David Crosby (August 14, 1941 – January 19, 2023) was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter, solo artist and founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
David Van Cortlandt Crosby was born in Los Angeles, California, the second son of Academy Award-winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby, who formerly worked on Wall Street, and Aliph Van Cortlandt Whitehead, a salesperson at Macy’s department store.
Growing up in California, David Crosby attended several schools, including the University Elementary School in Los Angeles, the Crane Country Day School in Montecito, and Laguna Blanca School in Santa Barbara for the rest of his elementary school and junior high years. At Crane, he starred in HMS Pinafore and other musicals but he flunked out. Crosby did not graduate from the Cate School in Carpinteria. His parents divorced in 1960, and his father married Betty Cormack Andrews.
David Crosby briefly studied drama at Santa Barbara City College before dropping out to pursue a career in music. He performed with singer Terry Callier in Chicago and Greenwich Village, but the duo failed to obtain a recording contract. He also performed with Les Baxter’s Balladeers around 1962. With the help of producer Jim Dickson, Crosby recorded his first solo session in 1963.
David Crosby joined the Byrds in 1964 and they had their first number-one hit in April 1965 with a cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan. Crosby appeared on the Byrds’ first five albums and produced the original lineup’s 1973 reunion album. He subsequently formed Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1968 with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.
After the release of their debut album, Crosby, Stills & Nash won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist of 1969. Neil Young joined the group for live appearances, their second concert being Woodstock, before recording their second album “Déjà Vu”. Meant to be a group that could collaborate freely, Crosby and Nash recorded three gold albums in the 1970s, while the core trio of Crosby, Stills & Nash remained active from 1976 until 2016. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunions took place in each decade from the 1970s through the 2000s.
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David Crosby wrote or co-wrote “Lady Friend”, “Everybody’s Been Burned”, “Why”, and “Eight Miles High” with the Byrds and “Guinnevere”, “Wooden Ships”, “Shadow Captain”, and “In My Dreams” with Crosby, Stills & Nash. He wrote “Almost Cut My Hair” and the title track “Déjà Vu” for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 album of the same name.
David Crosby had 4 children including, James Raymond, with Celia Crawford Ferguson in 1962, who was placed for adoption and reunited with Crosby as an adult. Beginning in 1997, James Raymond performed with Crosby on stage and in the studio, as a member of Crosby, Pevar & Raymond, and as part of the touring bands Crosby & Nash and Crosby, plus Stills & Nash.
In January 2000, Melissa Etheridge announced that David Crosby was the sperm donor of two children with her partner Julie Cypher by means of artificial insemination.
David Crosby developed a craft cannabis brand called “MIGHTY CROZ” in partnership with longtime friend and entrepreneur Steven Sponder. Crosby, a 50-plus-year cannabis advocate, and connoisseur, credited cannabis with contributing to his creative process of songwriting.
He also credited cannabis and cannabidiol (CBD) with alleviating his chronic shoulder pain which allowed him to continue touring and making new music well into his seventies. In 2018, David Crosby was invited to join the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) advisory board.
David Crosby was politically active throughout his professional career. He publicly questioned the report of the Warren Commission covering the assassination of John F. Kennedy onstage during the Byrds’ appearance at the Monterey Festival in 1967. He was as a pacifist and a well-known opponent to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Crosby also strongly criticized the presidency of Donald Trump, calling him “a dangerous guy who’s got a big ego”.
During the early 1990s, Crosby had a brief acting career and appeared on TV as a guest star in several episodes of “The John Larroquette Show“, where he played the part of Larroquette’s Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) sponsor, on an episode of “Roseanne” as the singer–husband of one of Roseanne’s co-workers, who was played by Bonnie Bramlett, and an episode of “Ellen” called “Ellen Unplugged”, in which he was helping out at the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp.
He also appeared as a pirate in the 1991 film “Hook“, as a 1970s hippie in the 1991 film “Backdraft”, and as a bartender in the 1992 film “Thunderheart“. David Crosby also voiced himself on two episodes of The Simpsons, “Marge in Chains” and “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet”
David Crosby‘s work with the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young has sold over 35 million albums, so far.
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David Crosby was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, once for his work in the Byrds and again for his work with Crosby, Stills & Nash. Five albums to which he contributed are included in Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, three with the Byrds and two with Crosby, Stills & Nash. He was outspoken politically and was sometimes depicted as emblematic of the counterculture of the 1960s.
In 1994 David Crosby was the recipient of a highly publicized liver transplant, paid for by Phil Collins, which created some controversy because of his celebrity status and his past problems with drug and alcohol addiction.
In February 2014, at the urging of his doctor, David Crosby postponed the final dates of his solo tour to undergo a cardiac catheterization and angiogram, based on the results of a routine cardiac stress test
David Crosby died on January 18, 2023 at the age of 81 after a long illness.
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