Quote of the Day (David Crosby, on His ‘Terrible Mistake’ in Using Heroin)

“Heroin is a beautiful high the first time. And then it's just a horror of trying to recapture that beauty, which you can never do. At a certain point, it defeats you completely.  Your life becomes useless because you're driving a car where the steering wheel is not attached. You have no control. Me becoming a junkie was the worst thing I did to my partners. That's how I let them down, where the rift between us started. I so wish I had avoided that, but there's no point in being dishonest about having made a terrible mistake.” —Rock ‘n’ roller David Crosby quoted in Alan Paul, “Weekend Confidential: David Crosby—A Legend Faces the End by Making Music,” The Wall Street Journal, July 6-7, 2019

Singer-songwriter David Crosby was born 80 years ago today in Los Angeles. A founding member of the influential bands The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, he might also be their most infuriating.

Crosby is only half right about drug addiction driving a wedge between him and his bandmates. That substance abuse was so protracted, so embarrassing, and so life-threatening that one is tempted to accept it at face value.

What tends to be forgotten is that ego and lack of impulse control over his tongue did the rest.

 Before the pandemic, Roger McGuinn—surely recalling tensions that led to Crosby's firing from the Byrds in 1967—issued a statement dismissing Crosby’s trial balloon of a Byrds reunion: “DC is not hated but that doesn’t mean anyone wants to work with him.”

As for Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young, at last report none is speaking to him anymore, making any notion of a get-together with them even more unlikely.

All of this comes at an increasingly difficult time for Crosby, in terms of his health and finances. His struggles with diabetes and heart disease have been known for some time. But now, the musician notes in a June 30 interview with Rolling Stone, tendonitis in his hands has affected his guitar playing to the point where “I’m down 20 percent from where I was at my best, and it’s deteriorating pretty steadily.”

Ordinary people might wonder how an artist who recorded some of the bestselling music of the rock era could hit financial trouble, but Crosby also admits that the inability to tour has impacted his bottom line enough that only the sale of his song catalog prevented him from losing his home. (As a corollary, he might also have observed that his arrests and detox efforts in the Eighties—not to mention his recent health issues and the lack of a payday from CSNY tour or even concert in the last several years—combined to put him into this predicament.)

If I sound impatient with Crosby, it is because I judge few people more severely than those who have wasted their talents—and, having seen Crosby four decades apart, I have little doubt that he has them in abundance, even when he has been prodigal in their use.

Even before Cameron Crowe’s 2019 documentary, David Crosby: Remember My Name, I had seen just the year before (as I observed in this post from the time), in a concert in my hometown of Englewood, NJ, that the musician remained not only in good voice but committed to writing intriguing new material.

This summer brings fresh confirmation of the latter trend with the release of Crosby’s new CD, For Free. (Yes, the title cut is his cover version of the song by his old lover, Joni Mitchell.) Consider that this CD is his fifth solo collection since 2014, while in the 30 prior years he released only three.

I am glad that Crosby is releasing so much good work at last. Too bad it took the prospects of insolvency and mortality to do so. And too bad if that fine content came as the music industry, like Hamlet, discovered that “the time is out of joint”—with the old Geffen-like “starmaking machinery” unable to reach a younger generation that, like the one which made Crosby and his contemporaries stars, is all too forgetful of the singers and songwriters who came before them.

Flashback, September 1970: CSNY’s Mitchell-Inspired ‘Our House’ Released as Single

Fifty years ago this month, Atlantic Records released as a single “Our House,” the third and last song from the Deja Vu album to reach the top 100 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Following one month after Crosby Stills Nash and Young’s rushed release of “Ohio” as a stand-alone song and six months after “Woodstock,” this tender love song did not burn with combustible fervor as warm the heart—at least superficially.

As CSNY bandmate Stephen Stills had done the prior year with “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” Graham Nash was inspired to compose his song by a relationship with a folk music queen. But, while Stills wrote out of frustration over his seesawing romance with Judy Collins, Nash poured out his feelings at the zenith of his love affair with Joni Mitchell.

