<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A while back, we covered how the ups and downs of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (FTV:\u00a0 1974 – 12-25-19) led to the normalization of huge venue concerts.\u00a0 These mega-events were quite common up until the COVID-19 pandemic pulled the rug out from under the music industry.\u00a0 At that time, I promised to take a more intimate look at the individual members of CSNY.\u00a0 A few short months later, the book <\/span>Long Time Gone – The Autobiography of David Crosby <\/span><\/i>(1988 – Doubleday Books by David Crosby and Carl Gottlieb) caught my attention at the Ontonagon Township Library.\u00a0 I realized that the book had been published after Crosby sobered up.\u00a0 I surmised that it would be a pretty unvarnished take on his life in music because one of Crosby\u2019s fundamental character traits (or flaws if you rather) is brutal honesty (most of the time).\u00a0 There has been plenty of ink spent on the negative image Crosby forged when he was drugging away a fortune during his wild and wooly career.\u00a0 Crosby has been described as loud, opinionated, brash, egotistical, arrogant, and a host of other less than flattering things (even by those who like him).\u00a0 Those who aren\u2019t fans of the Cros\u2019s personality flaws do not let their feelings eclipse how they feel about his tremendous talents as a singer\/songwriter.\u00a0 I was looking forward to hearing Crosby himself explain how he landed in and out of two of the biggest bands of the era.\u00a0 The logical place to begin would be with his first wildly popular band, The Byrds.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the early 1960s, the area of Los Angeles widely known as The Strip could be described as a combination of the wild west and Las Vegas.\u00a0 As had happened in other major cities, the seedy clubs on the Sunset Boulevard (sandwiched between Old Hollywood, the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, and the Wilshire District) became the gathering places for folkies, beats, and jazz heads.\u00a0 One of the original clubs in this then unincorporated area of Los Angeles County was The Troubadour and like most folk clubs of the time, they would host a Hootenanny Night.\u00a0 It was at one of these \u2018hoot\u2019 nights that the core of The Byrds came together, but it wasn\u2019t quite as simple as it sounds.\u00a0 Fasten your seatbelt and let me try to pull the pieces together.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Jim McGuinn had landed in L.A. after stints touring with The Chad Mitchell Trio and The Limelighters.\u00a0 Jim joined a religious sect that expected members to change their name, thus he became Roger McGuinn.\u00a0 Gene Clark had recently come to Los Angeles after touring Canada with one of the New Christy Minstrels groups (there were several different NCM units touring under the same name to capitalize on their one hit record).\u00a0 Clark had heard the first Beatles hits in Canada and was drawn to McGuinn when he heard him singing Beatles songs at The Troubadour.\u00a0 Their original plan was to form a Peter and Gordon type duo, but their voices were too similar in range to make it the right blend.\u00a0 When Clark heard David Crosby singing at another Troubadour hoot, he was blown away.\u00a0 He told McGuinn, \u201cMan, is he good!\u00a0 That\u2019s it.\u00a0 You can\u2019t ask for any better than that.\u201d\u00a0 McGuinn wouldn\u2019t explain the details, but he told Clark, \u201cNo, man.\u00a0 I know David.\u00a0 We tried to work together.\u00a0 It\u2019s impossible.\u00a0 It\u2019ll never work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Crosby lived a vagabond life sleeping on whatever couch, mattress, or floor he could find.\u00a0 This couch-camping network worked as long as none of these temporary flophouses let him unpack for a longer stay.\u00a0 As a result, Crosby stashed his suitcase in Jim Dickson\u2019s garage.\u00a0 David knew Dickson because one of the Cros\u2019s old roomies, Dino Valenti, had sold Dickson the rights for a song he wrote called <\/span>Get Together<\/span><\/i> for a hundred bucks.\u00a0 Valenti needed the money to keep his car from being repossessed and no one foresaw the song becoming a hit three times (for the We Five in 1965 and for The Youngbloods in 1967 and 1969).\u00a0 The triple hit brought in bundles of cash for Dickson\u2019s Tickson Music publishing company but none of that filtered back to Valenti.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One night when McGuinn and Clark were performing on stage at The Troubadour, Crosby came up and started to sing with them.\u00a0 Their blended voices were exactly what McGuinn and Clark needed in their music.\u00a0 Clark recalled, \u201cDavid was saying, \u2018Hey, I\u2019d really like to sing with you guys.\u00a0 I\u2019d really like to be in your group.\u2019\u00a0 Eventually, David came to us with a proposition:\u00a0 he knew a guy named Dickson who had a studio.\u00a0 He would take us there and get something accomplished.\u00a0 We agreed it would be a good approach.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dickson completes the story:\u00a0 \u201cDavid comes in and says, \u2018I\u2019ve found these two guys I want to sing with and if you get involved I can do it.\u2019\u00a0 He was putting the pieces together.\u00a0 He brought them into World-Pacific [studios] and made the very first audition tape I ever made of the three of them singing together.\u00a0 Because of the British Invasion thing that was happening, they\u2019re singing with these English accents.\u00a0 It\u2019s marvelous, really, and funny.\u00a0 But they had a sound.\u00a0 There\u2019s no question about it.\u00a0 The Byrds.