Even at 77 years old, David Crosby hasn’t given up defying convention. In the Sixties and
Seventies, at the height of his commercial popularity, that involved
challenging political and sexual attitudes. These days—certainly, when I saw
him a few days ago at the Bergen Performing Arts Center (BergenPAC) in my hometown of Englewood, NJ—he was
about overturning audience expectations for an oldies set.
As he worked through a first half containing
material released only in the last few years, Crosby noted that this was not
something that artists with his career of hits was supposed to do. “But I have
a habit of doing things you’re not supposed to do,” he added with a chuckle.
The audience chuckled at this wink at the problems
with substance abuse and the law that blighted his career in the Eighties. Under
the circumstances, it was miraculous that the veteran rock ‘n’ roller was even
alive, let alone ambulatory.
But, as this last week of his fall tour revealed,
the singer-songwriter remains not just uncompromising but also creative. Since
2014, he has released four solo CDs of surprising depth and variety, and the resonant
voice that contributed so much to The Byrds and the multipart harmonies of
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young has lost little to age.
Rather than squawking for old hits, the BergenPAC
audience—slanted heavily toward the Baby Boom generation—rewarded him with a
respectful hearing for his newer efforts and appreciation for his continuing
activism (“Thanks for speaking out!” one female fan near me yelled).
Oh, that “and friends” part of the billing? It was
never in the cards that this would include Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil
Young. The fallout these last few years has been considerable, from Crosby’s
blunt comments about actress Daryl Hannah, the woman Young dumped for his wife of
nearly 40 years (a “purely poisonous predator”) to Nash’s depiction in his
memoir a few years ago of Crosby’s randy younger days.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that, with
expectations tamped down for all-too-familiar songs from a half-century ago,
Crosby has been able to experiment with “friends” Michael League (of Snarky
Puppy), Becca Stevens, and Michelle Willis—musicians nearly four decades
Crosby’s junior who collaborated with him on his two most recent releases, last
year’s Lighthouse and this fall’s Here If You Listen.
The results are both wonderfully old and new: the
multi-instrumental League provides the kind of versatility that Stills
displayed with CSNY; the four singers do a nice job of approximating the
intricate vocal web of CSNY; Stevens and Willis represent female perspectives
that CSNY did not have; and one can hear jazz textures in the vocals that have
increasingly interested Crosby.
What was additionally surprising was Crosby’s
willingness not merely to collaborate with his younger colleagues, but even
cede the stage to them. He not only made sure to credit them with fleshing out
ideas lying undeveloped for years in his vast tape archive, but even allowed
them to spotlight their own contributions, such as Willis’ “Janet,” about the
uselessness of jealousy, and Stevens’ “Regina.”
I do wish that Crosby had juxtaposed his newer songs
with his older ones on the same subject. For instance, he noted that his recent
warning of climate-induced aqua apocalypse, Vagrants of Venice,” is science-fiction,
just like “Wooden Ships.” But having whetted the audience’s interest, he never
got around to playing the latter haunting song he wrote in his CSNY heyday with
the late Paul Kantner.
But there is also a warmth and tenderness in this
version of “Croz” that was largely missing from his younger, edgier self.
Sixties Crosby’s “Triad,” about the advantages of a menage a trois, led to a quarrel that contributed in no small part
to his expulsion from The Byrds. These days, though, he sings unabashedly of
his love for his wife of more than three decades, Jan, in “The Things We Do for
Love”: “At first it’s just fun / but love is long / a little each day / you
build it that way.”
Crosby and his three accomplished younger “friends”
finished their regular set with longtime favorites “Guinevere,” “Carry Me,” and
“Déjà Vu” (the closing number for the second set), before concluding with two
rapturously received encores, “Woodstock” and “Ohio” (his favorite CSNY tune).
Much has changed since the only other time I saw
Crosby live, in Central Park with Graham Nash in the mid-Seventies. Much has
changed since then, and not only because the former hippie can no longer sing
“Almost Cut My Hair” without irony.
Ironically, Crosby has been producing the best work
of his non-CSNY career at a time when not only musical tastes have shifted, but
the distribution of songs makes it harder for the average fan to find his work.
If he can maintain what remains of his health (these days, diabetes has become
a concern), you will not be seeing a tired retread but an artist who refuses to
go gentle into that good night.