After eating breakfast on Ventura Boulevard, Nash and Mitchell stopped at a small antique store, where Mitchell purchased a vase, Nash later remembered: 

“It was a kind of a cold gray morning as it sometimes can be in Los Angeles, and I said, ‘Why don’t I light the fire and you put some flowers in the vase that you just bought.’ So she’s cutting stems and leaves and arranging flowers in this vase, and I’d lit the fire. Now, my and Joan’s life at the time were far from ordinary … and I thought, ‘What an ordinary moment.’ Here I am lighting the fire for my old lady and she’s putting flowers in this vase that she just bought.”

Nash promptly sat down at the piano in their home in Laurel Canyon and, within an hour to an hour and a half, wrote “Our House.”

The details evoked in the song—as well as the event that inspired it—represent an ideal of domesticity, at least in the home shared by Nash and Mitchell in Laurel Canyon—a community of friends who listened to each other’s music, dreamed of a better world—and tried to negotiate personal relationships enough to be close and intimate but not possessive.

Domesticity, as practiced by Nash and Mitchell, meant living together outside of marriage. Young people today might find this surprising, given that 7.5 million unmarried American couples now cohabit, but the concept was nearly nonexistent in 1960, according to a 2012 study by the National Institute of Health.  

Such relationships, however, had come into vogue in the counterculture. It especially suited a bohemian like Mitchell, much of whose subsequent work reflected her oscillation between emotional closeness and the personal freedom she required as an artist. “We don’t need no piece of paper from the city,” she sang in “My Old Man.”

The relationship between her and Nash came into existence not only because of personal attraction, but through their Laurel Canyon community’s ideals of friendship and freedom.

“I can only liken it to Vienna at the turn of the century or Paris in the Thirties,” Nash remembered in the documentary Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind. “There was this freedom in the air, this sense that we could do anything. We were scruffy kids that were, in some small way, were changing the world and changing the way we think about things.”

Mitchell had originally been involved with CSNY bandmate David Crosby, who yielded when he sensed the growing attraction between her and Nash.

“Our House” was not the only indication of Mitchell’s influence on CSNY: they also recast her quietly meditative “Woodstock” into an electrified anthem of the counterculture.

Mitchell's influence on Nash's work lasted longer than their relationship, however.

“I had sworn my heart to Graham in a way that I didn’t think was possible, and he wanted me to marry him," she noted years later. "I had agreed to it, and then I just started thinking that my grandmother was a frustrated poet and musician and she kicked the kitchen door off of the hinges on the farm…As much as I loved and cared for Graham, I just thought I’d end up like my grandmother.”

Nash got a telegram from Greece from Joni that ended, “If you hold sand too tightly, it will run through your fingers.” “It was Joan’s way of saying goodbye to me,” Nash recalled. The two would go on to other partners but would remain close friends.

The recording sessions for the Déjà Vu LP were among the most difficult in rock history, with the band members often nitpicking particular tracks. One wonders if even a seemingly simple tune like “Our House” elicited this same rough treatment.

Not everyone was enthused with “Our House.” Four years after its release, Rolling Stone’s Langdon Winner called it “a flyweight ditty with nothing to say and makes this clear through its simpering melody.”

But the song has become a staple of classic rock stations, and will probably endure long after Nash and the rest of CSNY are no more.

Concert Review: ‘David Crosby and Friends,’ BergenPAC, Englewood NJ

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).

The only other time I saw Crosby live was 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.

Amazingly, 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.

Song Lyric of the Day (David Crosby, Influencing Newt?)

“So you see what we can do
Is to try something new —that is if you're crazy too
But I don't really see, why can't we go on as three.”—“Triad,” written by David Crosby, from the CD 4 Way Street, performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (1971)

What a difference sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll makes! In October 1967, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman sacked Byrds bandmate David Crosby for pushing the group too hard to play his songs. The last straw was probably “Triad,” which the future CSNY legend later stated was about “lust and perversion.” Even for the bohemian atmosphere of Sixties rock ‘n’ roll, Crosby’s mating call for multiples was the equivalent of stepping on the third rail.

