David Crosby

David Crosby, an icon of American rock, has died. A co-founder of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young influenced a generation of rockers and singer ...

So the feeling of being able to look at myself now and be proud of myself - oh, boy, that's a big deal. Look in his eyes and see the dark. WESTERVELT: When the documentary about Crosby came out, he told me he's at peace with who he'd become, despite the burned bridges and lost friends. CROSBY, STILLS AND NASH: (Singing) Speak your mind, man, yeah. And we were horrible to each other many, many times - all of us. In the meetings, they tell you it's a moment of clarity. And we were competing all the time, the whole time. Graham Nash wanted out of the pop rock group the Hollies. And Crosby had just been kicked out of The Byrds. As soon as we sang one of Stephen's songs, you know, he's a great songwriter. He was the founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. But their foundation was a unique California sound built on harmonies, acoustic guitars and a dose of self-awareness often missing in rock lyrics.

The singer-songwriter died peacefully after a long illness.

His 1982 arrest in Texas on drug and weapons charges led to a five-month prison stay. * His legacy will continue to live on through his legendary music.

Music legend David Crosby, co-founder of the '60s rock bands the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, has died at the age of 81. In a statement made to Variety, ...

“Although he is no longer here with us, his humanity and kind soul will continue to guide and inspire us.” “He was lovingly surrounded by his wife and soulmate Jan and son Django. In a statement, his wife said it was with great sadness after a long illness David passed away.

Croz was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. By Jon Dolan ...

In 2004, he pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon when police found a gun and a small quantity of marijuana in his hotel room the night after a concert in New York. He received a liver transplant in 1994, and recorded another album with CSN, the commercially unsuccessful After the Storm. In 1995, he reunited with his son Raymond, who he’d given up for adoption in the Sixties, and they recorded three albums together as CPR. “Stephen always felt that Nash and I were resentful or trying to obstruct him,” Crosby wrote in Long Time Gone. “Roger and Chris [Hillman] drove up in a pair of Porsches and said that I was crazy, impossible to work with, an egomaniac,” Crosby told Rolling Stone in 1970. “Nash and I always felt that Stephen was overbearing. “It is with a deep and profound sadness that I learned that my friend David Crosby has passed,” Crosby’s former bandmate Nash wrote in a statement. “It was a result of losing him, of losing John Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Woodstock was a time where there was a prevailing feeling of harmony.” The trio — which became a quartet in 1969 when Neil Young joined their ranks — played a major role in the development of folk rock, country rock, and the emergent “California sound” that dominated rock radio throughout the mid-Seventies. Croz wrote many of their most beloved tunes, including “Almost Cut My Hair,” “Long Time Gone,” and “Déjà Vu.” Crosby was a founding member of the Byrds, playing guitar and contributing harmony vocals to their most enduring songs, including “Eight Miles High,” “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” and “Turn!

Crosby was a prominent figure of the free-spirited 1970s Laurel Canyon scene who helped bring folk-rock mainstream with both The Byrds and Crosby, ...

Years of well-documented substance abuse led to tumultuous relationships in and out of music, multiple arrests and a nine-month stint in a Texas prison in the '80s. His songwriting contributions also pushed the band in new directions — in particular, the rhythmic cadences of "Déjà Vu" and the loose arrangements and boho instrumental tone of "Wooden Ships." But in later years, it made him a natural for the concise and quippy nature of Twitter. Its self-titled 1969 debut led to an performance at Woodstock and a Grammy for best new artist, while 1970's Déjà Vu — by which point Neil Young had joined, adding another letter to the band's name — touched on both the comforts of tradition and the seismic generational shifts that were underway. His older brother, Ethan, introduced him to jazz, a genre he would touch on throughout his career, including with his late '90s / early '00s band CPR and on a ruminative 2017 solo album, Sky Trails. and [Bob Dylan](https://www.npr.org/artists/15193203/bob-dylan)'s "Mr. At loose ends, he immersed himself in sailing, one of his childhood passions, buying a schooner for $25,000 with money borrowed from The Monkees' Peter Tork. He added five solo albums to his catalog between 2014 and 2021, and toured frequently with two sets of collaborators, the Lighthouse Band (which featured "The idea of cooperative effort to make something bigger than any one person could ever do was stuck in my head," he wrote in his 1988 autobiography, Long Time Gone. [Pete Seeger](https://www.npr.org/artists/15869924/pete-seeger)'s "Turn! His publicist confirmed the artist's death to NPR; no cause of death was given at the time of this report. Crosby had long dealt with serious health problems, including multiple heart attacks, diabetes and hepatitis C, for which he had a liver transplant in 1994.

The founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash was surrounded by family when he passed away after a "long illness".

