David Crosby

Singer-songwriter-guitarist David Crosby, a founding member of hugely influential '60s rock units the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, has died at 81.

“I loved him and he loved me and he was family to me.” Wrote Bob Dylan in his memoir, “Chronicles”: “Crosby was a colorful and unpredictable character, wore a Mandrake the Magician cape, didn’t get along with too many people and had a beautiful voice — an architect of harmony … In 2000 he published “Stand and Be Counted,” a history of activism in music, with David Bender. In a [separate article,](https://variety.com/2019/music/news/cameron-crowe-interview-david-crosby-documentary-remember-my-name-1203274929/) Crowe talked about working with producer Greg Mariotti on the picture with the idea of preserving Crosby’s legacy and personality for future generations of viewers. Though by no means a stranger to drug use himself, Young was appalled by Crosby’s behavior and the constant tension and disorder within the group, and withdrew to focus on his solo career, though he would return to tour with the other members in 1974. Crosby maintained his solo career with the albums “Oh Yes I Can” (No. Graham Nash was Crosby’s reliable partner and stabilizing collaborator through the ’70s: Together they issued the duo recordings “Graham Nash/David Crosby” (No. That June, the band appeared at the historic Monterey Pop Festival in Northern California; the politically outspoken Crosby infuriated McGuinn with some of his onstage remarks, and further enraged his bandmate by sitting in with Buffalo Springfield for most of their set. Though Crosby’s pure, soaring voice was a key component of the unit’s sound, he took a back seat as a writer to bandmates McGuinn and Clark, who were responsible for the group’s hit originals. Crosby spoke about his own mortality in the film, and Crowe remarked on that in an [David Crosby](https://variety.com/t/david-crosby/), a founding member of two popular and enormously influential ’60s rock units, the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash (later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), has died, his representative says. I don’t have the stamina; I don’t have the strength.” But he said he was recording as busily as possible: “I’ve been making records at a startling rate.

David Crosby, the legendary singer-songwriter and founding member of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, has died at 81.

In 2000, Melissa Etheridge revealed that Crosby was the father of the two children she shared with then-partner, Julie Cypher. “I regretted losing him many times,” Crosby told The Associated Press of Raymond in 1998. The band went on to release a series of hits with “Marrakesh Express,” “Just a Song Before I Go,” “Woodstock” and others. Cypher carried the children Crosby fathered by artificial insemination, Etheridge told Rolling Stone. “I was right about the sex. [“Live at the Capitol Theater,”](https://davidcrosby.com/products/david-crosby-the-lighthouse-band-live-at-the-capitol-theatre-cd-dvd) came out last month. I was wrong when it came to drugs.” "I was happy to be at peace with him," he said. Shortly after he underwent the liver transplant, Crosby was reunited with Raymond, who had been placed for adoption in 1961. Crosby also had a daughter, Donovan, with Debbie Donovan. He spoke his mind, his heart and his passion through his beautiful music and leaves an incredible legacy. His legacy will continue to live on through his legendary music."

Crosby, who co-founded both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash, had been ill for some time.

There followed periods of ill health, and a liver transplant in 1994. A six-decade career culminated in his final album, For Free, released in 2021. He was renowned for his guitar-playing and vocal harmonies. Following the musician's death, Graham Nash wrote on social media that his late collaborator was "fearless in life and in music" and left behind a "tremendous void". Crosby later expressed regret over his addictions and altercations with co-stars, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2019 he was "ashamed" of some of his past behaviours. His substance abuse had reportedly intensified after the death of a girlfriend in a car crash when he was a young man.

David Crosby, an icon of American rock, has died. A co-founder of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young influenced a generation of rockers and singer ...

