David Crosby doc hits some jarring notes
After “Echo in the Canyon,” “The Quiet One” and “Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love” comes “David Crosby: Remember My Name,” and the pool of music themed documentaries is beginning to overflow.
Directed by A.J. Eaton, whose only previous credit is a 2007 documentary short, and produced by director and former Rolling Stone reporter Cameron Crowe, director of “Almost Famous” and “We Bought a Zoo,” the film is a portrait of the musician David Crosby, and like its subject, it is a bit of an odd beast.
It is not a history of the folk-rock band The Byrds, which Crosby cofounded, or Crosby, Still & Nash or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, groups that Crosby also co-founded and helped make him one of the most famous musicians of the 1960s and ’70s, although those bands all have a role in the film.
“David Crosby: Remember My Name” is a portrait of the 77-yearold musician as he lives and breathes (by some miracle) today, warts and all, and if not unapologetic, not really very apologetic. Crosby wrote or co-wrote such memorable tunes as “Eight Miles High,” “Guinnevere,” “Wooden Ships” and the fatuous anthem “Almost Cut My Hair.” He performed at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and at Woodstock in 1969. His work with various bands has sold 35 million records.
His standing as a giant is not in doubt. His worth as a human being is what is the subject of discussion much of the time in “Remember My Name.” Is it relevant? And do I care?
He was by his own account a troublemaker. He was fired from the Byrds by the other members.
Neal Young, the last CSN&Y band member to be on speaking terms with Crosby, who has suffered two or three heart attacks and has eight stents, has cut him off. The film recounts the death of Crosby’s longtime girlfriend Christine Hinton in a car accident in 1969, something that helped send him spiraling into a drug-fueled abyss. An avid sailor, Crosby bought a 59-foot, John Alden-designed schooner with money borrowed from musician Peter Tork of the Monkees clocked thousands of miles sailing in the Pacific and the Caribbean. That’s all kind of interesting.
The problem with “David Crosby: Remember My Name” is that it offers Crosby a platform to expand upon a number of nonmusical subjects. He admits that he “hurt a lot of girls,” which is probably true of many male rock stars. He takes responsibility for the overdose death of one former lover while he was addicted to coke and heroin. But most of his “old sage” pronouncements, including his unwavering dislike of Jim Morrison, the long-dead front man of the Doors, come across as trivial, delusional, false and insincere. A nine-month stretch in a Texas jail in 1982 for possession of cocaine and heroin arguably saved his life. But it did not end his use of drugs or runins with the law.
Much of the life and times of David Crosby, who continues to tour in his eighth decade because he needs the money, suggests the film be retitled “If Only I Could Remember My Name.”
(“David Crosby: Remember My Name” contains profanity, drug references and brief nudity.)