David Crosby: Remember My Name (2019) - full transcript
Meet David Crosby in this portrait of a man with everything but an easy retirement on his mind.
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.
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...
... 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.
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.
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.
Hi, Mama! How's my girl?
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.
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.
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,
and go see the heart people right 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.
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?
I wanted him
to choose family first,
and I thought he would.
This is really
where I feel alive.
The only solace I have
is that
when the light does go out,
I hope it's when he's singing.
♪ 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... ♪
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? ♪
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.
♪ Drea-ea-ea-eam ♪
♪ Dream, dream, dream ♪
♪ Drea-ea-ea-eam... ♪
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... ♪
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
will give you an idea
of my method of working.
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.
High Noon.
He won one of the first Oscars
they ever gave out for a movie called Tabu,
and he won a Golden Globe
for High Noon.
With every swing
of the pendulum,
with every second,
a man's life ticked away.
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... ♪
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... ♪
Hello.
I'm David Crosby,
and when we are together,
they call us "The Byrds."
♪ So you want to be
A rock 'n' roll star ♪
♪ Then listen now
To what I say ♪
♪ Just get
An electric guitar... ♪
I think we were one
of the first electric bands.
♪ Learn how to play... ♪
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...
feel like you're more
important than you really 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.
Who is the young man
with the lengthy haircut
to your right rear?
Right rear.
Who is it?
That's Dave from The Byrds,
a mate of ours.
Ahoy, mateys.
I was just hiding back there,
paying attention
to what they were doing.
I was trying to learn how to,
you know, be a rock star.
And they knew how.
Young, cocky, bright,
very creative,
and a caboose to my dick.
♪ You keep saying no
To her... ♪
Ciro's.
♪ 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,
and 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... ♪
Are these memories in black
and white or in color for you?
Color, very color.
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..."
... please play a song for me.
His words were so good.
His songs were so good.
♪ Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man ♪
♪ Play a song for me ♪
♪ In the jingle jangle
Morning ♪
♪ I'll come
Following you... ♪
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...
♪ Hey
Mr. Tambourine Man... ♪
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... ♪
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.
I've never forgiven him
for that.
Uh, no! Keep going straight.
You want to go up
Laurel Canyon, right?
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... ♪
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.
Your mother gets high,
and you don't know it!
At the time, you know,
I was becoming a character.
Russian shirt, Russian hat.
♪ Hey, Joe, where you going
With your cash? ♪
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 any money,
and 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... ♪
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... ♪
And, you know, it's beautiful.
♪ Forgot it long ago... ♪
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... ♪
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.
Yeah.
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.
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."
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, man,
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 that musicians
were living up here,
and they would start to hang out
to run across a musician.
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.
- Where do you get coffee here?
- Okay.
How do you get coffee?
♪ I can recall a time ♪
♪ When I wasn't ashamed
To reach out... ♪
Let's talk about these photos
right here, Croz.
I'm not in them.
♪ Now I think I've got... ♪
I'm definitely not
in any of those photos.
Okay, well, I know that.
All those people showed up here
after I was here.
Okay. 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.
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.
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.
But I didn't want to be
left alone.
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.
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.
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 could 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.
Getting close. There it is.
Okay. Pull in. Let's get out
and walk around for a second.
It's quiet up here.
Until they throw us out. Yeah.
Well, we're trespassing. They won't throw you out.
♪ Love is but a song
We sing ♪
♪ Fear's the way
We die... ♪
♪ You can make
The mountains ring ♪
♪ Or make the angels cry... ♪
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.
And why would you
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,
with 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.
That's 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... ♪
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.
Whatever sound Crosby,
Stills and Nash has
was born in 40 seconds.
Not years.
Not months of rehearsing.
Forty seconds.
There's a little space
for a garden out in back.
We can't rehearse it so that
it all 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.
What you gotta do is play
acoustic now, get it down,
and try and get a big
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.
Right. So where's 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.
Hello. Test.
Forty-nine. Sixty-five. Hi.
Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome with us
Crosby, Stills and Nash.
Thank you. We needed that.
This is our second gig.
This is the second time
we've ever played
in front of people, man.
We're scared shitless.
♪ Almost cut my hair ♪
You know, 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 ♪
It was about spirit.
