David Crosby
David Van Cortlandt Crosby was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He first found fame as a member of the Byrds, with whom he helped pioneer the genres of folk rock and psychedelia in the mid-1960s, and later as part of the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash, who helped popularize the California sound of the 1970s. In addition to his music, Crosby was known for his outspoken personality, politics, and personal troubles; he was sometimes depicted as emblematic of the counterculture of the 1960s.
After a short time performing in the folk music scene, Crosby co-founded the Byrds in 1964. They scored their first number-one hit in 1965 with a cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." Crosby appeared on the Byrds' first five albums and the original lineup's 1973 reunion album. In 1968, he formed Crosby, Stills & Nash with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. After the release of their debut album, CSN won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist of 1969. The group later occasionally included Neil Young. The core trio of CSN remained active from 1976 until 2016, and the duo of Crosby & Nash also recorded three gold albums in the 1970s. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunions were held in each decade from the 1970s through the 2000s.
Crosby released eight solo albums, albeit sporadically, over the course of his career. His solo debut was 1971's If I Could Only Remember My Name. The last five of his solo albums, beginning with Croz, came in the last decade of his life. Additionally, he formed a jazz-influenced trio with his son James Raymond and guitarist Jeff Pevar in CPR. He also appeared frequently on recordings by other artists, including Joni Mitchell, Jefferson Airplane, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Elton John and David Gilmour.
Crosby's combined work with the Byrds and CSNY has sold over 35 million albums. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: once for his work in the Byrds and again for his work with CSN. Five albums to which he contributed are included in Rolling Stones list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time," three with the Byrds and two with CSN.
He was also an occasional actor, appearing as a member of Captain Hook's pirate crew in Hook.
Early years
David Van Cortlandt Crosby was born on August 14, 1941, in Los Angeles, California, the second son of Academy Award-winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby, who formerly worked on Wall Street, and Aliph Van Cortlandt Whitehead, a salesperson at Macy's department store. His father was a relative of the Van Rensselaer family, and his mother—granddaughter of Bishop of Pittsburgh Cortlandt Whitehead—descended from the prominent Van Cortlandt family; they "regularly inhabited the New York society pages before their wedding".Crosby’s older brother was musician Ethan Crosby. His brother inspired his early love of jazz, particularly John Coltrane and Miles Davis; the latter would later recommend that Columbia Records sign the Byrds, and then cover the Crosby composition "Guinnevere." Their parents divorced in 1960, and his father then married Betty Cormack Andrews.
Growing up in California, he attended several schools, including the University Elementary School in Los Angeles, the Crane Country Day School in Montecito, and Laguna Blanca School in Santa Barbara for the rest of his elementary school and junior high years. At Crane, he starred in H.M.S. Pinafore and other musicals but flunked out. Crosby finished high school via correspondence courses from the Cate School in Carpinteria. He briefly attended Carpinteria Union High School in 1958. Ethan had been at CUHS before David. At CUHS David was given the lead in the Junior Class Play.
Musical career
The Byrds
Crosby briefly studied drama at Santa Barbara City College before dropping out to pursue a career in music. He performed with singer Terry Callier in Chicago and Greenwich Village, but the duo failed to obtain a recording contract. He also performed with Les Baxter's Balladeers in 1964. With the help of producer Jim Dickson, Crosby recorded his first solo session in 1963, with a cover of a song by Ray Charles. Miriam Makeba was on tour and in Chicago at the time with her band, which included Jim McGuinn, a multi-instrumentalist who later dropped his first name and began to go by his middle name, Roger McGuinn. Callier introduced Crosby to McGuinn and Gene Clark, who were then performing by the name the Jet Set. Crosby joined them, and they were augmented by drummer Michael Clarke, at which point Crosby attempted, unsuccessfully, to play bass. Late in 1964, Chris Hillman joined the band as bassist, and Crosby relieved Gene Clark of rhythm guitar duties.Through connections that Jim Dickson had with Bob Dylan's music publisher, the band obtained a demo acetate disc of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and recorded a version of the song, featuring McGuinn's twelve-string guitar as well as McGuinn, Crosby, and Clark's vocal harmonies. The song was a massive hit, reaching No. 1 in the charts in the United States and the United Kingdom during 1965. While McGuinn originated the Byrds' trademark 12-string guitar sound, Crosby was responsible for the soaring harmonies and often unusual phrasing of their songs. While he did not sing lead vocals on either of the first two albums, he sang lead on the bridge in their second single "All I Really Want to Do."
In 1966, Clark, who then was the band's primary songwriter, left the group because of stress and this placed all the group's songwriting responsibilities in the hands of McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman. Crosby took the opportunity to hone his craft and soon became a relatively prolific songwriter, collaborating with McGuinn on the up-tempo "I See You" and penning the ruminative "What's Happening". His early Byrds efforts also included the 1966 hit "Eight Miles High", and its flip side "Why," co-written with McGuinn.
Because Crosby felt responsible for and was widely credited with popularizing the song "Hey Joe", he persuaded the other members of the Byrds to record it on Fifth Dimension. By Younger Than Yesterday, the Byrds' 1967 album, Crosby began to find his trademark style on songs such as "Renaissance Fair", "Mind Gardens", and "It Happens Each Day"; however, the latter song was omitted from the final album and ultimately restored as a bonus track on the 1996 remastered edition. The album also contained a rerecording of "Why" and "Everybody's Been Burned", a jazzy torch song from Crosby's pre-Byrds repertoire that was initially demoed in 1963.