But the song did end up getting performed--not just by CSNY, but also by Jefferson Airplane, on their 1968 “Crown of Creation” LP. And so, it began to penetrate, slowly, into the general public consciousness.

Could it be that one of those affected was Newt Gingrich? You’d never think that the man who advised members of the Occupy Wall Street movement to go home and take a bath would ever consort with protesters who took a walk on the wild side. But in the late 1960s, while a grad student at Tulane University, that’s exactly what he did. It was beyond simply going one toke over the line. No, it turns out, according to an essay by Tim Wise, that during this time, Gingrich also backed the idea that the student newspaper should be allowed to print photos of nude statues with enlarged genitalia, along with shots of the sculptor himself also in the altogether.

Maybe at one of these protest sessions, Newt first heard Crosby’s musings about a different kind of love. That might be speculation, but where else could such an innocent, impressionable mind such as Gingrich’s find out about this stuff?

In the old days, they used to call “this stuff” “free love,” but today’s Tea Party-friendly Newt would probably call it something else. “Free,” after all, sounds vaguely Communistic. He’d probably want to label it “an opportunity relationship,” though the “opportunity” sounds as if it would have benefited one person only: himself.

Which brings us, inevitably, to his role in the increasingly nutty GOP Presidential race. The same day that Gingrich heard that Rick Perry was not only withdrawing, but throwing his support behind him, the news broke of the ABC News interview with the former House Speaker’s second wife, in which Marianne Gingrich claimed that he pressed her for an “open marriage” as their relationship came to an end.

Former White House speechwriter Peggy Noonan wasn’t alone among Republican old pros when she speculated, in her weekly Wall Street Journal column, that the latter news “is going to have an impact. ” The funny thing was, that view turned out to be dead wrong--at least for now.

It’s hard not to interpret Gingrich’s double-digit victory margin in the South Carolina primary as “Annoy the Media Day.” How else to view this tally as anything but that, in a state with evangelicals who, under normal circumstances, would shake their heads and flood talk-radio stations with complaints about the shame of this all?

In the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky imbroglio, all the old, familiar rules about politicians and sexual waywardness have been scrambled. Clinton and Rudolph Guiliani went out of office with sky-high ratings, but the public didn’t look so kindly on others. Arnold Schwarzegger earned a “Sperminator” tag for knocking up the family help, and John Edwards finds himself with all doors to future high office closed to him for the foreseeable future, even if he survives his current simultaneous legal and health crises.

In this world-turned-upside-down, Anthony Weiner lost favor in his heavily Democratic district in New York--yes, the same place that most South Carolinians probably view as akin to Sodom and Gomorrah--after his experiments with social media turned him into a national joke. How unlike the big, fat wet electoral kiss South Carolina voters just bestowed on Gingrich!

Predictably, Gingrich has lambasted the media for dredging up a matter more than a decade old and not concentrating on real issues. Many people are going to find that a bit odd coming from the same politician who brought up a matter nearly a half century old--i.e., his speculation that the “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior” that President Obama inherited from his father is “the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

Gingrich has called Marianne Gingrich’s claim about the open marriage “false,” but he is saying this on the stump. Were he to be hauled into court on the matter, he might be forced into an admission to the contrary (as Bill Clinton was, five years after denying any involvement with Gennifer Flowers), or run the risk of having a jury weigh his ex-’s truthfulness versus his own. Based on his past admitted adulteries and his reprimand for violating House ethics rules, such a test is hardly a slam dunk for Gingrich.

Like Clinton--so like him in his academic leanings outside of politics, his baby-boomer background, his outsized ambition and ego, and his difficulties with marriage vows--Gingrich has become a marker in the culture wars. Some, in fact, might find him a bizarre cross between Clinton and Edwards, then somehow squared--a serial philanderer who cheated not just on one wife, but two--wives, be it noted, who were about to experience severe health crises.