Focus of LA rock community later was co-founder of CSNY
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 troubadour in Crosby, Stills, Nash & (sometimes) Young, has died at 81.
The New York Times reported, based on a text message from Crosby’s sister in law, that the musician died Wednesday night. Several media outlets reported Crosby’s death citing anonymous sources; The Associated Press was unable to reach Crosby’s representatives and his widow.
Crosby underwent a liver transplant in 1994 after decades of drug use and survived diabetes, hepatitis C and heart surgery in his 70s.
While he only wrote a handful of widely known songs, Crosby was on the front lines of the cultural revolution of the ’60s and ’70s — whether triumphing with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young on stage at Woodstock or mourning the assassination of Robert Kennedy in “Long Time Gone.”
He was a founder and focus of the Los Angeles rock music community from which such performers as the Eagles and Jackson Browne later emerged. He was a twinkly-eyed hippie patriarch, the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s long-haired stoner in “Easy Rider.”
Crosby advocated for peace, but was an unrepentant loudmouth who acknowledged that many of the musicians he worked with no longer spoke to him.
Crosby kicked addiction in 1985 and 1986 during a year’s prison stretch in Texas on drug and weapons charges. The conviction eventually was overturned.
“I’ve always said that I picked up the guitar as a shortcut to sex and after my first joint I was sure that if everyone smoked dope there’d be an end to war,” Crosby said in his 1988 autobiography, “Long Time Gone,” co-written with Carl Gottlieb. “I was right about the sex. I was wrong when it came to drugs.”
He lived years longer than even he expected and in his 70s enjoyed a creative renaissance, issuing several solo albums while collaborating with others including his son James Raymond.
While his solo career thrived, his seemingly lifetime bond with Nash dissolved. Crosby was angered by Nash’s 2013 memoir “Wild Tales” and relations between the two spilled into an ugly public feud, with Nash and Crosby agreeing that Crosby, Stills and Nash was finished.
Crosby became a star in the mid-1960s with the seminal folk-rock group the Byrds, known for such hits as “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” He contributed harmonies that were a key part of the band’s innovative blend of the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
Troubled relations with bandmates pushed Crosby out of the Byrds and into a new group. 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. Nash’s high harmony added a magical layer to Stills’ rough bottom and Crosby’s mellow middle and a supergroup was born.
Their eponymous debut album was an instant success that redefined commercial music. The songs were longer and more personal, yet easily relatable for an audience also embracing a more open lifestyle.
Their spirited harmonies and themes of peace and love became emblematic of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their version of the Mitchell song “Woodstock” was the theme for the documentary about the 1969 rock concert during which the group made only its second live appearance together. Crosby had produced Mitchell’s first album, “Song to a Seagull,” in 1968, and for a time was her boyfriend.
Now wearing the mustache that would define him, Crosby provided harmony and rhythm guitar, and his songs reflected his own volatile personality.
Crosby was born David Van Cortlandt Crosby on Aug. 14, 1941, in Los Angeles.
He married longtime girlfriend Jan Dance in 1987. The couple had a son, Django, in 1995.
Crosby also had a daughter, Donovan, with Debbie Donovan.
In 2000, Melissa Etheridge revealed that Crosby was the father of the two children she shared with then-partner Julie Cypher. Cypher carried the children Crosby fathered by artificial insemination, Etheridge told Rolling Stone.