I was living in Chicago...
with a friend of mine named Clem Floyd.
Clem was going with a little German hooker
named, uh, "The Duchess."
She was about 4-feet-2 and cute. [INTERVIEWER CHUCKLES]
And, uh, very popular.
And we were as stoned as we could get.
We took everything we had and anything anybody else had.
We were gonna go hear John Coltrane. He was a hero.
So they would play this tune, ensemble,
and then Trane would start sawing.
You know, 15, 20 minutes. He'd be blowing pretty hard.
And I was very high.
[*****]
Got to be too much for me.
I went and ducked into the men's room.
And I got my head against this puke-green tile.
I can still remember the color of the tile.
And I'm, like, thinking:
"Okay, it's gonna be all right now.
Just get it together now. It's gonna be okay."
Bam!
Somebody kicks the door open.
Bam! It's Trane.
He's kicked the door open because he's...
[IMITATING SAXOPHONE]
...playing at the most intense level
you could ever imagine in your life.
He never stopped soloing.
He's still soloing,
and he's up where it's really hitting
the thousand mark, you know?
He's, like, burning.
I never heard anybody be more intense with music
than that in my life.
In that little bathroom.
Little tile bathroom.
Whew.
[*****]
[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]
People ask me if I got regrets. Yeah. I got a huge regret
about the time I wasted being smashed.
I'm afraid.
I'm afraid of dying.
And I'm close.
I don't like it.
I'd like to have more time. A lot more time.
[*****]
This is, um, Big Sur Folk Festival.
And that's Christine right there.
This is the four of us.
I think that would've been the cover for Human Highway.
That's me back before I had the mustache. The Byrds.
God, that's a great shot of Miles.
That's the intensity right there.
Me and Neil.
Me and Garcia.
God bless Jerry Garcia.
This is me and the Lighthouse band
goofing off at a great moment,
and it's just, I'm so happy right there.
INTERVIEWER: If I were to come to you and say:
"No music, you don't get any of that,
but you get extreme joy in your home life
and an incredible family..."
No music? No music.
Would you make that trade?
That's no world for me.
And is that a selfish thing?
I don't know. Maybe.
But no. Me, music? No music?
No, not interested.
It's the only thing I can contribute, man.
It's the only thing-- Place I can help.
It's the only place I can make it better.
It's the only thing I got to offer, really.
I don't want to go.
I got a lot of stuff I'm trying to do.
I'm touring because I--
I'm touring because I love to sing.
I do, uh, need to tour,
to just simply buy groceries and pay my-- My mortgage.
The hardest part is just leaving home.
I don't like to leave home. I love my wife. I love my son.
I love, I love it here.
JAN: Hi, Mama! How's my girl?
DAVID: I'm under some pressure, yeah. You gotta understand,
I'm the guy in Crosby, Stills and Nash,
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. That's never had a hit.
Black. Hi, Black.
The way I get through it
is I know what he's going toward.
I know what makes him the happiest.
DAVID: I'm 76 years old.
I've had...
two or three heart attacks.
I've got eight stents in my heart.
You know, I had hepatitis C, which destroyed my liver,
which made me have to have a transplant.
I'm diabetic.
That does kill you in the long run.
But I'm happy.
JAN: I don't think people know how sick he really is.
I'm so glad he's as stubborn as he is
and wants to sing anyway.
I might say, "Hey, honey, I think you should stay here,
go see the heart people now and not go out on that tour,"
and he'll go, "Fuck you. I'm going."
And I have to be okay with that.
I have to say, "Go, honey. Have fun."
And I might not ever see him again.
DAVID: At this point in my life, every...
minute that you get, you know, is-- It's precious.
Time is the final currency.
And so how do you spend it?
JAN: I wanted him to choose family first,
and I thought he would.
DAVID: This is really where I feel alive.
JAN: The only solace I have
is that when the light does go out,
I hope it's when he's singing.
[DAVID CROSBY'S "GUINNEVERE" PLAYING]
* Guinnevere *
* Had green eyes *
* Like yours, milady... *
Man, I hate leaving.
I just hate leaving home.
I love singing, but I hate leaving.
* Through the garden... *
INTERVIEWER: Six weeks, you'll be back.
Hopefully.
I promised my wife I'd be back.
* Peacocks wandered Aimlessly *
* Underneath an orange tree *
Keep your fingers crossed.
* Why can't she see me? *
[*****]
DAVID: When I was a young guy,
I was taken to a small symphony orchestra
playing in the park by my mom.
And the power of the orchestra was gigantic to me.
It broke over me like a wave.
And I noticed...
all the elbows were moving together.
All the doodly-doodlies were going together.
That's why it was that powerful. Big imprint.
Then I encountered the Everly Brothers.
I hear that, and I think, "Oh."
And I started singing three-part to their two-part.
[IN HARMONY] * Drea-ea-ea-eam *
* Dream, dream, dream *
* Drea-ea-ea-eam... *
DAVID: I just naturally love singing harmony.
My mom was a humanist
and felt that equality between human beings
was, like, where it was at.
My mom got a Josh White record.
It's one of the first records I remember really knowing,
and there was a song on there called "Strange Fruit."
And I didn't understand it, so I went to my mom,
and I said, "Mom, I don't understand.
What's the strange fruit that he's talking about?"
And my mom started crying.
* Strange fruit hanging... *
DAVID: Didn't have no concept
that anybody could hang another human being
because they didn't like what color they were.
My mom was really good at loving.
My dad was a crusty old guy.
Didn't ever express any of that stuff at all.
It was a little bit of a dysfunctional family.
The pictures which follow give an idea
of my method of working.
[*****]
DAVID: One of my earliest memories was watching my dad
pull himself up into the belly of a B-24
and fly away into the Second World War.
He was, uh, you know, shooting footage.
And very dangerous stuff too, but he wouldn't talk about it.
So he'd seen some shit.
[*****]
NARRATOR: High Noon.
DAVID: He won one of the first Oscars
they ever gave out for Tabu,
and he won a Golden Globe for High Noon.
NARRATOR: With every swing of the pendulum,
with every second,
a man's life ticked away.
DAVID: A stunning photographer.
My dad never told me he loved me.
Not once ever. Never said those words.
And that affects you.
I was kind of a lonely kid.
Chubby little kid, not real popular or anything.
No good at sports.
I was a class clown.
Disciplinary problem. Got in trouble all the time.
I was thrown out of, I think, just about every school
I was ever in.
I wanted attention.
Constantly trying to get attention.
I'm sort of always seeking approval, you know?
Scratch me behind the ear, tell me I'm cool?
* A girl once told me That I should try to work *
* At honest labor For just one day *
* But I said to her With just a little smirk... *
DAVID: My brother was a musician also.
He was the one who gave me my first guitar.
He turned me on to '50s jazz.
That's where I went right down the rabbit hole.
* Buh-nah, dee Dah-dah, dee-dee-dee *
* Buh-nuh, dee, dee, dee Dah, dah, day *
[*****]
This is Sunset Boulevard.
* I see you... *
If you're gonna be on a street in Los Angeles,
this is probably the street to be on.
* Everywhere, I see you... * [APPLAUSE]
DAVID: Hello.