So the feeling of being able to look at myself now and be proud of myself - oh, boy, that's a big deal. Look in his eyes and see the dark. WESTERVELT: When the documentary about Crosby came out, he told me he's at peace with who he'd become, despite the burned bridges and lost friends. CROSBY, STILLS AND NASH: (Singing) Speak your mind, man, yeah. And we were horrible to each other many, many times - all of us. In the meetings, they tell you it's a moment of clarity. And we were competing all the time, the whole time. Graham Nash wanted out of the pop rock group the Hollies. And Crosby had just been kicked out of The Byrds. As soon as we sang one of Stephen's songs, you know, he's a great songwriter. He was the founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. But their foundation was a unique California sound built on harmonies, acoustic guitars and a dose of self-awareness often missing in rock lyrics.

Crosby was a prominent figure of the free-spirited 1970s Laurel Canyon scene who helped bring folk-rock mainstream with both The Byrds and Crosby, ...

Years of well-documented substance abuse led to tumultuous relationships in and out of music, multiple arrests and a nine-month stint in a Texas prison in the '80s. His songwriting contributions also pushed the band in new directions — in particular, the rhythmic cadences of "Déjà Vu" and the loose arrangements and boho instrumental tone of "Wooden Ships." But in later years, it made him a natural for the concise and quippy nature of Twitter. Its self-titled 1969 debut led to an performance at Woodstock and a Grammy for best new artist, while 1970's Déjà Vu — by which point Neil Young had joined, adding another letter to the band's name — touched on both the comforts of tradition and the seismic generational shifts that were underway. His older brother, Ethan, introduced him to jazz, a genre he would touch on throughout his career, including with his late '90s / early '00s band CPR and on a ruminative 2017 solo album, Sky Trails. and [Bob Dylan](https://www.npr.org/artists/15193203/bob-dylan)'s "Mr. At loose ends, he immersed himself in sailing, one of his childhood passions, buying a schooner for $25,000 with money borrowed from The Monkees' Peter Tork. He added five solo albums to his catalog between 2014 and 2021, and toured frequently with two sets of collaborators, the Lighthouse Band (which featured "The idea of cooperative effort to make something bigger than any one person could ever do was stuck in my head," he wrote in his 1988 autobiography, Long Time Gone. [Pete Seeger](https://www.npr.org/artists/15869924/pete-seeger)'s "Turn! His publicist confirmed the artist's death to NPR; no cause of death was given at the time of this report. Crosby had long dealt with serious health problems, including multiple heart attacks, diabetes and hepatitis C, for which he had a liver transplant in 1994.

He was an original member of the Byrds and a founder of Crosby, Stills & Nash. But he was almost as well known for his troubled personal life as for his ...

Mr. Crosby, Mr. Stills and Mr. Nash, and sometimes Mr. McGuinn and Mr. Crosby released a series of successful albums with Mr. Crosby and Mr. Starting in 1972, Mr. Crosby wrote his first song with Mr. By this time Mr. Patricia Dance, a sister of Mr. Crosby’s wife, Jan Dance, said in a text message on Thursday evening that Mr.

David Crosby, a folk rock pioneer and one of the founding members of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, has died, his family announced Thursday.

He spoke his mind, his heart, and his passion through his beautiful music and leaves an incredible legacy. Turn!” which was made popular again in the mid-’90s thanks to the 1994 feature film “Forrest Gump.” He was released in 1986 and credited his time in prison with helping him get sober. He leaves behind a tremendous void as far as sheer personality and talent in this world. “That I can still at this advanced age get a chance to make more music is just a freaking miracle.” Carole King, who was joined on stage in 1994 by Crosby and Nash to perform “You’ve Got a Friend,” reacted to the news on His legacy will continue to live on through his legendary music” “We will miss him dearly.” The statement added that “David lived a life of deep and enduring gratitude and was an extraordinary, richly sentient being,” continuing to say that “his music will live on through us all.” The statement added: “David was fearless in life and in music. “There are two (centers) to my life; my family and the music,” he added. He was lovingly surrounded by his wife and soulmate Jan and son Django,” the Crosby family said in a statement, obtained by CNN through a family spokesperson.

He helped write the soundtrack of an era with the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, then nearly died from drug abuse.

