David Crosby
These days, David Crosby has a great deal to be thankful for. He’s clean and sober after years of drug addiction which at times,nearly cost him his life. At one point in his career,when his drug addiction was controlling him, Crosby started reading in magazines that his death was imminent.
“Back then,”he said,”most of the people who knew me really well were waiting for the phone call saying that I’d died. It didn’t look good,so I can understand people saying those things about me back then. Rolling Stone magazine wrote some pretty grim stuff which was mostly true. People magazine was pretty brutal but they turned around when I got straight and made something of myself again. They gave me about as much paper space on the positive side as on the negative side. A lot of people did write me off and you shouldn’t do that too soon.” Since successfully undergoing a transplant surgery, Crosby has regained much of the strength which disease and drug addiction had at one time drained from him. “His wife also has played a major role in his recovery. “I knew I loved Jan when I first met her,”Crosby said,”but we were into drugs for so long that I didn’t really realize the actual depth of the person until I got straight. She went through the whole downhill slide and the uphill climb with me. Jan has been real strong and I don’t think I would have managed to get sober without her. She was a major force in getting me to the meetings and helping me make the commitment.”
Crosby and his wife Jan, have recently had a son, Django, who’s one year old. His son’s birth has brought a peace and helped create a stability within the Crosby household which Crosby never really experienced until the past year. “He is the sweetest little guy you’ve ever seen and funnier then anybody’s business. My wife and I have been blessed with Django. He gives me a whole new reason to live.”
Crosby, who is currently touring throughout the summer with Crosby, Stills & Nash,currently has two questions which are perplexing him. One deals with his record label and the other is regarding his good friend and partner from the Byrds, Roger McGuinn. “CSN is being ignored completely by Atlantic Records,Crosby said,”If they have a hit,they can work that first single very well. That first Hootie single,which I sang the harmonies on,was a big hit. Atlantic can work a Hootie hit and then sell five million albums on it. But,they do not have the vaguest clue as far as the demographic audience who enjoys CSN and is interested in us. We’re very unhappy with them.”
Crosby’s most current Atlantic album”It’s All Coming Back To Me Now”
This album is a strong compilation of live material, initially recorded for radio syndication then released by Atlantic. “It’s a really good album,”he said. “It just rocks like crazy and it’s still in print. But,the people at Atlantic just didn’t care about it and didn’t do anything for it. We have meetings every day about our problems and I can’t say what we’re going to do. After all,we can’t put our business out on the street at this time.” For three years now,Crosby has considered a reunion with Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman to reform the seminal country/rock group the Byrds,for one more tour.
Today, the Byrds influence can be heard both on modern rock radio as well as country radio. Concert promoters across the country could book a Byrds reunion tour in their hometown venues. And,especially after the huge box office grosses another country/rock band reunion tour,The Eagles,earned over the past few years, there’s a renewed interest. Crosby says that both he and Hillman want to regroup and tour as the Byrds, but frontman Roger McGuinn has expressed no interest in the project, which puzzles Crosby. “Roger lives in Florida and I live in California,”Crosby said. There’s no amenity between us, but he doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to do it, and I would love to do it. I’m in a weird position. In CSN (David Crosby (guitar,vocals),Graham Nash(guitar vocals)& Steven Stills(guitar,vocals))I go out on tour and play big venues. I’m in a much more successful band. When Roger goes out on tour, he plays coffee houses. I have no idea why he wouldn’t want to join up with us and do that music. Because it is wonderful music,we made really good music. Roger is the leader of that band and I will gladly follow him as the leader of that band. The relative success we’ve both had in the time between the days of the Byrds and today don’t really count. I was supposed to be his wing man in the Byrds,and I would gladly once again take that spot. The Byrds music means a lot to me and Chris, Roger and I can make that music again.”
The Byrds music can still be heard in many of the songs by today’s modern rock and country music recording artists.
While Crosby acknowledges he hears a resemblance between The Byrds and some of the Generation X acts,he is not taking too much credit for the influence. “It was a natural evolution anyway,”he said. “I’m sure they don’t consciously say, ‘Yeah,we learned this trick from the Byrds.’ It happens pretty organically. Maybe some of them did listen,I mean how could you get away without having not listened to the Byrds. But for the most part I think it was pretty much organic.” You know,”he continued,”I liked the Kingston Trip as a kid (he said with a laugh). I thought they were great,obviously in hindsight they were schlock music, but I thought they were great back then. I was a big Everly Brothers fan also.” Crosby wants to pursue an acting career in the future. He played a pirate in the feature film “Hook”,a bartender in another feature film”Thunderheart” and had a cameo appearance on a TV episode of “Roseanne” “I just did a role in a TV movie called “Urban Legend”,”Crosby said. “That was a slightly bigger part and was a lot of fun. I wanted to be in acting before I started playing music. My father was a cinematographer and I’ve always wanted to be a character actor. I’ll keep acting whenever I can the time to coincide with my life. I would like to in the long run wind up being as good a character as I can pull off.”