I'm David Crosby, and when we are together,
they call us "The Byrds."
[THE BYRDS' "SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROCK 'N' ROLL STAR" PLAYING]
* So you want to be A rock 'n' roll star *
* Then listen now To what I say *
* Just get An electric guitar... *
DAVID: I think we were one of the first electric bands.
* Learn how to play... *
DAVID: I loved it.
We could get the attention of girls,
which, of course, is why all of us started playing music
in the first place.
* Where the agent man... *
But it's not necessarily always a positive thing
when you win early and win young.
I was tremendously lucky,
and I don't think I realized how lucky I was.
* And in a week or two... *
Being a star, it makes you, you know...
you feel like you're more important than you are.
Like, in '65, '66, we were, like, number one,
and met the Beatles and hung out with them,
and it was, like, a pretty heady place.
We-- We know our real image,
which is nothing like our image. [CROWD LAUGHS]
INTERVIEWER: Who is the young man with the lengthy haircut
to your right rear?
Right rear. [CROWD CLAPPING]
INTERVIEWER: Who is it?
That's Dave from The Byrds,
a mate of ours.
Ahoy, mateys.
DAVID: I was just hiding,
paying attention to what they were doing.
I was trying to learn how to be a rock star.
And they knew how.
[WOMEN SCREAMING]
DAVID: Young, cocky, bright,
very creative,
and a caboose to my dick.
[THE BYRDS' "WHY" PLAYING]
* You keep saying no To her... *
DAVID: Ciro's.
[WHISTLES]
* You keep saying no To her... *
One of the few things our manager, Jim Dickson,
actually did correctly. He got us in there,
and then he called every single person
he'd ever met in Hollywood, said:
"You gotta come down here.
The chicks are unbelievable."
And they-- And--
So they all-- Everybody came down there.
It got to be a scene to be seen there.
* She don't think That's where it's at... *
INTERVIEWER: Are these memories in black and white or in color?
[DAVID LAUGHS]
Color, very color.
[HARMONICA PLAYING]
DAVID: Dylan did come and visit us.
He came and played with us live.
I remember when I looked up,
when I saw Bob Dylan for the first time,
how entranced everybody was with him.
This is called "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man..."
[CROWD CLAPPING] ...please play a song for me.
DAVID: His words were so good. His songs were so good.
[PLAYING INTRO TO "MR. TAMBOURINE MAN"]
* Hey, Mr. Tambourine man *
* Play a song for me *
* In the jingle jangle Morning *
* I'll come Following you... *
DAVID: I remember being jealous.
David said, "I don't like it.
It's that folky two-four time.
It's never gonna play on the radio."
So we-- We rearranged it to, like...
[PLAYS INTRO TO THE BYRDS' "MR. TAMBOURINE MAN"]
[BAND PLAYING "MR. TAMBOURINE MAN" INTRO]
* Hey Mr. Tambourine Man... *
DAVID: Dylan came and we played "Tambourine Man" for him,
and you could hear the gears working in his head,
and he went straight out
and got an electric band right away.
* Hey Mr. Tambourine Man... *
DAVID: Some funny stuff happened in there.
I went in there to watch The Doors.
That's probably where my dislike of Morrison started.
He pulled my shades off and said:
"You can't hide behind those shades."
And I, of course, was high on LSD.
So I teleported to the other side of the room.
[CHUCKLING]
I've never forgiven him for that.
[TURN SIGNAL CLICKING]
Uh, no! Keep going straight.
[*****]
You want to go up Laurel Canyon, right?
DAVID: I started being a counterculture,
rebellious person
right about the time I started growing the hair.
We were starting to be hippies.
* Here it comes again *
* The night is going To fall... *
DAVID: And at the beginning,
people didn't like seeing us show up.
So I got a good taste of being a second-class citizen,
which makes you feel very rebellious.
[APPLAUSE]
Your mother gets high, and you don't know it!
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
[BAND PLAYING INTRO TO "HEY JOE"]
DAVID: At the time, you know, I was becoming a character.
Russian shirt, Russian hat.
* Hey, Joe, where you going With your cash? *
[INSTRUMENTAL INTERLUDE]
DAVID: I know that having political opinions
really distressed them.
You know, they're shooting this for television.
I'm sure that they'll edit this out.
I want to say it anyway, even though they will edit it out.
When President Kennedy was killed,
he was not killed by one man.
He was shot from a number of different directions
by different guns.
The story has been suppressed, witnesses have been killed,
and this is your country, ladies and gentlemen.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
Well, David had become insufferable.
He was just hard to hang out with.
You didn't want to be around him.
* He was a friend Of mine... *
I didn't think it was our place to--
To get out there and promote these things,
like the Kennedy conspiracy.
I'm not sure what was motivating him.
He wanted to save the country?
I don't know.
DAVID: They saw us as a pop group trying to be pop stars,
and they did not think that that involved
having political opinions.
* He was a friend Of mine... *
I could see potential train wrecks happening
between Roger and David.
This is the house where they fired me.
They came up in two Porsches.
[IMITATES WHINING ENGINE]
[TIRES SQUEALING]
[CAR DOORS CLOSING]
[CRICKETS CHIRPING]
It's just not working. We'd like you to quit the band.
We don't want you in the band anymore.
Too much politics, not enough music.
And when we're trying to do a song that you don't like,
you just fall asleep.
Plus, that song about sister lovers
and water brothers isn't trippy.
It's just weird.
Let's face it, your heart's not in it.
You have a knack for causing trouble
and not the good kind.
And I said, "I think you're wrong,
and I think you're making a big mistake, but it's okay.
I'm cool with it. All right.
But I'm taking 'Guinnevere'
and my weird tunings with me."
I don't-- I don't regret it, obviously.
I was a difficult cat,
and growing leaps and bounds.
And-- And, uh...
And not easy.
Big ego, no brains, goofy.
It stung.
[*****]
So I did what you do
when you get fired from your band.
[CHUCKLES] I took off.
I thought I was gonna go find a sailboat and go sailing.
This beautiful schooner, I saw it right away.
So I tried to find out about it.
And it had been there and been for sale for a while.
What we did was, I started a rumor, uh,
in Lauderdale through a couple people
that there was rot underneath the mainmast
where it'd cost a whole lot of money
to go and find out.
Um...
And then I offered them 25 grand, and they took it.
And I got the 25 grand from Peter Tork.
I said, "Peter, I don't have money.
They threw me out of The Byrds. Can you--?
I want to go sailing.
Can you loan me 25 grand?"
[*****]
* All along the lee shore *
* Shells lie scattered... *
DAVID: Sailing...
Sailing out in the Pacific or sailing the Caribbean,
waking up feeling the motion...
She's loping along, waves coming up,
slowly picking us up and giving us a shove.
She's doing this big slow dance, you know.
And she's graceful.
Everything, sensory, visual, auditory...
Every kind of information.
Louder, cleaner, brighter.
* It's still lying there... *
DAVID: And, you know, it's beautiful.
* Forgot it long ago... *
DAVID: When we're here on the shore, there's so much data
impinging on our senses all the time
that we filter it down.