Friction between Crosby and the other Byrds came to a head in early to mid-1967. Tensions were high after the Monterey International Pop Festival in June when Crosby's onstage political diatribes and support of various John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories between songs outraged McGuinn. He further annoyed his bandmates when, at the invitation of Stephen Stills, he sat in with Buffalo Springfield's set the following night, after Young had quit the band and was replaced by guitarist Doug Hastings. The internal conflict boiled over during the initial recording sessions for The Notorious Byrd Brothers that summer, where differences over song selections led to intra-band arguments. In particular, Crosby was adamant that the band should record only original material despite the recent commercial failure of "Lady Friend", a Crosby-penned single that stalled at No.82 on the American charts following its release. McGuinn and Hillman dismissed Crosby in October after he refused to countenance the recording of a cover of Goffin and King's "Goin' Back". While Crosby contributed to three compositions and five recordings on the final album, "Triad," his controversial ménage à trois ode, was omitted. Jefferson Airplane released a Grace Slick-sung cover on Crown of Creation, and three years later, Crosby released a solo acoustic version on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's double live album 4 Way Street. The Byrds' version appeared decades later on the 1987 Never Before release and later on the 1997 re-release of The Notorious Byrd Brothers.
In 1973, Crosby reunited with the original Byrds for the album Byrds, with Crosby acting as the album's producer. The album charted well but was generally not perceived to be a critical success. It marked the final artistic collaboration of the original band.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Around the time of Crosby's departure from the Byrds in 1968, he met Stephen Stills at Laurel Canyon in California through Cass Elliot, and the two started meeting informally and jamming together. They were soon joined by Graham Nash, who would leave his commercially successful group the Hollies to play with Crosby and Stills. Their appearance at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August 1969 constituted only their second live performance.Their first album, Crosby, Stills & Nash, was an immediate hit, spawning two Top 40 hit singles and receiving key airplay on the new FM radio format, in its early days populated by unfettered disc jockeys who then had the option of playing entire albums at once.
The songs Crosby wrote while in CSN include "Guinnevere", "Almost Cut My Hair", "Long Time Gone", and "Delta". He also co-wrote "Wooden Ships" with Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane and Stills.
In 1969, Neil Young joined the group, and with him, they recorded the album Déjà Vu, which peaked at No.1 on the Billboard 200 and the ARIA Charts. On September 30, 1969, Crosby's longtime girlfriend Christine Hinton was killed in a car accident only days after Hinton, Crosby, and Debbie Donovan had moved from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area. Crosby was devastated, and he began abusing drugs more severely than he had before. Nevertheless, he still managed to contribute "Almost Cut My Hair" and the album's title track. After the release of the double live album 4 Way Street, the group went on a four-year hiatus to focus on their respective solo careers.
In December 1969, Crosby appeared with CSNY at the Altamont Free Concert, increasing his visibility after also having performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival and Woodstock. At the beginning of 1970, he briefly joined with Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Mickey Hart from Grateful Dead, billed as "David and the Dorks", and making a live recording at The Matrix on December 15, 1970.
CSNY reunited in the summer of 1973 for unsuccessful recording sessions in Maui and Los Angeles. Despite lingering acrimony, they reconvened at a Stills concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco in October. This served as a prelude to their highly successful stadium tour in the summer of 1974. Following the tour, the foursome attempted once again to record a new album, provisionally entitled Human Highway. The recording sessions, which took place at the Record Plant in Sausalito, were very unpleasant, marked by constant bickering. The acrimonious atmosphere was too much for Neil Young, who deserted the sessions and the album was never completed.
In rehearsals for the 1974 tour, CSNY recorded a then-unreleased Crosby song, "Little Blind Fish". A different version of the song would appear on the second CPR album more than two decades later. The 1974 tour was also affected by bickering, though they managed to finish it without interruption. A greatest hits compilation entitled So Far was released in 1974 to capitalize on the foursome's reunion tour.
In 1976, as separate duos, Crosby & Nash and Stills & Young were both working on respective albums and contemplated retooling their work to produce a CSNY album. This attempt ended bitterly as Stills and Young deleted Crosby and Nash's vocals from their album Long May You Run.
CSNY did not perform together again as a foursome until Live Aid in Philadelphia in 1985, and then performed only sporadically in the 1980s and 1990s. Without Young, however, Crosby, Stills & Nash performed much more consistently after its reformation in 1977. The trio toured in support of their 1977 and 1982 albums CSN and Daylight Again and then, starting in the late 1980s, toured regularly year after year. The group continued to perform live, and since 1982 released four albums of new material: American Dream, Live It Up, After the Storm, and Looking Forward. In addition, Crosby & Nash released the self-titled album Crosby & Nash in 2004.
Full-scale CSNY tours took place in 2000, 2002, and 2006.
Crosby, Stills, and Nash appeared together on a 2008 episode of The Colbert Report, with Colbert filling in for Young in the fourth harmony part on "Teach Your Children".
Following a November 2015 interview in which he stated he still hoped the band had a future, Nash announced on March 6, 2016, that Crosby, Stills & Nash would never perform again because of his poor relationship with Crosby. In an interview in 2025, Nash remembered Crosby as "charming, caring and a brilliant musician... he was my best friend for 50 years".