David Crosby was really lucky none of us popped him," Hillman said.  "He was really asking for it."  Crosby didn't quit the Byrds, by the way - he was fired.

And how about this quote from a fellow folk singer?  "He was the most arrogant, obnoxious person I'd ever met and totally disdainful of my cultural naiveté."  That was from John Denver, probably one of the nicest guys in 1970s pop.  If you're getting dissed by a guy whose music was as inoffensive as a Sears catalog, you must be a rhymes-with-glass-pole.

This is just one more reminder of why Graham Nash terminated his friendship with Crosby - and why he, Stephen Stills and Neil Young won't even talk to Crosby now, so, no, don't expect another CSN or CSNY project any time soon.  

In no way am I suggesting that Crosby is no more than a minimally talented musician.  (Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell would suggest that, but that's another issue.)  Crosby remains a masterful singer, and he's written some timeless songs such as "Guinevere," "Long Time Gone," "Delta" (which Jackson Browne forced him to finish by threatening him with physical violence when Crosby wanted to freebase some coke), "Homeward Through the Haze" and, well, "Foolish Man."  And to those of you who think his more recent solo work is the sort of placid folk music for Sunday breakfast shows on National Public Radio, well, a lot of people like that sort of music.  But none of that excuses his jerkish behavior or his arrogant attitude toward his fans.  Crosby, who turns 81 next month, is too old to change his stripes, and at this point, I would ask him to not to say anything at all (just sing "Anything At All"!) if he can't say anything nice.

Unless he's talking about Kanye West, of course.  Then Crosby can say anything nasty he wants.  

Now I understand why Elon Musk is backing out of his commitment to buy Twitter, where all of this brouhaha over David Crosby started.  Musk obviously doesn't need any of this crap if this is what free speech is all about, and he certainly doesn't need to own and oversee a social media platform used by David Crosby.

Crosby Versus Nash

In the realm of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, David Crosby and Graham Nash were often thought to be the George and Ringo of the quartet, but not only have they come up with tremendous songs in their work with Stephen Stills and/or Neil Young, they proved to be impressive as a duo.  Whenever internecine arguments caused the group to put their act on ice, Crosby and Nash would still work together, and they managed to come up with a sharp single such as 1972's "Immigration Man" and two fine albums from the mid-seventies - 1975's intense Wind On the Water and 1976's pensive and underrated Whistling Down the Wire.  Some of the work they did together was on par with their CSNY contributions and often superior to a good deal of Stephen Stills' solo work.

So it's really depressing to, in the wake of the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album, to find Crosby and Nash on the outs . . . and possibly for good.

The feud between Crosby and Nash (above, in 1976) dates back to the 2013 release of Nash's memoir "Wild Tales," in which Nash came down hard on Crosby for his drug use and how it affected the group, which famously recorded so infrequently that CSN and CSNY projects were always thought to be reunions.  Although Crosby had told Nash to go ahead and be honest about all of the anguish he caused him and Stills and Young, he was reported to have issues with how Nash characterized him in the book, saying that most of what Nash wrote was a pack of lies.

"Graham’s book is full of inaccuracies and chock-full of misinformation," Crosby told the Web site Ultimate Classic Rock. "When he handed [an advance copy] to me, he said, 'It’s too late to change anything, but here it is.' I was very unhappy about it. It’s a very shallow, very self-serving book, and full of BS."

As if that weren't bad enough, Crosby only made things worse with some nasty comments about actress Daryl Hannah when she started dating Neil Young.  (They wed in 2018.)  Crosby accused Hannah of being a predator in a 2014 interview, suggesting she was some sort of gold digger. Though he apologized to Young - "That was judgmental and stupid and careless and I regret it a lot," Crosby said, adding that Hannah was making Young happy and he wanted to see Young happy - Young has been cool to Crosby ever since, and Nash won't forgive Crosby for that slight.

Nash says there will never be another CSNY record or show again, and Young wholeheartedly agrees.  As for Stills, who has nothing to do with any of this, he is reportedly ticked off at Crosby as well.

I'm not going to defend Crosby for anything he's done. Everyone knows he's a jerk, even his best friends, and the other three have every right to be mad at him.  And truth be told, nothing Crosby has ever said or done has surprised or shocked me. When he turned out to be the sperm donor who produced a baby for Melissa Etheridge and her partner Julie Cypher, my jaw didn't drop because I was too busy laughing.  But I'm still sad over this.  I still hope that, even if Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young never record or perform again, they will still bury all of their hatchets.  As for Crosby, he ought to be damn grateful that Nash pulled him out of his many quagmires over the course of fifty years.

"I trusted my instincts with David," Nash said of his partner in 1991 about Crosby's near-fatal drug addiction.  "I felt he could bounce back, because I still believe that his problems are of self-image rather than anything else.  So he came back and I was there to love him and support him.  Because I think he's worth it."

Come on, Cros, remember everything you and Graham have been through, and how he helped you out.  Because he believed in you.  Don't let your own arrogance bust up for good a friendship that has lasted longer than many marriages.  You're both in your seventies, as are Stills and Young.  It would be a shame if any of you - but especially you and Nash - went to your graves without ever talking to each other again.         

Far Out West

David Crosby is a crusty, mean old curmudgeon.  And I'm grateful for that.

The 75-year-old veteran rocker drew a lot of flak in 2015 for dismissing Kanye West as a poser.  Rap fans and contemporary pop critics were quick to denounce him as an aging white male rockist who just didn't get that popular music had changed and that rock and roll was being defined by someone who was reclaiming it for the black Americans who invented it back in the fifties.  Well, Crosby doubled down on his criticisms only recently, saying that West "certainly can’t play anything, and he certainly doesn’t sing."