When you go out there,
lots of space and very little information,
and it's a really delicious feeling.
* Floating home *
* Down below Her graceful side... *
DAVID: It's a truly magical part of my life,
and, of course, I wrote a lot of great music there.
I wrote "Lee Shore" there. I wrote "Page 43" there.
I wrote "Wooden Ships" there.
The ocean's totally real.
The opposite of Hollywood.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
[*****]
DAVID: I think I was the first one to move here.
First musician that I knew about.
Probably, there was somebody else,
but I don't know who it would have been.
GLENN: The first day I got to California,
first celebrity I saw was David Crosby.
He was standing on the porch
of the Laurel Canyon Country Store,
and he had on that flat-brimmed hat
that he wore on the second Byrds album,
and he had a little leather cape on.
And I just looked, and I thought:
"Oh, my God, there's David Crosby."
DAVID: You guys are nuts.
There's no cinematic value here at all.
There isn't a shot. It's-- It isn't here.
When we started moving up here,
it wasn't because there was a community.
We were trying to get above the smog.
Back in the '50s, the smog was really terrible.
And then people would see musicians up here,
or know musicians were living up here,
and they would start to hang out
to run across a musician.
INTERVIEWER: What is something
that you wish they knew about what this place
really did represent?
You know?
What did it do? All--
It was just where we got the groceries.
It wasn't like we hung out here. Heh.
Where do you get coffee here? INTERVIEWER: Okay.
How do you get coffee?
* I can recall a time *
* When I wasn't ashamed To reach out... *
INTERVIEWER: Let's talk about these photos right here, Croz.
DAVID: I'm not in them.
* Now I think I've got... *
I'm definitely not in any of those photos.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, well, I know that.
DAVID: All those people showed up here after I was here.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. WOMAN: Take pictures.
The only people I know are-- Are The Doors,
and I didn't like them.
I don't think any of The Doors ever lived up here.
* Watch my sailboat glide *
Morrison, what a dork.
* But every day can be *
Well...
* A magic carpet... *
Cass. Cass lived up at the top.
On Woodrow Wilson. She lived here.
[*****]
DAVID: Cass and I got to be very tight friends.
She had good weed. I had good weed.
We knew what was important in life.
Very, very, very bright.
Lonely.
Fat girl.
Wishing-- Wishing she could be loved.
She was loved, but not the way she wanted to be.
INTERVIEWER: Turning that on yourself, do you feel
like you've been loved the way you wanted to be loved?
I think I didn't have a clue.
I don't think I was a good lover.
I don't think I was a good person to...
To companion. I don't-- I think I was selfish.
And, uh...
And wacko.
And I got more wacko as time went on.
There were a lot of women that I made love to.
Hundreds.
Uh, drugs make you different.
And cocaine tends to make you be obsessed with sex
and, uh, stuff.
There was boundaries I crossed
that you haven't thought of yet.
I'm surprised that any of the women
that put up with me did put up with me.
Um.
But they did.
I hurt a lot of girls.
I hurt a lot of people.
And I dragged several young women
through a lot of stuff.
Dana.
And Debbie Donovan.
Nancy was really hard
because I was fully addicted.
You know, she had to get out.
Save her life.
[CLEARS THROAT] But I didn't want to be left alone.
INTERVIEWER: And she had become addicted, being in that lifestyle?
You betcha.
Did you feel like you had addicted her?
Yes.
Were--? Were these girls addicted?
Yes, they were. And, yes, I did it.
I turned them on to it.
Cocaine and heroin, both.
[*****]
What you do to yourself is what you do to yourself.
You can be proud of it or disgusted by it,
but it's not really a moral thing.
What you do to other human beings,
that counts.
And I went back, and I was able to build bridges back.
All of the women
that I seriously cared about in my life,
except my daughter Donovan,
I've been able to repair it with.
I should thank them all for loving me.
I should thank them all for expanding my world.
They all taught me something.
Each of them taught me something.
And each of them loved me, you know, the best they could,
and they did love me really well.
Better than I loved them.
I think.
INTERVIEWER: Did Joni feel like forever when you--?
When you--? No? No.
When I first met Joni down in Florida,
she was singing, you know, at a coffeehouse,
and, uh, I was pretty much stunned by her.
You know, I fell for her,
which was similar to falling into a cement mixer.
I can remember laughing and crying
within the same half hour.
INTERVIEWER: Now, Joni has said that, at that point,
she felt like you were parading her around.
I did exactly that.
She's totally right, but the way she puts it
makes it like it was an imposition
and not like I was opening up
all the fucking doors in Hollywood for her.
I love her, and she's the best singer-songwriter of all of us,
no question, hands down.
I'd say, "Here, smoke this. Joni, want to sing a song?"
And then you'd watch their brains fall out
because nobody had heard anybody like her.
Joni and Clapton and that, that happened all the time.
[*****]
I produced her first record,
and I don't think I did that great a job.
I didn't get a great sound on her,
but I did manage to catch her essence.
She thought that Judy Collins was, like, success.
As much as she deliberately-- When she found out
she was going over people's heads, she went further.
Take a left.
Uh, and said, "Fuck you."
But the truth is that's what happened.
She went right over people's head.
INTERVIEWER: Getting close. There it is.
Okay. Pull in. Let's get out
and walk around. It's quiet up here.
Until they throw us out. Yeah.
Well, we're trespassing. They won't throw you out.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
[*****]
* Love is but a song We sing *
* Fear's the way We die... *
* You can make The mountains ring *
* Or make the angels cry... *
DAVID: Artists are fascinating.
Joni, Cass, Janis.
I got a dozen of them.
And they were all damaged, and they were all brilliant,
and they were all lonely,
and they were all...
fantastic.
INTERVIEWER: And why fall in love with Joni
and not any of the others?
* Smile on your brother... *
She wanted me to.
She had strong mojo.
[*****]
One night, we were all having a big dinner,
and there was 20 of us there.
She comes stomping in with her guitar
and sits down, and says, "I've got a new song."
And we all went, "Oh, fantastic. A new Joni song.
Unbelievable. This is so great. Sing it for us. Sing it for us."
And it was obviously her...
"fuck you and goodbye" to me.
And then she finished the song
and looked at me.
This intense, angry expression on her face,
and then she sang it again.
There's no one like Joni Mitchell.
I think probably the best guy for her,
and the best guy with her, was probably Graham.
And I was glad that they were together.
I had already fallen in love with Christine.
* Only for you... *
That's the house "Our House" was written about, right there.
* Our house *
* Is a very, very Very fine house *
* With two cats In the yard... *
See that interior light there?
The yellowy-white one back through that window?
That's the kitchen
where Crosby, Stills and Nash was born,
right under that light.
That's where we were standing
when we sang our first song together.
* Ah... *
* Da-da, da-da *
* La... *
DAVID: Cass introduced me to Graham.
I didn't know who he was at first.
And, uh-- But I liked him.
He put the top harmony on.
And we went:
Uh... Ha-ha-ha.
Blink! You know.
We knew what we were gonna be doing
for the next few years, right then.
GRAHAM: Whatever sound Crosby, Stills and Nash has
was born in 40 seconds.
Not years.
