E-mail a friendDavid Crosby
airdate February 19, 2008
As a founding member of two pioneering musical groups—the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young—David Crosby helped create the folk-rock sound. The two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee also produced the album that introduced Joni Mitchell to the world. He recounted his rollercoaster journey in his memoirs, Long Time Gone and Since Then, and helped unveil the documentary CSNY: Déjà vu, described as part performance and part commentary on war. Crosby has formed a new band, CPR, which includes his son.
David Crosby
Tavis: I am pleased to welcome David Crosby to this program. The rock icon is of course a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the legendary group that is the subject of the recent film "Déjà Vu." Just last month the movie closed out the Sundance Film Festival. A box set of David Crosby's great work is now available called "Voyage." But first, here now a scene from the film "Déjà Vu."
[Clip]
Tavis: Couple of projects called "Déjà Vu" of late, I was just saying to David Crosby, but there is no mistaking that sound - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Nice to see you, sir.
David Crosby: You too, man.
Tavis: Good to have you here.
Crosby: It's a pleasure.
Tavis: Tell me more about the project "Déjà Vu." We know it was at Sundance, you guys closed out Sundance, in fact. Tell me about the project.
Crosby: Well, Neil, like most of us, is very tired of this war and very tired of this administration. Doesn't like being lied to and really, really is unhappy about the war. He wrote an album, very political album. Songs like "Let's Impeach the President for Lying," very political, and he called us and said, "Listen, I want to go on tour with the four of us and do this record and do these songs and see if we can stir up some trouble."
And we all, of course, were extremely happy to do that. The songs are good, the message is something that we feel very strongly. So we went out and we did it and of course I think most of the people at the shows were very supportive. I think 90 percent of the people that we played to really loved it. There were people that at some of the shows, Atlanta or down in Orange County that booed us.
Tavis: I can't imagine that message getting booed in Orange County.
Crosby: My heavens, no.
Tavis: That's a joke, yeah.
Crosby: Yeah, so we got booed pretty heavily in Orange County, actually. We'd sing "Let's Impeach the President for Lying." "Well, you can't say that about George. You stop that right now." (Laughter) We felt very good about it, but we had cameras. We had a wonderful guy named Mike Serray (sp?) that used to work for ABC. He did, I think, four tours in Iraq and a couple in Afghanistan. He was a platoon leader in Vietnam.
And he added something to it, because he really wasn't there to praise us, he was there to tell the story the best he could. And he did a wonderful thing, he brought a lot of young vets to the shows who had been in Iraq recently, and they added a dimension to it, because invariably all of them would say, "Didn't you guys notice Vietnam?"
That's where the "Déjà Vu" came from. They used my song title to say, "Don't you remember we made this mistake before? Hasn't anybody learned anything from it?" That came from every vet we talked to. And we also filmed the audience and we filmed them when they got mad at us, we would capture them on the way out, and they would say some pretty amazing stuff.
The documentary isn't a performance thing like the U2 one. It's really about a crux point in American history where we think a shift took place and hopefully it's going to take that way.
Tavis: As an artist, you've never been shy about expressing yourself, but what is the risk one takes as an artist, as a group of artists, when you know that there are folk in your fan base who want to hear you perform but don't want to hear the political stuff? And there are other artists who've gotten in trouble for this - the Dixie Chicks come to mind, a number of folk. Linda Ronstadt; a bunch of folk come to mind. When they come to see you perform, they want to hear you do your stuff. They don't want no speeches.
Crosby: Well, I think we pretty much have to just say, "Tough luck." (Laughter)
Tavis: I guess you did. You say, "Tough luck" and put it on film.
Crosby: Well, because to me, Tavis, it's a part of our job. We've always been, for hundreds and hundreds of years, we've been the troubadours. Folk singers have always been the troubadours and the town criers, the "it's 11:30 and all's well" or "it's 12:00 and we have a chimpanzee in the White House and things aren't too good."
That's part of our job. It isn't all of our job; a large part of our job is just to boogie, just to make you have and to express emotional things that you want to have expressed. But part of our job is this troubadour, town crier part, so anybody that comes to a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert and doesn't expect that really hasn't been watching. So we pretty much went ahead with it and didn't worry about if we appealed to the whole fan base or not.
Tavis: What do you make of the fact this book, "Since Then -" "Since Then," I love that title."Since Then: How I Survived Everything and Lived to Tell About It." This book is now out in paperback. But what do you make of the fact that you are still here to tell about it?