\u201d\u00a0 Dickson knew a lot of people in Hollywood and a lot more about the music business than did Crosby <\/span>et al<\/span><\/i> (\u201cWe knew nothing.\u00a0 Zip.\u00a0 Zero.\u00a0 Nada,\u201d\u00a0 according to Cros).\u00a0 Dickson had the essential elements the new band needed to get to work:\u00a0 A studio, connections, good weed, and the smarts to ply them with free cheeseburgers after recording sessions.\u00a0 That Dickson had some unreleased Dylan tracks on hand would also loom large in their story.\u00a0 One was for a song called Mr. <\/span>Tambourine Man.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Byrds were at the right place to transition from folk music to Top Forty pop in a large part because of Beatlemania.\u00a0 Crosby had been near the end of a grueling Jack Linkletter Folk Caravan tour that included several groups, one of which was The Big Three with future Mamas and the Papas singer Cass Elliot.\u00a0 They had a couple of dates left in NewYork and New Jersey when President Kennedy was assassinated.\u00a0 One date was cancelled but they still had a two night stand to fill.\u00a0 The four shows attracted a total of no more than sixty people, most of whom were friends of the musicians.\u00a0 The tour ended with a whimper and Crosby went back to the L.A. folk circuit.\u00a0 The <\/span>Billboard<\/span><\/i> charts were dominated with hits by Bobby Vinton (<\/span>There I\u2019ve Said It Again<\/span><\/i>), Leslie Gore (<\/span>You Don\u2019t Own Me<\/span><\/i>), and the Kingsmen (<\/span>Louie Louie).<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 The Beatles\u2019 fourteen week stretch topping the charts (<\/span>I Want to Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, <\/span><\/i>and<\/span> Can\u2019t Buy Me Love<\/span><\/i>) was finally interrupted in May by Louis Armstrong\u2019s rendition of <\/span>Hello Dolly <\/span><\/i>(really!).\u00a0 The seed for The Byrds had been planted and watered by The Beatles.\u00a0 When they went to see <\/span>A Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/span><\/i>, Crosby said he knew what his future would bring:\u00a0 \u201cI can remember coming out of that movie so jazzed that I was swinging around stop sign poles at arm\u2019s length.\u00a0 I knew right then what my life was going to be.\u00a0 I wanted to do that.\u00a0 That was it.\u00a0 They were cool and we said, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s it,\u00a0 We have to be a band.\u00a0 Who can we get to play drums?\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The original thought was to have Crosby play bass and sing, but he couldn\u2019t do it:\u00a0 \u201cPlaying bass and singing at the same time is like being able to dial two telephones at once with both hands.\u00a0 All credit to Paul McCartney, I can\u2019t do it.\u00a0 I could, however, play rhythm guitar pretty well and sing.\u00a0 Dickson knew Chris Hillman who was a mandolin player when we found him with his own bluegrass band called The Hillman, and he was looking to find some way to grow.\u201d\u00a0 As for the drummer slot, Crosby had met a conga drum toting hippie from Big Sur named Michael Clarke while hitchhiking a few years earlier.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t afford equipment yet so Clarke played on cardboard boxes.\u00a0 Dickson convinced a wealthy backer to front the band $5000 for new gear and the investment was repaided twenty times over when they blew up.\u00a0 Dickson was an integral part of their rapid rise to fame.\u00a0 By using Dickson\u2019s studio, they were able to instantly review tapes of the sessions and make immediate improvements.\u00a0 Most bands require years of woodshedding and bar gigs to become tight units.\u00a0 Dickson helped the band whittle their formative period from \u2018years\u2019 to \u2018months\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This version of The Byrds would soon be making waves in Top 40 AM radio.\u00a0 They became vanguards of the new west coast music and cultural \u2018cool\u2019.\u00a0 The publicity shots taken with their new instruments portrayed them as the American version of The Beatles sporting Ludwig drums, Rickenbacker twelve string guitars, and Gretch six stringers.\u00a0 Aping The Beatles right down to their instruments and publicity shots was a calculated step that only backfired when they first toured in Europe:\u00a0 The Brits did not take well to a group being advertised as \u2018the American Beatles\u2019.\u00a0 Back home, they found the public couldn\u2019t get enough of them.\u00a0 McGuinn started wearing cobalt colored granny shades and the fad spread like wildfire.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Growing up, Crosby learned quite a bit about music from his older brother Ethan.\u00a0 Their cinematographer father was absent much of the time and eventually split from Crosby\u2019s mother.\u00a0 Crosby wasn\u2019t a great student, but he wasn\u2019t dumb, either.\u00a0 When he discovered his voice in school musicals, it provided him with a creative outlet that laid the foundation of his future life.\u00a0 He was never expelled from school, but his last go at private schooling ended after tenth grade when they \u2018suggested\u2019 that he probably shouldn\u2019t come back.\u00a0 By the time he completed his education in the public schools, he was ready to get out on his own.\u00a0 His Junior College career was shortened by a bust for burglary.\u00a0 He hit the road for Colorado when one of his numerous girl friends turned up pregnant.\u00a0 Cosby loved cars, sailboats, and women with equal measure, but once he was out on his own scratching up a little cash from singing in folk clubs, he never went back home.\u00a0 His ability to charm aided his career as a non-property owning couch-camper.