Not months of rehearsing.
Forty seconds.
[LAUGHS]
There's a little space for a garden out in back.
[INDISTINCTLY]
We can't rehearse it so it makes sense together.
They've got to be on. Like Dallas,
they don't play just to the track.
They listen to the vocal. He's conscious of the vocal.
MAN 1: What you gotta do is play acoustic now, get it down,
try and get a place as soon as we can.
Look, David and I have been sat here
for at least half an hour because we were told
that we were gonna play acoustic guitars right here.
MAN 2: Right. So where's Stephen?
STEPHEN: I'm not gonna cop out an inch to fear.
And you've walked out two fucking days in a row,
you fucking hypocrite.
You piss me off.
DAVID: Hello. Test.
Forty-nine. Sixty-five. Hi.
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome with us
Crosby, Stills and Nash.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
Thank you. We needed that. Heh.
This is our second gig.
This is the second time we've ever played
in front of people, man. We're scared shitless.
[INTRO TO "ALMOST CUT MY HAIR" PLAYING]
* Almost cut my hair *
DAVID: Everybody always asks me about Woodstock, right,
because it's grown hugely.
The further away from it we get, the bigger it gets.
* Happened Just the other day *
DAVID: It was about spirit,
about humans being nice to each other.
* It's gettin' Kind of long... *
DAVID: I saw this girl...
Blond girl, pretty, short dress,
good legs, pretty, walking in the mud.
She cuts her foot on a piece of glass in the mud.
Cuts it pretty badly. It's really bleeding.
See this guy, he's a New York State Thruway cop.
And I notice his shoes are all polished and shiny,
and his pants are creased real sharp.
And he looks pretty dapper.
He, without any hesitation at all,
walks right over to the girl, into the mud, picks her up,
and gets the blood and the mud all over himself,
and carries her to the car.
Lays her gently.
And 15 hippies step forward
to push that police cruiser out of the mud.
All of a sudden, it's working for me.
We ran on that field. You could see us.
When we came back and we did that TV show with Dick Cavett,
when you see us all, we're running on that field.
A lot of the people in my audience are very tired
because they came here,
I understand, from Woodstock, right here.
And the festival, people are still...
DAVID: You see the spirit in all of us,
how we're feeling right there,
how happy we are, how confident we are.
All of a sudden, our world's making sense,
and we feel like we're winning.
I still have my mud. [WOMAN LAUGHS]
DAVID: We're gonna stop that damn war.
Can I describe what it looked like
flying in on a helicopter?
It looked like an encampment of the Macedonian army
on the Greek hills... [AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
...crossed with the biggest batch of gypsies you ever saw.
DAVID: We're gonna make it different.
We're gonna fix this damn thing.
DICK: ...room upstairs. I got one.
I don't think it's wrong. Okay.
The air we're breathing is not clean.
You're aware of that. Everybody is.
Anybody looks out the window. [MAN COUGHS]
Consider this.
The only way to solve it seems to be
to convince GM, Ford, Chrysler, 76, Union, Shell, and Standard
to go out of business. DICK: Mm-hm.
MAN: All right. [AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
Which is-- Which is merely a setup for the punch line,
which is fat chance.
DICK: Yeah. [CHUCKLES]
Especially since four of them are my sponsors.
[ALL LAUGHING]
I don't know who lives here now.
I was sitting here, drunk in my car.
Neil drove by.
He saw me. This was when we were trying to decide
whether we wanted him in the band or not.
We were Crosby, Stills and Nash,
and we had the number one record in the country.
He turned around and pulled up here,
pulled in next to me.
He sat down on the trunk of the car,
and he sang me, I don't know, three, four songs.
You know, "Helpless," "Country Girl," stuff like that.
And that's when I decided I really wanted him in the band.
DAVID: The whole idea of starting the group,
it was to build a mother ship group
that would allow us the freedom to do what we wanted to do.
* Teach your children well *
* Your father's hell *
* Did slowly go by *
* And feed them... *
DAVID: All four of us are still slaves to the music.
Still.
And I can't tell you how great it was
to be in that band.
* And it appears To be a long *
* Appears to be a long *
* Such a long, long time *
* Before the dawn... *
[AUDIENCE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING]
The relationship was a bunch of guys
just getting something together for the first time
in the spotlight.
You know, attention that they never had before.
We were crazy. There was no--
You know, there was a lot of pressure.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING RHYTHMICALLY]
[AUDIENCE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING]
["LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH" PLAYING]
DAVID: Stephen, talented guy, man.
Very impressive dude.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING AND CLAPPING]
["CARRY ON" PLAYING]
DAVID: Synthesis is when you take widely separated things
and put them together,
create something new.
That's what happened.
* One morning I woke up *
* And I knew * * You were really gone... *
DAVID: For years at the beginning,
every time we'd go on stage, fantastic.
* A new way, I knew... *
DAVID: We could sing together.
Nash is a fantastic harmony singer.
* Go your way... *
DAVID: I think we might have been the first American supergroup.
* And carry on... *
DAVID: That tour in '74,
we were packing in huge numbers of people.
More than anybody, probably, since The Beatles.
* The fortunes of fables *
* Are able * * To sing the song... *
They see human beings up there.
We don't have high heels.
We don't have sequins. We don't have smoke bombs.
All we have is these buddies and songs.
That's all we have. That's all we've ever had.
That's all we've ever felt was important, was the music.
DAVID: Bottom line, I think, really, we thought
that forcing four guys into a space
that was only big enough for three would be explosive.
And we were right.
* Carry on *
* Love is coming *
* To us all *
MAN 1: I think he just wrapped himself.
[ALL LAUGHING]
MAN 2: Open the door and get in the car.
That's all we want.
Mic drop, mic drop.
[*****]
Good morning, David. [LAUGHING]
Kind of early, huh?
What's happening? Good to see you, man.
I wasn't a photographer, I was a musician with a camera.
So I didn't have a studio and lights.
I've never used lights. I've never developed a roll of film.
I just frame it up and push the button
when the moments are right.
And, you know, the trick is to be there, you know.
So these were all friends of mine, and I was hanging out..
You were asking about all those classic pictures.
I mean, who knew?
That day we did the photo on the couch there
for your CSN album cover...
* I have kissed you... *
After that, we drove around the corner
to a used clothing shop
and did a bunch of pictures in clothes.
We didn't know we even had an album cover.
And we did go back a day or two later,
but the house was gone.
* Yeah... *
I'm a Virgo. I analyze.
You're a Leo.
You just say what you feel.
See, he believes that bullshit. Right?
It's unbelievable. Well...
Don't even. What year were you born? '40?
You're not gonna tell them about the Chinese animal, are you?
What is your Chinese animal?
Don't tell them about the Chinese...
I know you're a...
I think you're a snake.
Please, we got to know this. [LAUGHING] '41.
'41.
Let me tell you this:
A snake is very lucky
in Chinese astrology.
Wouldn't you say your life
has been sort of a lucky thing? DAVID: Drastically.
Really drastically. You're sitting here now, right?
That's why. You're a Leo snake. Nothing to do with astrology.
Nothing to do with-- I'm a Virgo tiger.