The brash rock musician evolved from a baby-faced harmony singer with the Byrds to a mustachioed hippie superstar and an ongoing troubadour in Crosby, ...

Like so many folk performers, Crosby was dazzled by the Beatles’ 1964 movie “A Hard Day’s Night” and decided to become a rock star. “I regretted losing him many times,” Crosby told the AP of Raymond in 1998. Crosby had produced Mitchell’s first album, “Song to a Seagull,” in 1968, and for a time was her boyfriend (as was Nash). Crosby, meanwhile, was so devastated by the death of girlfriend Christine Hinton in a car accident, that he would lay on the studio floor and sob. Crosby was exposed early to classical, folk and jazz music. In recent years, Crosby toured often, and candidly answered questions on Twitter with a blend of affection and exasperation, whether commenting on rock star peers or assessing the quality of a fan’s marijuana joint. Featuring a rougher, less unified sound, the album released in 1970 and was another commercial smash. His father was Oscar-winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby of “High Noon” fame. Crosby, Stills and Nash’s first meeting is part of rock folklore: Stills and Crosby were at Joni Mitchell’s house in 1968 (Stills would contend they were at Mama Cass’), working on the ballad “You Don’t Have to Cry,” when Nash suggested they start over again. Crosby was angered by Nash’s 2013 memoir “Wild Tales” (whiny and dishonest, he called it) and relations between the two spilled into an ugly public feud, with Nash and Crosby agreeing on one thing: Crosby, Stills and Nash was finished. president did lead Crosby to suggest that he was open to a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young protest tour, but his old bandmates declined to respond. He was a founder and focus of the Los Angeles rock music community from which such performers as the Eagles and Jackson Browne later emerged.

Taken in total, Crosby's body of work offered a lot to take in, but was always worth the effort. And from that big stash, these are 10 of the best.

All three of Crosby’s songs for the Crosby, Stills & Nash debut album became deserved classics, and this ferocious protest anthem demonstrated the muscle that complemented the more artful stylings of his songcraft. Crosby drew on three key relationships in his life — with Joni Mitchell, the late Christine Hinton and Nancy Ross — for this airy love song from the Crosby, Stills & Nash debut album that he often referred to as his best ever. The B-side and Fifth Dimension album track “Why?,” meanwhile, is all him, inspired by Indian ragas and particularly sitar master Ravi Shankar (not yet widely known in the pop world). Crosby was part of the triumvirate, with Gene Clark and Jim “Roger” McGuinn, that wrote The Byrds’ psychedelic A-side classic — though the late Clark maintained that Crosby’s contribution was just one line: “rain gray town/ known for its sound” (a reference to London). He made memorable music from political and social commentary, romantic longing (and, occasionally, fulfillment) and from the well-chronicled struggles with substances that periodically derailed his life. Whether on his own or with The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young), CPR and, most recently, the Lighthouse Band, Crosby’s idiosyncratic touch with a melody and a lyric was showcased in abundance.

Singer-songwriter David Crosby of Crosby, Stills & Nash & Young has died. He was 81 years old.

He also wrote the Byrds tracks "Lady Friend," "Everybody's Been Burned" and more. "David was fearless in life and in music," he continued. "He leaves behind a tremendous void as far as sheer personality and talent in this world. My heart is truly with his wife, Jan, his son, Django, and all of the people he has touched in this world." A documentary about his life, " In 1996, he also formed the group CPR, a.k.a. His music and legacy will inspire many generations to come. He was without question a giant of a musician, and his harmonic sensibilities were nothing short of genius. Born in Los Angeles in 1941, Crosby launched his career as a member of the Byrds, joining the band in 1964 and appearing on their first five albums. I know people tend to focus on how volatile our relationship has been at times, but what has always mattered to David and me more than anything was the pure joy of the music we created together, the sound we discovered with one another, and the deep friendship we shared over all these many long years." He spoke his mind, his heart, and his passion through his beautiful music and leaves an incredible legacy. The group welcomed Neil Young in 1969 and changed their name to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

American rock legend David Crosby has died aged 81 following a long illness, his wife Jan Dance announced on Friday. Crosby, one of the most influential ...

