At the time of the show, David Crosby just had a falling out with Neil Young after he had publicly trashed his girlfriend (now wife) Daryl Hannah for whom Young had left his wife Pegi (who passed away on New Year's Day). Graham Nash unsuccessfully tried to be peacemaker. But by March 2016, Nash was through with that role and publicly bashed his former bandmate:
I don’t like David Crosby right now. He’s been awful for me the last two years, just fucking awful. I’ve been there and saved his fucking ass for 45 years, and he treated me like shit. You can’t do that to me. You can do it for a day or so, until I think you’re going to come around. When it goes on longer, and I keep getting nasty emails from him, I’m done. Fuck you. David has ripped the heart out of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
It is not known what led to Crosby and Nash's falling out although Nash, like Young, left his wife for a much younger woman in 2016. Given Nash's visceral anger at Crosby one cannot rule out that possibility. Whatever the reason it is highly unlikely Crosby will ever harmonize with Nash, Stills or Young again.
Since 2016, David Crosby has been carrying on recording a string of solo albums, touring with a cabal of musicians half his age and is now the subject of a Cameron Crowe documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name which I saw today at the Film Forum in The Village.
Crowe interviewed Crosby while he was on tour in early 2017 with his Lighthouse Band. Much of Remember My Name is a lament about his falling out with CSNY and, to a lesser extent, his falling out with his former Byrds bandmates Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman. Complicating matters is his poor health having diabetes, a liver transplant and several heart attacks with eight stents in his heart. Crosby, who turns 78 next month, believes the end is coming soon and wants to say goodbye to the people with whom he spent decades making music and seek their forgiveness.
Forgiveness might be difficult to come by. After all, Crosby is a blunt man. Crosby admits to being an asshole, but has he learned anything from it? He still hates Jim Morrison of The Doors nearly 50 years after his death because Morrison had the temerity to remove his glasses while he was on an acid trip. Crosby has long been something of a bully. One thing which is not mention in Remembered My Name is his appalling treatment of Byrds bandmate Gene Clark. In his 2005 book Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of Gene Clark, John Einarson writes about Crosby making fun of Clark's guitar playing to the point where he gave it up and played the tambourine. The fact that Clark had written a majority of the Byrds' hits and was getting the lion's share of the royalties undoubtedly contributed to this conflict. It seems that Crosby has changed very little in half a century. He's a jerk who makes beautiful music. Nash wrote about this paradox in his song about Crosby called "Encore".
How you gonna feel if the music dies?
How you gonna live with the soul sadly sighing
Into the wind that is our life
Yet the ill winds of the Trump Administration could bring these men back together. Shortly after Trump took office in 2017, Nash opened the door of a possibility of a CSN or CSNY reunion to raise their voices against the President. If Trump separating children from their asylum seeking parents and telling American born Congresswomen to go back where they came from doesn't get CSN or CSNY back together then nothing will. Ironically enough the last time CSN performed together in public was in December 2015 during the lighting of the White House Christmas Tree when they sang "Silent Night". A brief clip of this performance was included in the film and I'm glad it was brief because it was painful to watch and listen. The Obamas looked utterly mortified at the whole spectacle. It would be a shame if they closed the chapter to their storied career on such a sour note.
But the reality is that most of us don't live to see happy endings. For many of us our lives end in bitterness, debt, estrangement and illness. Crosby might never perform with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash or Neil Young again let alone speak with them ever again. But he can still make music and has an audience that wants to listen to him. Indeed, Crosby is scheduled to perform a free concert at Lincoln Center next month and, if he is still carrying on, I plan on attending. People are paying attention to David Crosby and remember him. In the grand scheme of things, he is far more fortunate than most of us. David Crosby is carries on.
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