You are so full of shit. You got to know that.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
DAVID: If I-- If I...
You know, I'm pointing a flag gun at my head,
it's sort of saying me
against the United States of America's government.
Wait. Don't puff, though, okay? Why not?
Because it makes too much smoke. I like the smoke.
The fact he was smoking the joint with the flag gun
was like sticking it to them.
Yeah. Sort of saying-- When I talk about that picture
and I say, "It looks like we had a plan.
Let's make a flag gun, and let's get a white backdrop,
and let's have David pose." No. It was, I mean...
CSN was in Minneapolis.
I think you were talking to Bob Dylan on the phone,
smoking a joint. Our plan--
HENRY: There was a knock on the door.
Graham Nash opens the door
and throws that flag gun on the bed.
He says, "Hey, Croz, a fan made you this."
DAVID: You're full of shit. HENRY: Really good shot.
I've never been to Minneapolis.
Never even... It was a good shot. Ha-ha-ha.
Voilà. Here. MAN: One.
I'll take this. DAVID: This is...
[DAVID COUGHING]
This is going to great lengths
with your meds.
Crap.
[BOTH COUGHING]
DAVID: And, kid, you need to get another dealer.
[COUGHS] God's herb.
I'll get you decent weed.
One of my favorite quotes is Garcia.
You know, the first time he took acid, he said:
"I knew there was more going on than they were telling us."
[LAUGHING] You know? Ha-ha-ha.
["SONG WITH NO WORDS (TREE WITH NO LEAVES)" PLAYING]
DAVID: I remember we always used to say:
"Someday, the lawyers and the politicians...
We will be those.
We'll be the, you know, the guys that-- That got high
and really understood what life was about."
Drugs are cool, and I'm going through a trip now.
I like to feel good.
You get locked into one thing,
you don't realize there's a lot of things you can get into.
Religion. Dealing.
Cosmic pudding. God.
Benign energy.
DAVID: It sort of happened. Not quite.
Maybe it's still gonna happen.
The old hippie feeling is still alive
in the, like, Greenpeace,
in the environmental people, right?
[CHUCKLING]
* I pulled in to Nazareth *
* Was feeling 'Bout half past dead...*
INTERVIEWER: The mustache became very iconic very quickly.
What is the Dennis Hopper story?
DAVID: He had used me as, like, the template
for the guy that he played in Easy Rider.
Oh, yeah, man, like, I'm stoned, you know, man?
But, like, you know, I saw a satellite, man.
DAVID: You know, it was a great film
just because it had reference to me in it.
If I'd been in it, it would have been much better.
A much more serious film. Yeah.
The last stronghold of mother, God, home,
and apple pie, and they're full of shit.
* I went looking... *
What?
And on the other side, you got a girl...
* When I saw Carmen And the Devil... *
...running through a field of flowers, man.
Half naked and high and laughing.
In the sunshine.
And you offer those two alternates to a child,
and a child is too smart to make that mistake.
Well, I sure could use that.
[LAUGHING] Wow.
* Take a load off, Fanny... *
[CROSBY LAUGHING]
* And you put the load Right on me *
* You put the load Right on me *
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
MAN: And we're off!
This is our first show.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
MAN: Yeah, Croz!
["TRIAD" PLAYING]
DAVID: The last few years have been fantastic for me.
I've made four solo albums.
I'm-- I'm going for five.
* You want to know *
DAVID: I did something you're not supposed to do
in show business.
* How it will be... *
I left a big group, CSN,
which has a solid paycheck.
* Me and her *
* Or you *
* And me... *
MIKA: --Rock and Roll Hall of Famer,
founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash,
singer and songwriter David Crosby.
JOE: We're all huge fans.
Your voice is incredible. Thank you.
How have you taken care of it?
Because... I haven't.
What? I totally have not.
JOE: That's what surprises me
because we've heard stories about you through the years.
Absolutely. We're like, "He's still alive?
How am I--? He and Keith Richards
are still alive?"
But not only are you alive, your voice.
God has blessed you
with an incredible voice. Thank you.
JOE: Yes, exactly.
* You see This life is fine *
* Even, even *
* With these ups and downs *
* And you should Have a sip of it *
* Else you're gonna find *
* That it's passed you by *
[AUDIENCE WHOOPING]
MAN: "Almost Cut My Hair."
Don't do it.
Don't do that. Don't.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
I just have to warn you, there's a thing...
What happens when you cut your hair...
Uh-oh.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND WHOOPING]
[LAUGHING]
My bass player is making fun of me right now.
Oh, God, it's a funny band, man.
They torture me all day long.
[STRUMMING GUITAR]
This is a love song.
You won't know it till the third verse.
* How can I sweep *
* These words into a cluster? *
* Put 'em in a pile *
* Like feathers On your floor... *
DAVID: Did you ever have a person you love get killed?
Well, afterwards, you know, you can't go back in
and fix the stuff.
Can't make up for any mistake.
Frozen in time.
["TRIAD" PLAYING]
I was going with Joni,
and it was, you know, on-again, off-again.
And Christine was very stable, very wonderful.
You know, vivacious...
very alive girl.
And, uh... And full of energy
and full of, uh...
whizbang and joy.
[SIGHS]
INTERVIEWER: Nash has a pretty amazing quote
where he says you went to identify Christine's body
and really never were the same.
He's-- He's right. I never was.
Seems like she's shouldering a load in your mind.
* How it will be *
Why her?
I loved her.
* Me and her... *
DAVID: Uh, Christine Hinton was a very beautiful girl
who loved The Byrds.
Christine and I wound up together
and discovered that we actually cared about each other.
* Your long hair flowing *
* Your eyes alive... *
DAVID: There's a thing from the book Dune
called the litany against fear.
"Fear is the mind-killer."
Creator of rage.
So she wrote it out for me
in this beautiful little script.
I've got it framed.
She did a lot of stuff.
Look, you don't get to pick who you fall for
and you don't get to pick why.
* I love you, too *
DAVID: I have a couple pictures of her where you see her smile.
* But I don't really see... *
Uh, and there you can see the spirit in the person.
She was a very spirited girl.
Christine was 21 years old.
Just starting her life.
She was just taking the cat to the vet...
and she didn't come home.
[*****]
When someone is killed--
Not, you know, they got sick
and then there was a long, agonizing process.
They got killed.
"Oh, so-and-so has been in a wreck. Come quickly."
And you go to the hospital, and they're dead.
I-- I spent a long time crying.
Just because I didn't know what else to do.
You know, they don't...
They don't prepare you about death at all.
Death is not something that we can talk about.
You know, nobody talks about death.
There's just this emptiness.
This:
[BLOWS]
Gone. You know, it's like a rip in the fabric.
An empty place.
Leaves a big hole.
And you want to fill it, and you...
Of course, if you're like me,
you torture yourself about it, going:
"I wish I had said this. I wish I had done that."
So it kind of rocks your world.
INTERVIEWER: What do you want to say to her?
I'm sorry.
Could have loved you better.
[*****]
[BIRDS SQUAWKING]
DAVID: Neil and I were out driving around
in one of his woodies.
And we'd heard about it on the radio,
and we just couldn't conceive of it.
