With life in free fall, Crosby unloads
His mortality looms over the documentary like a sickly fog. His pending doom is much on his mind as he recites a litany of health woes. He begs for more time and even predicts his death. “I will have a heart attack within the next couple years,” he says.
David Crosby is like Roman ruins; his life may be a wreck, but the magnificence remains. At age 76, he finds himself playing an endless string of onenighters to pay the mortgage on his Santa Ynez Valley horse ranch; Crosby, as he points out, is the one member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to never write a hit. He is a sick, tired and lonely old man.
“All the main guys I made music with won’t even talk to me,” he says. “All of ’em.”
This is Crosby in “David Crosby: Remember My Name,” a brilliantly realized, Hollywoodsleek documentary produced by Cameron Crowe, Alist director and onetime boy wonder Rolling Stone reporter who not only conducts the film’s current interviews, but is also shown at age 16 in 1974 doing his first interview with Crosby. The septuagenarian rock star is captured in full obsessive confessional mode. He picks over the detritus of shattered relationships, old girlfriends, band politics and personality defects, without ever truly descending to selfpity, but with a connoisseur’s eye for pain and suffering.
This movie is like a car crash you can’t look away from. A lifetime of obstreperous behavior cascades before your eyes. He sowed conflict and reaped destruction. His longtime best friend and musical soulmate, Graham Nash, one of the most reasonable human beings in rock music, finally cut him off. After talking daily for 40 years, Nash says, he hasn’t spoken to Crosby in more than two years.
“He ripped the soul out of Crosby, Stills and Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young,” says Nash.
His truth and his music are all Crosby has left. The unflinching candor ranges in mood from cherubic to crabby, but he doesn’t make excuses for himself. “At least I have enough guts to be honest,” he says. It is his redemption, if there is any to be had.
Firsttime director A.J. Eaton follows Crosby on a tour of old haunts along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and houses in the hills of Laurel Canyon — one where he was fired from the Byrds and another where Joni Mitchell lived with his friend Nash, where Nash wrote “Our House.” It was in that kitchen that Crosby, Nash and Stephen Stills first joined voices. Crosby is alternately sentimental and salty. And the guy can tell a good story.
Other associates weigh in — wife Jan, Jackson Browne, former bandmates Nash, Neil Young and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds. Photographer Henry Diltz makes an amusing appearance, writing off all Crosby’s issues to Chinese astrology because Crosby was a Leo born in the Year of the Snake.
Throughout, Crosby is acutely aware he is being filmed; he occasionally tries to direct from in front of the camera (“There’s no shot here”). Consequently, the behavior that caused all his problems is discussed, not exhibited, although vintage clips clearly show Crosby baked out of his brain, attesting to his lack of sobriety during his glory years.
Director Eaton claims right at the outset that Crosby is in the midst of a creative revival, although there is scant evidence of that on the screen. Crosby has turned prolific late in life, pumping out a stream of solo albums in the wake of the final collapse of CSN in 2015 (the trio’s last appearance singing “Silent Night” at the White House treelighting ceremony in front of the Obamas is cringeworthy), but the recent concert performances in the film are not notable. Though Crosby was never a charismatic lead vocalist or consistently powerful songwriter — in fact, a lot of his solo work has been pedestrian — he has a sweet voice that blends beautifully in harmony. He and Nash were like hippie Everly Brothers.
The film’s engine runs on a flicker of humanity in Crosby that nothing can extinguish. The glint in his eyes may have dimmed, but he is a resolute fighter, ready for his next bout. He can muster considerable charm and sing like a bird. In the end, that is what always got him by and why this film is as engaging and seductive as Crosby himself.
“All made the music main with guys I won’t even talk to me. All of ’em.” David Crosby