Outside of music, Crosby was politically outspoken and often controversial. Their hits included a cover of the Bob Dylan track Tambourine Man. At this time, we respectfully and kindly ask for privacy as we grieve and try to deal with our profound loss.

David Crosby, the brash rock musician who evolved from a baby-faced harmony singer with the Byrds to a mustachioed hippie superstar and an ongoing ...

Like so many folk performers, Crosby was dazzled by the Beatles’ 1964 movie A Hard Day’s Night and decided to become a rock star. Crosby, meanwhile, was so devastated by the death of girlfriend Christine Hinton in a car accident, that he would lay on the studio floor and sob. “I regretted losing him many times,” Crosby told the AP of Raymond in 1998. Featuring a rougher, less unified sound, the album released in 1970 and was another commercial smash. In recent years, Crosby toured often, and candidly answered questions on Twitter with a blend of affection and exasperation, whether commenting on rock star peers or assessing the quality of a fan’s marijuana joint. Crosby was exposed early to classical, folk and jazz music. The band was joined by Neil Young, who had feuded with Stills while both were in Buffalo Springfield and continued to do so. Crosby had produced Mitchell’s first album, Song to a Seagull, in 1968, and for a time was her boyfriend (as was Nash). Crosby, Stills and Nash’s first meeting is part of rock folklore: Stills and Crosby were at Joni Mitchell’s house in 1968 (Stills would contend they were at Mama Cass’), working on the ballad “You Don’t Have to Cry,” when Nash suggested they start over again. Crosby was angered by Nash’s 2013 memoir “Wild Tales” (whiny and dishonest, he called it) and relations between the two spilled into an ugly public feud, with Nash and Crosby agreeing on one thing: Crosby, Stills and Nash was finished. Their spirited harmonies and themes of peace and love became emblematic of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was a twinkly-eyed hippie patriarch, the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s long-haired stoner in Easy Rider.

American rock legend David Crosby has died aged 81 following a long illness, his wife Jan Dance announced on Friday. Crosby, one of the most influential ...

Crosby, one of the most influential rock singers of the 1960s and ’70s, was a founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash (later becoming Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). American rock legend David Crosby has died aged 81 following a long illness, his wife Jan Dance announced on Friday. US rock legend David Crosby passes away at 81

BMG has paid tribute to David Crosby, who has died aged 81. The music legend was a recording artist and publishing client of BMG, as well as being a BMG ...

[David Crosby: Remember My Name](https://www.musicweek.com/labels/read/fred-casimir-on-bmg-s-david-bowie-documentary-and-the-music-company-s-growing-film-division/086450), produced by Cameron Crowe and directed by AJ Eaton. Crosby attended the premiere along with BMG execs including [CEO Hartwig Masuch](https://www.musicweek.com/media/read/david-bowie-film-moonage-daydream-is-2022-s-biggest-documentary-at-the-box-office/087142). He would go on to form the Grammy-winning supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN) in 1968, before Neil Young joined the band adding his name (CSN&Y). One of the all-time greats, we remember David through his incredible music, poignant words, and electric performances. [Rock & Roll Hall of Fame](https://www.musicweek.com/talent/read/lyor-cohen-on-the-future-of-the-rock-roll-hall-of-fame/084521) for his work with both The Byrds and CSN, Crosby released his first solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name in 1971. The company posted on social media that Crosby was “one of the all-time greats, we remember David through his incredible music, poignant words, and electric performances”.

Crosby, who co-founded both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash, had been ill for some time.

There followed periods of ill health, and a liver transplant in 1994. A six-decade career culminated in his final album, For Free, released in 2021. He was renowned for his guitar-playing and vocal harmonies. Following the musician's death, Graham Nash wrote on social media that his late collaborator was "fearless in life and in music" and left behind a "tremendous void". Crosby later expressed regret over his addictions and altercations with co-stars, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2019 he was "ashamed" of some of his past behaviours. His substance abuse had reportedly intensified after the death of a girlfriend in a car crash when he was a young man.

The singer and songwriter, who died this week, created music that helped define an era and stretched across generations. Listen to six decades of tracks ...