Crosby, one of the most influential rock singers of the 1960s and ’70s, was a founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash (later becoming Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). American rock legend David Crosby has died aged 81 following a long illness, his wife Jan Dance announced on Friday. US rock legend David Crosby passes away at 81

The brash rock musician evolved from a baby-faced harmony singer with the Byrds to a mustachioed hippie superstar and an ongoing troubadour in Crosby, Stills, ...

The trio formed the influential supergroup Crosby, Stills and Nash – which later also included Neil Young – in 1968 and following the passing of their former ...

Singer and songwriter whose work with the Byrds, and Crosby, Stills and Nash helped define folk-rock.

An accomplished musician and composer, Raymond played in the jazz-rock band CPR with his father and Jeff Pevar (they released four albums between 1998 and 2001), was music director for Crosby’s solo live shows and also became a member of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s touring band from 2009. He released the solo album Thousand Roads (1993), which gave him a minor hit single with Hero, then picked up the pace dramatically in the new century with Croz (2014), Lighthouse (2016), Sky Trails (2017) and Here If You Listen (2018). One of his regular musical collaborators was James Raymond, his child with Celia Crawford Ferguson, whom Crosby had left pregnant in California in the early 60s, and who had given her baby up for adoption. Born in Los Angeles, he was the second son of the cinematographer Floyd Crosby and his first wife, Aliph Van Cortlandt Whitehead, a scion of the influential Van Cortlandt dynasty. In 1973 Crosby reunited with his previous band for the album Byrds, and in 1977 Crosby, Stills and Nash released CSN, which reached No 2 on the US album chart and outsold the trio’s debut. [Peter Tork](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/feb/21/peter-tork-obituary) of the Monkees, Crosby bought a 74ft schooner called Mayan, where he would write some of his best-known songs including Crosby, Stills and Nash’s Wooden Ships. He would make six further solo discs, in addition to Crosby & Nash (2004), two albums with Stills and Nash (Live It Up in 1990 and After the Storm, 1994) and American Dream and Looking Forward with CSNY (1988 and 1999). The hanging chords and mysterious time changes of his title track made it one of his most mesmerising compositions, while Almost Cut My Hair was his battle cry for the counterculture. He marked his return with the enthralling autobiography Long Time Gone (1988) and the solo album Oh Yes I Can (1989). The members then embarked on solo ventures and their reunions grew increasingly rare, though they reformed for a stadium tour in 1974, a lavishly wasteful affair that Crosby nicknamed “the Doom tour”. Their debut album, Crosby Stills & Nash (1969), was an immediate smash, and proved hugely influential on a rising generation of west coast artists. This was defined by their shimmering recording of Bob Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man, its distinctive harmonies and chiming 12-string guitar carrying it to the top of the charts in Britain and the US in 1965.

The singer and songwriter, who died this week, created music that helped define an era and stretched across generations. Listen to six decades of tracks ...

Written with the members of the Lighthouse Band, “Balanced on a Pin” contemplates fragility and mortality: “Landing’s the hardest part/The connection comes apart,” Crosby sings. “Curved Air” — written with his son James Raymond — is briskly percussive and rhythmically unpredictable, with flamenco-like handclaps and a bass line that talks back to him. There’s more than a hint of Crosby’s lifelong admiration for Mitchell in “Holding On to Nothing,” with its calmly strummed, eccentric chords and asymmetrical melody. In 1971, Crosby released his perfectly atmospheric solo debut album, “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” backed by members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane as well as Joni Mitchell, who joined the backup harmonies on this song. “Don’t you wonder what’s going on down under you?” the members of this supergroup harmonized at a key moment in this wonderfully complex musical and verbal construction. Boomers can remember when the length of a man’s hair signified a political allegiance. Survivors from opposite sides of a war, who don’t even know “who won,” share their meager supplies, deciding they can be “free and easy” on the water. The song would emerge anyway: first with the Jefferson Airplane, later on “4 Way Street” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Written by Crosby and Jim McGuinn (who would later rename himself Roger), “I See You” shows their shared interest in Indian music and John Coltrane’s jazz. He was also happy to dissolve that voice, and the ego it implied, into shared vocal harmonies: with the Byrds, with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young) and with his 21st-century group, the Lighthouse Band. Is it a love song or a rush of hallucinations? The singer and songwriter, who died this week, created music that helped define an era and stretched across generations.