It was about humans
being nice to each other.
♪ It's gettin'
Kind of long... ♪
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...
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.
We're gonna stop that damn war.
Can I describe to you
what it looked like
flying in on a helicopter, man?
It looked like an encampment
of the Macedonian army
on the Greek hills...
... crossed with the biggest
batch of gypsies you ever saw.
We're gonna make it different.
We're gonna fix this damn thing.
... room upstairs. I got one,
and I don't even think it's wrong. Okay.
Well, like, the air that we're
all breathing is not clean, right?
You're aware of that.
Everybody is.
Anybody that looks out the window.
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.
Mm-hm.
All right.
Which is—Which is merely
a setup for the punch line,
which is fat chance.
Yeah.
Especially since four of them
are my sponsors.
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.
The whole idea of starting
the group in the first place,
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... ♪
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 ♪
♪ Appears to be a long ♪
♪ Time ♪
♪ Such a long, long time ♪
♪ Before the dawn... ♪
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.
Stephen, talented guy, man.
Very impressive dude.
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... ♪
For years at the beginning,
every time we'd go on stage,
fantastic.
♪ A new way, I knew... ♪
We could sing together.
Nash is a fantastic
harmony singer.
♪ Go your way... ♪
I think we might have been the
first American supergroup.
♪ And carry on... ♪
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.
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 ♪
♪ Love is coming ♪
♪ To us all ♪
I think he just wrapped himself.
Open the door
and get in the car.
That's all we want.
Mic drop, mic drop.
Good morning, David.
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?
Please don't tell them
about the Chinese...
I know you're a...
I think you're a snake.
Please, we got to know this. '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?
- Drastically.
- Really drastically.
- You're sitting here now, right?
- There you go, that's why. You're a Leo snake.
- Has 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.
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.
And the fact that he was smoking
the joint with the flag gun
was kind of like sticking
it to 'em, you know.
- Yeah. Sort of saying—
- And when I talk about that picture
and I say,
"Well, it looks like we had a plan.
Well, 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,
and smoking a joint.
- Our plan—
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."
- Henry, you're so full of shit.
- It's a really good shot.
I've never even been to Minneapolis.
- Never even...
- It was a good shot. Ha-ha-ha.
- Voila. - Here.
- One.
- I'll take this.
- This is...
This is going to great lengths
with your meds.
Crap.
And, kid, you need
to get another dealer.
God's herb.
I'll get you some 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."
You know?
- Ha-ha-ha.
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 like a drug trip right now.
I like to feel good.
You get locked into one kind of a thing,
and you don't realize there's a lot
of things that you can get into.
Religion. Music. Dealing.
Cosmic pudding. God.
Benign energy.
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?
♪ I pulled in to Nazareth ♪
♪ Was feeling
'Bout half past dead... ♪
The mustache became very iconic very quickly.
What is the Dennis Hopper story?
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.
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.
Wow.
♪ Take a load off, Fanny... ♪
♪ And you put the load
Right on me ♪
♪ You put the load
Right on me ♪
And we're off!
This is our first show.
Yeah, Croz!
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 ♪
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... ♪
Rock and Roll Hall of Famer,
founding member of The Byrds
and Crosby, Stills and Nash,
singer and songwriter
David Crosby.
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.
That's what surprises me
because, you know, we've heard stories
about you through the years.
- Absolutely.
- And we're like, "He's still alive?"
- How in the hell 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.
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 ♪
"Almost Cut My Hair."
Don't do it.
Don't do that.
Don't.
I just have to warn you,
there's a thing...
What happens
when you cut your hair...
Uh-oh.
My bass player
is making fun of me right now.
Oh, God, it's a funny band, man.
They torture me all day long.
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... ♪
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.
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.
Nash has a pretty amazing quote
where he says that 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... ♪
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... ♪
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 ♪
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.
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, you know, 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.
What do you want to say to her?
I'm sorry.
Could have loved you better.
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.
Tear gas first started
down the commons.
Then the Guard moved up
on both sides of Taylor Hall,
and forced the kids off the commons,
and all of a sudden,
I heard the shooting.
Then I saw people
dropping to the ground.
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.
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.
Neil picked up the guitar
and wrote the song
right in front of me.
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."