[PROTESTERS SCREAMING]
Tear gas first started down the commons.
Then the guard moved up on both sides of Taylor Hall,
forced kids off the commons, and all of a sudden,
I heard the shooting.
[STUDENTS YELLING INDISTINCTLY]
[GUNFIRE]
[BELL CLANGING]
STUDENT: Then I saw people dropping to the ground.
REPORTER: Today, the guardsmen opened fire on the students,
killing four of them,
two young men and two young women.
Three were shot in the chest and one in the head.
A dozen or more others were wounded,
some by gunfire and some by bayonets.
The students were protesting
the American invasion of Cambodia.
DAVID: And I watched it hit Neil. Wham!
It was like he'd been punched.
Crosby came up, and he had the magazine
with the Kent State killings cover on it.
And I'd heard it on the news, what had happened, and...
But Crosby always has a way of bringing things into focus.
That's what really woke me up.
DAVID: Neil picked up the guitar
and wrote the song right in front of me.
[CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG'S "OHIO" PLAYING]
And I called Nash and said, "Get a studio. Now."
And our record company president,
a wonderful man named Ahmet Ertegun,
he told everybody, "Look, this record has to go out tomorrow."
[CROSBY, STILLS, NASH, & YOUNG'S "OHIO" PLAYING]
DAVID: As soon as I heard the song, it felt right.
It felt like it said what I was feeling.
* Soldiers Are cutting us down... *
[CROSBY, STILLS, NASH, & YOUNG'S "OHIO" PLAYING]
* Should have been done Long ago *
* What if you knew her... *
It made me feel good
that I was actually able to stand up for what I believed.
I think that's probably the best job
of being troubadours
or being town criers that we ever did.
PROTESTERS: Hell, no, we won't go!
It lit the whole country on fire.
* Four dead in Ohio... *
There were protests on every campus in America.
[PROTESTERS CHANTING INDISTINCTLY]
* How many in Ohio? *
* How many more? *
* Four dead in Ohio... *
This guy, sergeant...
swore he never fired his gun.
The slide's racked back right there.
That's a Colt .45 Automatic.
The barrel is protruding because the slide has racked back.
It is ejecting a shell as he fired.
Swore he never fired his weapon.
Bang. Right there.
In the picture.
Never went to court.
Nobody even tried.
Him.
Him. Him.
Idiot kids.
The person who gave them that live ammunition
should be in prison still,
right now,
for murder.
This lying son of a bitch.
"I never fired my weapon!" Really? Hmph.
Funny, we got a picture of you doing it.
[CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG'S "FIND THE COST OF FREEDOM"]
* Find the cost *
* Of freedom *
* Buried in the ground... *
Belief is good.
Didn't work out.
Yet.
But we're trying.
* Lay your body down *
DAVID: * Yeah, yeah, yeah *
* Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah *
* Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah *
* Whoa, oh, whoa... *
* Whoa, oh, oh, yeah *
DAVID: Christine's death, I couldn't deal with at all.
I was in a terrible place.
Pretty freaked out.
* There I heard This story... *
[*****]
DAVID: I'd just finished making Déjà Vu,
during which I, a number of times, wound up
sitting on the floor, crying.
* Do, do, do, do, do... *
A number of people, Nash in particular,
stuck with me for a long time, in order that I not...
[SIGHS] ...you know, do something really dumb
and give up.
* Do, do, do, do-dee-dum Do-dee-dum, do-dee-dum *
* If I had ever Been here before *
* I would probably know Just what to do... *
* Don't you? *
DAVID: Was living on my boat in Sausalito
and I was going up Tamalpais
to this spot that I had up there
and just crying for hours.
And I had these songs
because they'd only taken two of my songs for Déjà Vu.
And I just stayed in the studio, in Wally Heider's,
because it was...
somewhere I felt safe.
[IN ITALIAN]
If I Could Only Remember My Name.
* I thought *
* I met a man *
* Who said... *
David didn't seem to have a plan at all.
It was like free-form.
It was-- I mean, he had these songs in his head.
Some had been cooking since The Byrds' days.
But he never revealed them to too many people.
* I was mistaken *
* Only a child *
* Laughing... *
STEPHEN: I felt kind of privileged to peer into this world
because I liked this world that he inhabited.
DAVID: It was the most innocent, unplanned,
follow-your-heart...
kind of, uh, experience...
you could imagine.
STEPHEN: He laid out no rules.
"Here are my songs. Do whatever the hell you want."
Whoever showed up that night
was who was making the record that night,
and I would sing them a song.
STEPHEN: There was a presence in the room.
You could taste it.
It was a playground.
It was an audio freaking playground.
DAVID: Jerry Garcia.
He'd just show up. "Hey. What? What are you doing?"
If he and I had two guitars
and we would sit in the same room,
we were happy. He just wanted it to happen.
He wanted to coax it into happening,
any kind of way.
If it meant get down on the floor
and lick the notes off the floor, he'd do it.
He'd do whatever.
He knew it was waiting to happen
right around the edges of the picture,
and he wanted to invite those notes out.
"Come on. Come on, little notes. Come on out, come on out."
And he was the most...
pure music guy.
GARCIA: Actually, the way it starts is:
[VOCALIZING TO GUITAR] * Da-da, da-da-da *
* Da, da, da *
* Da-da-da, da, da *
* Da, da, da *
* Da-da, da, da-da, da *
* Da-da, da, da-da... *
STEPHEN: He was just in sky-high heaven
with all his friends there
and even Neil backing him on this bizarre record.
* Everybody's sayin' *
* Music is love * * Everyone, everyone *
* Everybody's sayin'... * * Everybody's sayin'... *
DAVID: The friendship that they showed me
and the support that my friends gave me
was one of the best things in my life.
That record was a turning point.
* It's love, yeah *
* Everybody's sayin' That music is love *
* Everybody's sayin' *
* It's love * * Sayin' it's love, yeah *
* Everybody's sayin' *
* That music is love * * Everyone, everywhere *
* Everybody's sayin' It's love *
[FADING] * Sayin' it's love, yeah *
[PLAYING GUITAR]
* Yeah, yeah *
* Whoo! *
* Whoo, whoo, whoo! *
INTERVIEWER: Injecting drugs, they say...
first time,
your life changes, no matter what comes after.
DAVID: Mm-hm.
Yeah.
Yeah, a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless,
gave me a shot of heroin.
And, uh...
Mm.
Just great.
First one feels truly wonderful.
It's why it's so deadly.
[CLEARS THROAT] All of a sudden, nothing hurts.
You feel...
exalted and wonderful.
Only the first time.
After that, you're just trying to catch it.
You're just trying to go back there.
And you never get back there.
Ever.
Addiction takes you over
like fire takes over a burning building.
And I went completely off the rails.
It's a weird kind of spiral, man.
You are mad at yourself for being a dick,
so you do more drugs, which makes you more of a dick,
which makes you more mad at yourself.
INTERVIEWER: But what's the high phase?
What's the phase that keeps you going back?
It's-- You don't get it.
They're not to get high. They're for anesthesia.
That's why people get smashed on hard drugs,
is they don't want to be here.