The Cros could have stopped there, but he had more to say on the issue. "The thing that bugs me about him is the 'I’m the world’s greatest living rock star.' Somebody needs to drive him over to Stevie Wonder’s house right now so he understands what a real one is."  He also said that West should listen to Ray Charles records to learn how to sing.

It would be easy to dismiss Crosby as someone as a musician hopelessly set in his ways, but such a dismissal wouldn't hold water.  Because even though he's admitted to having problems with rap in general, he's developed a respect for the form, which he admitted to starting out having hated.  As I recall, in a 1991 television interview, Crosby endorsed the messages in rap lyrics and singled out one Dana Owens of Newark, New Jersey (that would be Queen Latifah, of course) for special praise.  More recently, Crosby gave a thumbs-up to Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the acclaimed musical Hamilton, for being a fantastic songwriter.  So Crosby's problem with Kanye West is not so much with the fact that West is a rapper as it is with the fact that West is . . . Kanye West.

And it was shrewd of Crosby to compare West not to Bob Dylan or his buddy Neil Young and instead compare him to Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, and not necessarily because Charles was and Wonder is black.  He compared West to Charles and Wonder because they are heralded as geniuses, and West is famous for labeling himself as one.  As if to drive the point home that one does not have the right to anoint oneself a genius, Crosby used that very word to describe . . . Lin-Manuel Miranda.

None of this, of course, is going to insulate Crosby from further criticism.  But give him credit; in the past quarter century, he's shown himself to be more broadminded about rap than I'll ever be.  (That would also go for Stephen Stills, who let a rap act sample his Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth," and and for Graham Nash, who endorsed rap for its political lyrics.)   I understand that West is more broadminded about rock than I am about rap and has experimented with fusing the two forms on his records.  Yeah, well, that's what I've been told.  That's not going to change my opinion that rap isn't music.  Nor is it going to change my opinion about West, who clearly will resort to any trick to aggrandize himself.  (Do you want to know how many people got apoplectic when West teamed up with Paul McCartney?  Plenty!)  But I am aware that, for all my protests against rap, I'm going to be seen as an intolerant white guy by more than a few people.  Those of us who reject rap as music could make an argument against it purely based on aesthetics and win the debate with little effort.  But when rap fans set the aesthetic issue aside and bring up race in response, what can we do?     

The Cros at Seventy

If you had told me back in the early eighties that David Crosby would live to see his seventieth birthday, I never would have believed you.

Of all the rock stars of the sixties and seventies who were expected to destroy themselves, Crosby was the most likely to do so. He was driven by an insatiable appetite for just about anything that gave him pleasure, most notably drugs. His legendary cocaine freebasing got more headlines than his music, and he was also known for the kind of sexual selfishness that would make heavy metal stars blush. But through the love of a good woman (his wife Jan, whom he met around 1977) and the long arm of the law (he was wanted for cocaine possession and failing to show up for a court hearing in Texas, and he spent nine months in a Texas prison), he cleaned up his act and realized that his music was suffering. As the Cros himself put it, he knew he couldn't go down that path to self-destruction anymore . . . because there was no path.

Crosby's past personal life has made him the object of ridicule from his detractors in the rock press, but when you hear his music, be it from the Byrds, his solo work, and his many variations on his partnership with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young, you can understand why I come today to praise, not bury, him - and express my gratitude that we haven't buried him. He's a masterful singer, equally adept at lead and backing vocals - his harmonies are exquisite, and he's always been an adventurous instrumentalist. Crosby is known for his complex tunings and his sharp note enunciation, producing a guitar sound as clear and peerless as his voice.

As a composer, Crosby is admittedly less consistent than his former bandmates in the Byrds and his occasional buddies Stills, Nash and Young. Hey, why fib? The Cros has never been able to come up with enough interesting material to fill out an entire solo album, and he's always functioned better in a larger group. However, when he does function best, he functions very well indeed. His haunting ballad "Guinnevere," from the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album, is a masterpiece in understatement, and "Almost Cut My Hair" from the Crosby, Stills Nash and Young LP Deja Vu has a raw power to it that is countered by its self-winking, self-referencing lyrics. Listen to Wind On the Water, the second Crosby/Nash duo album, from 1975 - not a weak Crosby song on it! You don't want to be without the heavy blues of "Homeward Through the Haze," a Crosby tune many songwriters likely wish they could have written. Later songs, like the enigmatic "Shadow Captain," written with keyboardist Craig Doerge providing the music (from the 1977 CSN album) and "Delta" (from 1982's Crosby, Stills and Nash album Daylight Again) are also standouts.

In spite of his ability to impress musically when you least expect it (even his solo albums have the occasional gems, like "Laughing" from his first solo LP), Crosby will always be more notorious for his drug busts and personal quirks than for his music. When it turned out that he donated sperm to allow Melissa Etheridge and her then-partner Julie Cypher to sire a child, other people were aghast. Me, I was laughing my head off. Nothing Crosby does phases me anymore. The point of his life and career is that he's always been more of an outlaw than anyone else in the Los Angeles pop-rock scene than his peers. He was speaking out about the threat to alternative media at the same time Gil Scott-Heron was, and his penchant for motorcycles sort of contradict the gentle folk harmonies of his records. He's done some nasty things in his life, and he's even proven to be despicable at times, but that's all right.

Because if he weren't like that, he wouldn't be David Crosby. :-D

Happy birthday, Cros - let your freak flag fly!

(I plan to pick a Crosby-related Music Video Of the Week this Friday; my choice of a Billy Preston song for this Friday was to play belated tribute to a Concert For Bangla Desh participant.)