As soon as I heard the song,
it felt right.
It felt like it said
what I was feeling.
♪ Soldiers
Are cutting us down... ♪
♪ 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.
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.
♪ 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.
♪ 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 ♪
♪ 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 ♪
Christine's death,
I couldn't deal with at all.
I was in a terrible place.
Pretty freaked out.
♪ There I heard
This story... ♪
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...
... 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? ♪
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.
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... ♪
I felt kind of privileged
to peer into this world
because I liked this world
that he inhabited.
It was the most innocent,
unplanned,
follow-your-heart...
kind of, uh, experience...
you could imagine.
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.
There was a presence
in the room.
You could taste it.
It was a playground.
It was an audio
freaking playground.
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.
♪ 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... ♪
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'... ♪
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 ♪
♪ Sayin' it's love, yeah ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Whoo! ♪
♪ Whoo, whoo, whoo! ♪
Injecting drugs, they say...
first time,
your life changes,
no matter what comes after.
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.
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.
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,
and 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.
Croz, do you ever wonder
why you are still alive?
I don't know.
No idea, man.
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 there,
the 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,
you know, like, 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.
Like, he'd be dead, you know.
You'd go...
Because you can't live that way
and not, you know,
pay the consequences.
Did I ever tell you about the time
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.
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.
It was—It was quite a—
quite a gathering of people.
Jan, who was in 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.
You know, 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.
♪ Homeward
Through the haze... ♪
After that, they pretty much
stopped trying.
He was convicted of drug
and weapons charges in 1983.
Since then, he's been arrested on additional drug
and hit-and-run charges.
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.
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.
Do you have any comments for us?
Wish me luck, huh?
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, huh?"
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... ♪
When I got out of prison,
I thanked the judge
for sending me away
because it got me
off hard drugs.
He's now on probation
for four years
and has to submit
to regular drug testing.
Are you off drugs completely now?
Yes, sir, I am. Happy to be.
His first gig out of prison
was in a small club in Texas.
He'd never before played
on stage without drugs.
♪ Guinnevere ♪
Mr. David Crosby,
ladies and gentlemen!
Feels wonderful!
♪ Look around again... ♪
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, and said, "Hey, please.
We're—I'm out of prison,
I'm sober,
and I'm gonna stay that way.
And 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... ♪
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.
This song,
if you know who's who,
this song is the story
of the first time
of many times
that CSNY broke up.
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 ♪
Ladies and gentlemen,
Crosby, Stills and Nash.
For a guy who was supposed to
be dead a couple of years ago,
I'm doing pretty well.
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.
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.
We really did like each other
when we first started playing,
and we were thrilled
by each other's songs.
Bands get together, and
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.
♪ Almost ♪
♪ Cut my hair... ♪
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 I mean, 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.
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. So, Neil's pissed at me,
and he's not gonna work with me.
He says, "No more CSNY ever!"
So my dream of you guys
reuniting,
having a little concert,
maybe doing the Déjà Vu album—
- That'll never happen.
- Never happen? - No.
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.
It is my pleasure to introduce
two-time Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame inductees
David Crosby, Stephen Stills
and Graham Nash.
We were singing
for the White House
Christmas tree lighting.
♪ Silent night ♪
♪ Holy night ♪
♪ Shepherds quake ♪
♪ At the sight... ♪
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.
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?
Thank you.
♪ When the last show
Is over? ♪
♪ And what you gonna do
When you can't touch base? ♪
♪ Encore, encore ♪
♪ The last song is over ♪
♪ Encore, encore ♪
This is you speaking in 1974.
This is the first interview
that we ever did.
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 any fucking 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.
Did he ever comment
on this quote?
So, in a way,
you're talking to yourself?
- Yeah... Yeah.
- And quoting your dad... ish.
Yeah.
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.
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."
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, you know,
'cause words are very powerful.
David and I
haven't spoken in two years.
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,
so you never know.
I know. You never know...
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 wouldn't you just show up
on his doorstep?
'Cause 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.
I just can't give up.
Putting you on speaker
for a minute here.
Okay. I love you, Jan Crosby.
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.
I can admit to you that...
it's gonna be hard,
whatever happens.
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.
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.
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.
♪ 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 ♪
It's over.