They want to suppress here and now.
They want to live more inside of their dream.
Or their nightmare.
I was warned by many, many people.
In fact, some close-up-to-him people, uh...
begged me not to get near him.
And I was already smitten.
I was already in the dance.
When I saw him doing drugs,
I thought, "What--? What is that?
Why is everybody so scared of it? Wait a minute.
Give me some of that. Let me see what it is.
Maybe if I can figure that out, I can pull you out."
And that was really all I meant to do.
INTERVIEWER: Croz, do you ever wonder why you are still alive?
[SOFTLY] I don't know.
No idea, man.
[IN NORMAL VOICE] I-- Why me?
Look at all these people, buddies of mine, that died, man.
Janis. Cass. Hendrix.
Those are friends of mine.
They all died from the same thing the same way.
How come I didn't?
I was doing the same drug.
I overdosed.
They had to bring me back a couple times.
How come?
How come I'm not dead?
[*****]
At a certain point, drugs became more important
than anybody or anything,
including music.
I let those guys down terribly, man, when I became a junkie.
I went right down the tubes in front of them,
and they watched the band go all to shit
because I couldn't pull my weight.
I had already decided that someday
I was gonna get that call. "Did you hear about David?"
And that would be it. He'd be dead.
You'd go. Because you can't live that way
and not, you know, pay the consequences.
Did I ever tell you Neil came and offered me
to come to his ranch and stay there and get sober?
He was genuine about it. He wanted to help me.
INTERVIEWER: What were you using?
Coke and heroin. Both.
Nash and Jackson were both very concerned.
Tried repeatedly to get me to quit.
They were two of the key people running the intervention on me.
JACKSON: It was-- It was quite a-- Quite a gathering of people.
Jan, who was just as bad a shape as he was.
I mean, they were addicts, you know?
And the drill was to try to convince them
that they should, you know, like, really:
"Take it from us, you're heading for the wall.
You got to stop. You got to do something.
We don't want to lose you."
It was an all-night thing.
He agreed to go into Scripps, like a hospital.
And he stayed there exactly one day
and split the next day.
[SIGHS]
* Homeward Through the haze... *
DAVID: After that, they pretty much stopped trying.
REPORTER: He was convicted of drug and weapons charges in 1983.
Since then, he's been arrested on additional drug
and hit-and-run charges.
GRAHAM: He had been forced by the courts
to go to a rehab center and left without permission.
And at that point,
he became a fugitive from the law.
DAVID: It was just a matter of days
before somebody put my picture up in the post office.
We fled. A dealer guy got us a plane ride.
On a single-engine airplane.
All the way across the country. Took us three days.
Guy was a good pilot.
Uh, I think he'd been a drug runner.
And I went and found my boat.
Because I thought somehow I could go back
and touch my touchstone,
and it would somehow save me from what I knew was coming.
I went to the boat, and she was in terrible shape.
Nobody had been taking care of her at all
because I hadn't given them any money to.
I lay there and lay there, and days passed.
[*****]
And I gave up.
Big moment.
And I got a ride to the local FBI agency.
And I walked in.
He said, "Yeah, can I help you?"
I said, "You're looking for me. My name's David Crosby."
He said:
"Step over against the wall."
I think I'm probably facing some time,
but I would like to get it done with
and go back to playing music. That's all I really want to do.
When I gave myself up,
Jan D. came back,
and a doctor friend of ours got her
into a treatment place in Monterey.
REPORTER: Do you have any comments for us?
Wish me luck, huh?
DAVID: When I went in prison, cut both ways.
"Hey, rock star, how you feel now, huh?
Bet you wish you was out there getting laid
and having a lot of money now, don't you?"
When I went into prison, I was nearly dead.
I'm kicking two major, heavily addictive,
really terrible drugs without even an aspirin.
I'd lost pretty much everything.
I'd hit bottom, blown my money.
I spent four months in solitary.
They lock you in a steel box and feed you through the door.
And in prison, I woke up in a cell,
remembered who I was and started writing again.
And that was the beginning of the road back.
"Compass" was the first decent song I wrote.
* I have wasted *
* Ten years... *
DAVID: When I got out of prison,
I thanked the judge for sending me away
because it got me off hard drugs.
REPORTER 1: He's now on probation for four years
and has to submit to regular drug testing.
REPORTER 2: Off drugs completely?
Yes, sir, I am. Happy to be.
REPORTER: His first gig out of prison was in a small club in Texas.
He'd never before played on-stage without drugs.
* Guinnevere *
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
ANNOUNCER: Mr. David Crosby, ladies and gentlemen!
DAVID: Feels wonderful!
* Look around again... *
DAVID: Jan D., God bless her,
she waited.
When I got out of prison,
we were under orders from a judge, uh,
not to see each other.
Forbidden to see me.
But then we got ahold of the judge, said, "Hey, please.
We're-- I'm out of prison, I'm sober,
and I'm gonna stay that way.
Jan is sober and going to meetings and is trying,
and we'd like to get married."
* That you should *
* Grab ahold of it... *
And he was a decent guy, and he let us.
* Else you'll find *
* It's passed you by... *
DAVID: Jan loves me in ways that I didn't love myself,
and she taught me to love myself.
She taught me a lot about how to love, period.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
This song, if you know who's who,
this song is the story of the first time
of many times that CSNY broke up.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
[PLAYING INTRO TO "SOUTHERN CROSS"]
What held CSN, CSNY together was Nash and I being so locked
because we can sing so well together.
Nash and I, as a pair of voices,
hard to beat.
Everly Brothers. Indigo Girls. Couple other people, not many.
* I have been around *
* The world *
* Looking *
* Looking for that Woman girl *
* Who knows Love can endure *
* And you know it will * [APPLAUSE]
Ladies and gentlemen, Crosby, Stills and Nash.
[MAN HOWLS] DAVID: For a guy
who was supposed to be dead a couple of years ago,
I'm doing pretty well.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
I wanna thank the two men standing next to me
because they've been brothers to me.
They've stuck with me through thick and thin.
They waited. They helped.
They cried sometimes.
They swore at me sometimes.
But they've been my brothers all the way down the line.
Without them, I could not have made this music,
and I love them dearly.
And I thank you both, guys. [AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
DAVID: We have made really good music together,
and I'm very grateful for every bit of it.
I think CSNY is a completely different band than CSN,
completely different,
and should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
on its own, by the way.
I should be in there a third time,
just to make Clapton jealous.
[CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG'S "ALMOST CUT MY HAIR" PLAYING]
We really did like each other when we first started playing,
and we were thrilled by each other's songs.
Bands get together, you're in love with each other,
and it's all wonderful and it's exciting,
but 40 years later, heh,
it devolves into just turn on the smoke machine
and play your hits.
[PLAYING "ALMOST CUT MY HAIR"]
* Almost *
* Cut my hair... *
DAVID: Got to the point where we didn't like each other,
didn't ride the same bus.
We were competing all the time.
If I'd bring in one of my new weird songs,
they didn't want to learn it.
And we've been so unkind to each other.
We've hurt each other. All of us have hurt each other.
We've done terrible things to each other many times.
Everybody in the band has, at many times.