David Crosby, whose death was announced this week, spent 60 years as as a household name with stints in the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

In the best of his work, you can hear the idealism of the time. Near the end of his life, he acknowledged publicly, virtually all of the other artists he’d made his name with wouldn’t talk to him anymore. And his moody reading of his own “Long Time Gone” is featured early in the film as well, making his voice a signal part in a key moment in the American counterculture. Even more cruelly, after so many years of bad behavior to his friends, bandmates, and family, he found himself isolated 60 years and a world away from the Laurel Canyon scene with a star or future star on every block. When the Byrds played The Ed Sullivan Show — at the time about the biggest opportunity a band could get — Crosby managed to get into a screaming match with the producer of the show, who turned out to be Sullivan’s son-in-law. (One arrest came after he left a bunch of drugs and a gun in a hotel room.) He spent five months in a Texas prison, though he managed to avoid severe punishments in future arrests. An early sideman to Crosby was guitarist Don Felder, who would go on to join the Eagles and write the music to the Eagles’ classic song “Hotel California.” “David Crosby … Stills was an army brat and far from a hippie radical; he was driven and a perfectionist. Crosby’s voice intertwined achingly and indelibly with those of Stills and Nash and occasionally took center stage, as on the brooding, seething “Long Time Gone.” Crosby, Stills & Nash — sometimes turbocharged with the addition of Neil Young into a juggernaut dubbed CSNY — became Crosby’s ticket to everlasting fame. The message from his fellow Byrd-mates, who knew him well, was — with the exception of the crack about his singing — right on the money. With some canny song choices and the sounds of McGuinn’s ringing guitar, the Byrds were suddenly stars after “Mr. His father was Floyd Crosby, the Hollywood cinematographer who shot High Noon and took home one of the first Academy Awards for cinematography for his work on F.W.

David Crosby sang delicate harmonies while living a reckless life, making him one of the Woodstock generation's most important and paradoxical figures.

“I see, for me, quite plainly a new humanity, I mean a bunch of people who are concerned with being human,” Crosby said. But it sounds like Crosby had to step into that place of oblivion to do his most beautiful singing. [Rolling Stone](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-crosby-the-rolling-stone-interview-2-168048/) that he felt his generation pushing toward a more humane, more empathetic tomorrow — but he wasn’t sure they’d ever get to fully touch it. His fluency in the melodies of John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar helped shape the spectral vocal harmonies of the band’s overtly iconic “ Sounds have meanings, and the metaphorical power of a silken, three-part Crosby, Stills & Nash harmony still feels as obvious as it does righteous — the sound of human beings coming together to smooth out life’s endless roughness. By the time the 1980s rolled around, Crosby’s personal problems had eclipsed his songwriting, making him a poster-boomer for hippie utopia deferred. Listen hard, and you can hear a gentle voice connected to an angry heart. Hard to answer because I didn’t give a damn about Aquarian this or Aquarian that. When Crosby, Stills and Nash played their second public show at Woodstock in the summer of 1969, they were inadvertently proposing a countervailing idea to the screaming guitars of Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix, showcasing the gentle warmth of the human voice and testing its ability to cultivate mass communion. And there was Crosby, shooting his drugs and shooting his guns, singing these folk ballads that sounded as if they’d fallen into Laurel Canyon from someplace better than heaven. As an irritable bon vivant who mainlined jazz and cocaine to sing lullabies like a cherub in a Tiepolo painting, David Crosby made no sense. The California-born songwriter, who

Crosby could be overbearing and convinced of his own brilliance – but despite the ups and downs of his time with the Byrds and CSNY, he was always proven ...

