David Crosby: The Rolling Stone Interview

Happy birthday, David Crosby!🎉 Read our 1970 Rolling Stone interview with the musician.

. Onstage, it is David, Leo/lion round face fronting a neat mane of wild hair, with freak fringes flying from his old Byrd jacket, who dominates the between-song raps. It’s like the man can’t stand dead air.

Crosby was an easy interview; he’d become a friend through past meetings for different stories. He said he’d found a journalist he thought he could trust. I’d found a musician/spokesman I knew I could believe.

Man, there’s limitations inherent in anything, I suppose. The thing you gotta do in a group is fill whatever needs to be filled that you can fill and try not to be too specific about it. No, the limitations worked out usually in the areas of there being nobody else to sing harmony. They all believed the same thing, but I don’t think any of them would’ve said it … well, they didn’t say it.Probably. Maybe they thought the focus was there. I know that everybody was conscious of the cameras because it was the first time anybody was filmin’ rock & roll, y’know. We were all very camera-shy. I was camera-shy to an extreme degree.: Well, there are mirrors in this world. For god’s sake, man. I mean, Lord.

That time in Chinatown when you were having dinner, you made a comparison between yourself, and your relationship to McGuinn, and the roles adopted in the movie by Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, inYeh, well, Dennis and Peter used to watch us a lot. Peter’s been a good friend for years, and Dennis, too, for that matter, although I don’t know him as well as I know Peter. I wouldn’t say that Dennis had me down exactly. He did grow a pretty good mustache, I’ll say that for him.

This isn’t total freedom, no, of course not. I have to — not only am I not free to just express myself, but that can’t even be my main concern. Not if I really want this to be a healthy group, which I really do, ’cause I really love it. And I love the cats and they can really play. That’s nice. They all also really get off playing. They’re doing it for the right reason, thank god. It’s really part of it. Why you do it really affects the flavor, man.

It’s something like we have only this one plot of ground, y’know, and we’ve built a house on it and it’s an old frame house and we didn’t use redwood. And it’s rotten. And we have propped it and shored it and buttressed it and sky-hooked it and everything we can think of to keep it up, man. And I don’t think it’s happening. I think at least we’re gonna have to kind of bust it up for the lumber. And I don’t dig it, man, because I don’t dig destruction, man. I’m a builder.

Maybe so. He’s up against pretty heavy odds, y’know. He’s up against California oil money and the original power bloc of this state. And they’re after his ass. And they’ve got idiots — just full-out clowns, front men — like Yorty, and they’ve got truly dangerous people like Reagan. See, I didn’t know him, I never talked to him. I believed in him because he said that he wanted to change stuff. And I believed also that in my probably naive conception of politics he had not made so many deals that he was unable to change course at all, which is the case in Johnson and Nixon both. They’re cats, politicians, who’ve made their deal. Years ago. They’ve sold out to the special interests and controlling powers in this country in order to gain power.

The point is that the problems we’re up against, and those include environmental crime, race crime, political, total, obnoxious corruption, and international crime, which is war — all of those problems, man, relate to a power structure that is running this country. It ain’t even happening for the Panthers. And I don’t blame them. The Panthers feel, and quite rightly so, that they’re in a kind of Warsaw ghetto situation. I don’t blame them for buying guns, not even a little, man. I ain’t aligning myself with anybody, but I sure don’t blame them. Boy, I sure don’t —-uh. It’s hard to make ’em forget how many people voted for Wallace. It isn’t like they didn’t do it or anything, they did, you know. Hard to make them forget that.

It’s a tricky thing. I could be dead wrong, man. Richard Nixon might be right, and I’m crazy enough to admit it. I just don’t think so. Gotta do what you believe. I believe that all those cats are wrong. I believe what they say matters is not it. Now, I also believe everybody is underestimating the amount of inertia. I believe that that big conglomerate blob of interlocking systems, all moving down this one big socio-economic path … I don’t think it can change its course. I’m sorry.

Talking about Altamont, you compared it to “My Back Pages.” Altamont attempted to recreate the spontaneity of Woodstock. What was “My Back Pages?” Given the economics of survival for a band, I can see where you might say, “Well, let’s do this one so that we can grow more later.” But North Beach — yeah, it was just before Sausalito. Sausalito was prime, just cream. And then, Dino Valente, who is a great person to be on the same bill with, since he will go up every set and just sing his ass off, y’know. Unless he’s on some kind of change, he will usually go up and just really do his level best to stir your brains around with a spoon. He’s a very alive cat, y’know.

No. Now mind you, I hung out with Albert and I kinda like him. I even kind of respect him. But I would not do business with him.I’m not able to discuss it. Talking about other people’s business and how they work and what they think is important about it and what they apparently don’t think is important about it is a pretty touchy area. Besides which, I’m no fucking businessman. I’m not really capable of assessing their true motives or what they intended to do with the money.

Which brings us to the ticket prices for your concerts. One of the complaints on this tour was from people in St. Paul-Minneapolis, who were boycotting your show there because tickets were $5.50, $7.50, and $10 top. He was an excellent myth-maker. He blew us up, made us bigger than life. Turned our thing, not into something else, but I’d say he placed a lens in front of it that blew it up. Huge, it’s huge.Derek hyped us, but the thing was, see, if you’re out hyping … Hyping is like, you know when your dealer says to you, “Man, say, man, I have some weed so righteous that you might just as well bang your head against the wall as smoke it.” I mean now that’s a hype.

That was very early. And then Ciro’s was amazing, how they handled it. The Trip, which was a little later, was not so wonderful. But, as the Trip — it was groovy. Ciro’s was really outrageous.

You’ve called them a magic band, and you’ve said that the Airplane — and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — are magic bands. What’s the criterion? I’m certain that for a mutual profit gain these companies can be convinced to allow us to cross-pollinate, particularly if it’s put to them in those terms. If it’s put to them as a revolutionary, “up against the wall, futher-muckers,” it will no doubt fall flat smack on its nose, and they will tighten up on the contracts. Be hard-ass, for four more years. If somebody takes the trouble to convince them that it’ll net ’em twice as much money over the next ten years, we’ll get it Tuesday.

That trip from Florida to San Diego … You mentioned how quickly Graham learned how to take over the boat. Not strange, not by me … The problem is that I’ve explored about every avenue of sex that I’ve heard of, OK? The trouble is that I like ’em, most of ’em. I’m not too fond of the bathroom trips, but aside from that in the catalog of sexual history I think that there are very few things that I don’t like. Which makes me, by most people’s standards, a freak.

Producing; I don’t know if I’ll do any more producing for outside people. There’re some people that I would like to help: Dead, Airplane. Not that they need much help, but I love playing with them. There’s a cat that I would’ve liked to have produced an album for and I don’t know if I’m gonna get a chance to. I’m sure somebody else will snap him up before I have time to do it: Jackson Browne. I think Jackson Browne is one of the probably ten best songwriters around, maybe.

Well, anyway, me learnin’ stuff, yeah, I want to learn stuff. Every kind of instrument, every kind of project, every kind of music I can get into for the rest of my life, but it’s not directly related to making an album. And I’m not waiting on the album until I’m not doing something I would rather be doing — namely Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Neil Young, which I would rather do than any other musical trip I can think of.

We would get through a set, 40 minutes long — just barely — of material that we had done so many times we were ready to throw up with it. We were bored, we were uptight, uncommunicative, we were on an ego trip, we were defensive … overall defensive. Y’know, after that “Eight Miles High”/ period … there was no significant advance that I know of. There was also no Byrds after that that I know of. And it’s a provincial attitude, but, as far as I’m concerned, there were only five Byrds, ever.

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