Me probably more than anybody else.
My big fuck-up is getting mad.
You didn't ask me, but I'll volunteer it.
Biggest mistake I make: getting mad.
Um...
Once the adrenaline hits my system,
it's just, like, instant asshole.
INTERVIEWER: What's the get-off for you?
There isn't any. There's no good about it.
There's no pleasure, there's no enjoyment.
There's nothing except...
Once the adrenaline takes ahold, you're...
in the grip of it,
and you say stuff and do stuff that's just awful.
I shot my mouth off about Neil's girlfriend.
I didn't realize the guy was gonna put it on the Net.
I thought the interview was over. Neil's pissed at me,
he's not gonna work with me. Says, "No more CSNY ever!"
HOWARD: So my dream of you guys reuniting,
having a little concert, doing Déjà Vu--
NEIL: That'll never happen. No. HOWARD: Never happen?
NEIL: If you make a mistake, you got to fix it right away.
Yeah. I shouldn't have said it anyway.
I apologized for it, but it doesn't do any good.
And it just-- It just went downhill from there.
The Graham that I have in my head
is on-stage with me in Scandinavia someplace,
Norway or somewhere,
and he's screaming at me...
in my face, from about this far away,
spittle hitting me in the face,
and he's screaming:
"You don't get it, do you?
You mean nothing to me now! Nothing!
I hate you!
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!"
Spit.
Punching in the chest.
On-stage, in front of an audience.
He was, on that tour, coming on-stage
and not looking at me.
The whole night, he would sing facing Stills
and just try to pretend I wasn't there.
I always wanted to have a buddy, a brother,
a, you know...
partner.
ANNOUNCER: It is my pleasure to introduce
two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees
David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.
[ALL CHEERING]
DAVID: We were singing
for the White House Christmas tree lighting.
[DISCORDANT] * Silent night *
* Holy night *
* Shepherds quake *
* At the sight... *
DAVID: We were fucking terrible.
And having the guts to say:
"Okay, it's dead.
Don't prop the corpse up.
Don't make its mouth move with a string.
Leave it. Let it die a decent death.
Go on and do the next thing."
* Sleep in heavenly *
* Peace *
* Sleep in heavenly peace *
Happy Christmas, everybody. [ALL CHEERING]
DAVID: It's so sad that the last song CSN sang together
was "Silent Night."
He tore the heart out of CSN and CSNY
in the space of a few months.
[*****]
That's what "Encore" is about.
I wrote that for David Crosby.
The song is about, who are you?
Who are you when you're not famous?
Who are you when the lights have gone out
and the audience has left?
Are you a decent person?
Or are you a fucking asshole? Who are you?
* What you going to do * MAN: Thank you.
* When the last show Is over? *
[CHEERING FADES]
* And what you gonna do When you can't touch base? *
* Encore, encore * [CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
* The last song is over *
* Encore, encore *
[AUDIENCE WHISTLING]
INTERVIEWER: This is you speaking in 1974.
This is the first interview that we ever did.
DAVID: Heh. My father's 74, man.
He says, in the long run, none of it counts.
Money, glory, fame, chicks, nothing.
Says the only thing counts is whether you got friends.
All the rest of it is bullshit.
I think I made that up.
The reason I think I made it up is...
my dad didn't have any friends.
INTERVIEWER: Did he ever comment on this quote?
So, in a way, you're talking to yourself?
Yeah. And quoting your dad-ish.
Yeah. Yeah.
[SNIFFS]
INTERVIEWER: What happened to your friends?
Whew.
That's really hard.
See, I have to look at it in context.
I still have friends, but...
all the main guys that I made music with
won't even talk to me.
All of them.
One of them hating my guts could be an accident.
McGuinn,
Nash, Neil, and Stephen all really dislike me.
Strongly.
I heard a quote about you. You said:
"David ripped the soul out of Crosby, Stills and Nash."
GRAHAM: Yeah, well...
You couldn't still feel that way.
Ah. You know, you say things in anger,
and you try and take them back,
and you can't sometimes because words are very powerful.
David and I haven't spoken in two years.
PAUL: Yeah.
Having spoken to him
probably almost every day for 45 years.
Yeah. It's just sad.
And I don't quite know how to undo it, you know?
Maybe-- Maybe it just all...
I mean, if we never played another note of music,
CSN or CSNY, look what we did.
I'm telling you, what a body of work.
Really. It's true.
But there's more. Always more.
There's more in there, you never know.
GRAHAM: I know. You never know...
INTERVIEWER: What comes to mind in terms of something like:
"Man, I wish I could wipe that right now"?
Just listening to you talk about Neil, for example.
What do--? I'm not mad at Neil.
Neil's mad at me. Understood.
But in terms of making a situation right...
Uh...
why won't you just show up on his doorstep?
Because I don't even know where his doorstep is.
The one thing I can do...
is make music myself.
So I'm trying really hard to do that.
To prove to yourself...?
That I'm worth a shit.
[AUDIENCE CHEERING]
DAVID: I just can't give up.
JAN [ON PHONE]: Putting you on speaker for a minute here.
DAVID: Okay. I love you, Jan Crosby.
JAN: I love you too.
Mm. Honey, I'm-- I'm so far away.
I'm just so tired, exhausted.
[*****]
Eight stents in my heart.
That's as many as you can put in.
They can't go any more.
Heart attack...
sometime in the next couple years.
I bit off more than I could chew.
I can't do five dates in a row.
So I lost my voice,
and I had to cancel a couple of dates.
It's hard.
* Where will I be *
* When I go back home? *
* Who will I see *
* When I'm all alone? *
* And what'll I do?
[*****]
Thank you, sweetie. You're welcome.
Boy, that tree's pretty.
That's the first thing I fell in love with here was the trees.
All these trees.
They're wonderful.
I see the rest of the world, the rest of what's going on,
but I don't really focus on it.
[CHUCKLES]
JAN: I can admit to you that...
it's gonna be hard, whatever happens.
[VOICE BREAKING] I might just disappear.
I'm sorry to say that on camera,
but I don't know how...
I could take another breath when he's gone.
DAVID: I want to be a guy who is loving.
So, yeah, that's what I'm striving for.
That's what I want to be. That's who I want to be.
Like loving my children and my wife and my dogs
and my music.
Like how it makes me feel.
And at least I have enough guts to be honest. Right now.
INTERVIEWER: That's what this is.
Maybe. Maybe I've conned you into it.
Maybe this is all a clever plan.
I think you should be able to say goodbye
and tell them what they meant to you.
[CHUCKLES]
DAVID: * When you roam *
* You're traveling alone *
* Tryin' to catch Each grain of sand *
* Slipping through Your hands *
* And the wind *
* Is weathering your skin *
* All that's on the outside *
* Is breaking you in *
* Let me be *
* The oil upon your glove *
* Moving in the creases *
* Soften what's tough *
* Glory *
* In the blink of an eye *
* Glory *
* In a moment of weakness *
* Glory *
* I will be your armor *
* Glory *
* I will be your witness *
* Glory *
* You can't lose me, no *
* Glory *
* No, you can't lose me *
[*****]
[SCATTING]
DAVID: It's over.