Crosby: I don't know. I don't know; I'm baffled by it, man. I had so many friends, good friends, who didn't make it, and I don't know why -
Tavis: Who didn't abuse themselves the way you abused yourself.
Crosby: Well, who did, too.
Tavis: Yeah, and who did, too, yeah.
Crosby: I think of Jimi Hendrix, how good would he be playing by now? How good would Janis Joplin be singing by now? How hard could John Belushi make you laugh by now? And why did I survive? I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes I feel guilty about it. But I'm happy to be here, I'm grateful as hell. I have a wonderful family and I have a great life and I get to make music. I'm very happy to be here, but gee, I don't have the answer as to why it's me.
Tavis: What do you make, then, of the fact that you were gifted - yeah, that's the right word - you were gifted with this music thing?
Crosby: I don't know. I think it must be so that I can make things better, shed a little light. If there is a plan and if anybody's running things, then they obviously had work for me to do, because they gave me a wonderful tool to do with it.
Tavis: When you put out a box set like this one I have in my hand, "Voyage," it gives all of your fans a chance to go back through the corpus of your work and to be reminded of places and people and things. But this is for us who are your fans. What does an artist like David Crosby think when he looks at a box set of his work over the years?
Crosby: How lucky I am.
Tavis: How lucky you are?
Crosby: Yeah. That goes clear back to The Byrds, and I have had an incredible run of good luck in wonderful partners, great opportunities, surviving stuff that, as we just discussed, killed a lot of other people, and to be able to still be here and still be able to make music that means something to me, it's pretty wonderful. And that body of work there is - well, it's what I get to leave behind.
We all have something that we create or something that we make, some body of work that we've done. You've got a body of work that you've done that you'll be able to say to your kids, "This is what I did."
Tavis: I interviewed David Crosby one day.
Crosby: Well, and it went well.
Tavis: Here's the tape to prove it. Fascinating question, for me at least. Are you comfortable with this? If it were to end tomorrow - because you're right, we're not judged by one moment, we are judged by not one piece of work, by our body of work. I love that phrase. So if god forbid, if you were to die tomorrow, are you comfortable with this body of work?
Crosby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's good work. There's a lot of heartfelt, creative process in there. And I'm proud of it. And I'm also very proud of that particular piece of work because Graham Nash did - he and a friend of ours, Joel Bernstein, did an incredible job with the pictures in the booklet and stuff.
Tavis: The liner notes are amazing, yeah.
Crosby: Yeah, they are. They're just amazing; they really did a great job.
Tavis: I can't let you go without asking you about this because it's such the talk of the last week, so Herbie Hancock walks on that stage at the Grammy awards and wins that album of the year, shocking a lot of people. Of course, the whole project in tribute to his friend and the woman you discovered, Joni Mitchell.
Crosby: It's all true, and I was so happy for Herbie last night, man. If ever there was a guy who deserved it, he did. That guy has been a fantastic musician for as long as I can remember.
Tavis: But the Joni part is so David Crosby.
Crosby: Well, the Joni part was Joni. I just ran into her. I walked into a coffee house and she was up there singing that stuff, and I went, "Who is that girl?" (Laughs) And I immediately made friends with her and then we sort of got a little closer than that and then I -
Tavis: You're being way too modest. You brought her back, you helped take her around and introduce her to people.
Crosby: I did. It was a lot of fun. We would go over to somebody's house and I'd say, "Joni, why don't you sing them a song?" And then I'd kind of sit back and watch. (Laughter) Their brains would run out their nose and (unintelligible) on the floor, and I'd be going "Yeah, she's pretty good." (Laughter) Underplaying it.
But Herbie always saw her music, he always understood her music very well, and always loved her music. I was just extremely happy for Herbie. I think everybody knows that Joni is probably the best or one of the very best songwriters that's ever lived.
Tavis: No question about it, yeah.
Crosby: But I was just extremely happy for Herbie because I like him a lot, and I really thought he deserved it and I think it was a very brave move by the Academy.
Tavis: Well, there are a lot of folk who are awfully happy for you. Happy that you are still here, happy that things are different since then, and that you have lived to tell about it. The book, in paperback now, David Crosby, "Since Then: How I Survived Everything and Lived to Tell About It," and the David Crosby box set. It doesn't just sound good, it's a gorgeous box set.
Crosby: It is a nice piece of work.
Tavis: It's a nice piece of work, yeah. It's called "Voyage," by David Crosby. I'm honored to have you here.
Crosby: Thank you, man.
Tavis: Thanks for coming on.
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