Written with the members of the Lighthouse Band, “Balanced on a Pin” contemplates fragility and mortality: “Landing’s the hardest part/The connection comes apart,” Crosby sings. “Curved Air” — written with his son James Raymond — is briskly percussive and rhythmically unpredictable, with flamenco-like handclaps and a bass line that talks back to him. There’s more than a hint of Crosby’s lifelong admiration for Mitchell in “Holding On to Nothing,” with its calmly strummed, eccentric chords and asymmetrical melody. In 1971, Crosby released his perfectly atmospheric solo debut album, “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” backed by members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane as well as Joni Mitchell, who joined the backup harmonies on this song. “Don’t you wonder what’s going on down under you?” the members of this supergroup harmonized at a key moment in this wonderfully complex musical and verbal construction. Boomers can remember when the length of a man’s hair signified a political allegiance. Survivors from opposite sides of a war, who don’t even know “who won,” share their meager supplies, deciding they can be “free and easy” on the water. The song would emerge anyway: first with the Jefferson Airplane, later on “4 Way Street” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Written by Crosby and Jim McGuinn (who would later rename himself Roger), “I See You” shows their shared interest in Indian music and John Coltrane’s jazz. He was also happy to dissolve that voice, and the ego it implied, into shared vocal harmonies: with the Byrds, with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young) and with his 21st-century group, the Lighthouse Band. Is it a love song or a rush of hallucinations? The singer and songwriter, who died this week, created music that helped define an era and stretched across generations.

Crosby could be overbearing and convinced of his own brilliance – but despite the ups and downs of his time with the Byrds and CSNY, he was always proven ...

He also became an enthusiastic user of Twitter – he was still tweeting the day before he died – on which he was variously funny, provocative, infuriating, generous, wilfully argumentative, clearly obsessed with music, and never above reminding the world of his own talent. Soulless and stilted, American Dream was a largely awful album – Compass, which Crosby had written in prison, was a rare highlight among a dearth of decent material – and, if anything, the subsequent CSNY album Live It Up was even worse, a hopeless attempt to marry their harmonies to the booming drums and glossy synth production that was still mainstream US rock’s default setting. It was a problem that also afflicted his post-prison solo albums Oh Yes I Can and Thousand Roads, although anyone prepared to dig deep would find a scattering of songs suggesting his skills were undiminished – the reflective and rueful Tracks in the Dust, the wordless Flying Man on the former, the Mitchell co-write Yvette in English on the latter. After Crosby emerged from a nine-month stretch in prison on drugs and weapons charges – a sentence that almost undoubtedly saved his life – Young proved true to his word. Just how intent he was is laid out in his 1988 autobiography Long Time Gone, a book that spares few details in documenting his descent: the open sores that covered his face and body, the squalid conditions in which he and partner, Jan Dance, lived, the crowd of dealers and fellow addicts he surrounded himself with – so sinister that even the musicians still willing to work with him dubbed them “the Manson Family” – the endless string of drug and firearms busts. A man who had battled the Byrds to get as many of his songs as possible on their albums managed only three compositions on 1977’s CSN, an album that sold 6m copies: if the sense of exploratory magic that sparkled throughout Crosby Stills and Nash’s debut had been replaced by solid professionalism, its sound fitted neatly with that year’s vogue for smooth, Californian rock (tellingly, it was at No 2 in the US charts when Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours was at No 1). Nash began publicly expressing the view that Crosby was going to die; Young responded to his plight with the scathing Hippie Dream, a song that depicted Crosby in his ruin, “capsized in excess”. The album’s poppier material was Nash’s work, while Crosby came up with more expansive and exploratory exercises in mood and atmosphere of which Games was a particularly great example. It was a huge hit, establishing CSN as the premier example of that most late 60s of concepts, the supergroup. Yet the Byrds had initially demurred from recording his material: it was hard to find room in among the souped-up folk songs and Dylan covers and the work of the band’s frontman McGuinn and chief songwriter Gene Clark. He forced his fellow Byrds to listen to a collection of Ravi Shankar ragas and John Coltrane’s Africa/Brass over and over again while touring the UK: the two albums inspired the groundbreaking Eight Miles High, widely considered to be the first psychedelic single ever released. He successfully lobbied for his song Lady Friend to be released as a single: it was both a flop and a superb song, richly melodic, boasting an intricate brass arrangement and complex vocal harmonies.

NPR's A Martinez talks to Michael Walker, author of Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood, about David Crosby's legacy.

And it really struck me as a really interesting point of view for life and for his career because in the studio he was known to be a very - he would be a - he was known to be a pretty difficult guy, but he was always pushing the envelope with the musicians he worked with to not just get it good, but to get it great. WALKER: Well, that was - he was a man that really - he was a sensualist. So how was he important, then, to the sound of both bands? Here with more on the legacy of David Crosby is Michael Walker, author of a book about the Laurel Canyon scene. But the three of them together is absolutely unmistakable. And it's a tribute to his talent and his perseverance that he was able to end his career performing again. He was the co-founder of two iconic bands. But his voice, this little keening tenor, was the glue that held that all together. And this is a man that could con a 76-foot schooner across the Pacific for thousands of miles with a joint in one hand and a sextant in the other. The Byrds were early pioneers of psychedelic rock. GRAHAM NASH: Whatever vocal sound that Crosby, Stills & Nash has was born in less than 40 seconds - no rehearsing that vocal blend. Folk-rock legend David Crosby has died at the age of 81.