\u00a0 Crosby continued his wandering folkie musician ways, at least until The Byrds hit it big.\u00a0 His network of friends were amazed that he never had any money, but a call to his mom or dad could always produce a plane ticket or a check.\u00a0 As one acquaintance said, \u201cHe was the only poor folk musician I knew who flew jets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It didn\u2019t take long for The Byrds\u2019 balloon of success to start deflating.\u00a0 The strong willed Crosby began to have major disagreements with both Dickson and McGuinn.\u00a0 Even as their records were climbing the charts, the band\u2019s foundation was crumbling.\u00a0 Gene Clark said he left the band first, citing a fear of flying.\u00a0 Crosby thinks he was part of the reason:\u00a0 \u201cGene was not a good guitar player.\u00a0 He had a bad sense of time.\u00a0 I was much better at it than him and I used to tell him that, which is not a good thing to do.\u201d\u00a0 Things came to a head when McGuinn and Hillman appeared at his front door one morning.\u00a0 Roger said, \u201cHey man, basically we want to get you out of the band,\u00a0 It\u2019s not working real well.\u00a0 You\u2019re really difficult to work with.\u00a0 We don\u2019t dig your songs that much and we think we\u2019ll do better without you.\u201d\u00a0 The ten grand he got for signing away his rights to The Byrds\u2019 name went fast; \u00a0 Crosby was snorting a lot of coke and dabbling in heroin, two other things that also contributed to his exit from The Byrds.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Crosby was suddenly a musician without a band.\u00a0 He had been asked to join Buffalo Springfield around the time of the Monterey Pop Festival, but they too were near the end of their road.\u00a0 Less than a year after he got the boot, <\/span>Crosby, Stills, and Nash<\/span><\/i> came out and for too brief a time, Corsby was in another great band.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the same two demons that had scuttled his time with The Byrds began to infiltrate Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young not long after Neil Young joined the band.\u00a0 The four egos plus Crosby\u2019s excessive ingestion of chemical substances took their toll.\u00a0 Just when David Crosby seemed to find the emotional stability of a home and family, the love of his life was killed in a horrific car crash.\u00a0 The next chapter was a long, downward spiral that only ended when he was finally paroled from the Texas State Prison in Huntsville in 1986.\u00a0 How he managed to let \u2018junk\u2019 ruin his life, career, and health can be summed up in a quote from a musician friend of Crosby\u2019s:\u00a0 \u201cIt [heroine] is the only terminal illness that tells you you\u2019re fine.\u201d \u00a0 Incarceration meant Crosby had to endure a brutal, cold turkey drug withdrawal.\u00a0 While not the best period of his life, the prison term saved his life.\u00a0 His equally addicted girl friend Jan Dance used their time apart to also come clean.\u00a0 Reunited (with court permission) and sober, they married in May of 1987.\u00a0 Crosby\u2019s only way to get high\u00a0 these days is through music.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It is rather chilling that the prologue of Crosby\u2019s book contains two medical reports.\u00a0 Both are from different hospitals that the then 42 year old musician was admitted to back in 1983.\u00a0 Reading these intake notes leaves one to believe that he was already more dead than alive.\u00a0 That he was able to clean up his act and is still producing music in 2020 almost qualifies as a miracle.\u00a0 He began his career with nothing but a guitar and his voice and seems to be in about the same place today.\u00a0 Crosby\u2019s life is both a testament to the \u2018not how to survive being a rock star\u2019 story (even though he did survive) and a cautionary tale about redemption.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The other thread of the story that made me scratch my head was the veritable harem of women who surrounded Crosby in his wildest days.\u00a0 David managed multiple simultaneous relationships and interchanged his partners often.\u00a0 His companions were constantly reminded that they were there for him and they shouldn\u2019t expect him to be tied down to one woman.\u00a0 I am not sure why so many of his female companions hung around as long as they did, but the aura of fame can sometimes make people make irrational choices.\u00a0 David Crosby stood on the edge of the pit for a long time and, luckily, was forced to pull himself back from the brink.\u00a0 I would hope his story can inspire others who feel the only direction they have left in life is down.\u00a0 I am also glad that he has finally found it within himself to settle down with one woman and reunite personally (and musically) with his son Raymond from one of his earlier relationships.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 The relationship with record producer Dickson did yield gold for The Byrds\u00a0 Granny\u00a0 Glasses and all!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A while back, we covered how the ups and downs of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (FTV:\u00a0 1974 – 12-25-19) led to the normalization of huge venue concerts.\u00a0 These mega-events were quite common up until the COVID-19 pandemic pulled the rug out from under the music industry.\u00a0 At that time, I promised to take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-from-the-vaults","category-new-music","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1924"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1927,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924\/revisions\/1927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}