He also became an enthusiastic user of Twitter – he was still tweeting the day before he died – on which he was variously funny, provocative, infuriating, generous, wilfully argumentative, clearly obsessed with music, and never above reminding the world of his own talent. Soulless and stilted, American Dream was a largely awful album – Compass, which Crosby had written in prison, was a rare highlight among a dearth of decent material – and, if anything, the subsequent CSNY album Live It Up was even worse, a hopeless attempt to marry their harmonies to the booming drums and glossy synth production that was still mainstream US rock’s default setting. It was a problem that also afflicted his post-prison solo albums Oh Yes I Can and Thousand Roads, although anyone prepared to dig deep would find a scattering of songs suggesting his skills were undiminished – the reflective and rueful Tracks in the Dust, the wordless Flying Man on the former, the Mitchell co-write Yvette in English on the latter. After Crosby emerged from a nine-month stretch in prison on drugs and weapons charges – a sentence that almost undoubtedly saved his life – Young proved true to his word. Just how intent he was is laid out in his 1988 autobiography Long Time Gone, a book that spares few details in documenting his descent: the open sores that covered his face and body, the squalid conditions in which he and partner, Jan Dance, lived, the crowd of dealers and fellow addicts he surrounded himself with – so sinister that even the musicians still willing to work with him dubbed them “the Manson Family” – the endless string of drug and firearms busts. A man who had battled the Byrds to get as many of his songs as possible on their albums managed only three compositions on 1977’s CSN, an album that sold 6m copies: if the sense of exploratory magic that sparkled throughout Crosby Stills and Nash’s debut had been replaced by solid professionalism, its sound fitted neatly with that year’s vogue for smooth, Californian rock (tellingly, it was at No 2 in the US charts when Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours was at No 1). Nash began publicly expressing the view that Crosby was going to die; Young responded to his plight with the scathing Hippie Dream, a song that depicted Crosby in his ruin, “capsized in excess”. The album’s poppier material was Nash’s work, while Crosby came up with more expansive and exploratory exercises in mood and atmosphere of which Games was a particularly great example. It was a huge hit, establishing CSN as the premier example of that most late 60s of concepts, the supergroup. Yet the Byrds had initially demurred from recording his material: it was hard to find room in among the souped-up folk songs and Dylan covers and the work of the band’s frontman McGuinn and chief songwriter Gene Clark. He forced his fellow Byrds to listen to a collection of Ravi Shankar ragas and John Coltrane’s Africa/Brass over and over again while touring the UK: the two albums inspired the groundbreaking Eight Miles High, widely considered to be the first psychedelic single ever released. He successfully lobbied for his song Lady Friend to be released as a single: it was both a flop and a superb song, richly melodic, boasting an intricate brass arrangement and complex vocal harmonies.

Legendary rocker Neil Young has paid tribute to former Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young bandmate David Crosby.

David was the catalyst of many things.” Young and Crosby’s paths crossed in 1970 when Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash. “His great songs stood for what we believed in and it was always fun and exciting when we got to play together,” Young’s tribute continued. [posted to Facebook, ](https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=758979955598521&set=a.325940078902513)adding that “what has always mattered to David and me more than anything was the pure joy of the music we created together.” Stills added that “David lived a life of deep and enduring gratitude and was an extraordinary, richly sentient being,” continuing to say that “his music will live on through us all.” Crosby was a very supportive friend in my early life, as we bit off big pieces of our experience together.

The singer, whose decades-long career was sidelined by drug use, died after a long illness, his wife said.

NPR's A Martinez talks to Michael Walker, author of Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood, about David Crosby's legacy.

And it really struck me as a really interesting point of view for life and for his career because in the studio he was known to be a very - he would be a - he was known to be a pretty difficult guy, but he was always pushing the envelope with the musicians he worked with to not just get it good, but to get it great. WALKER: Well, that was - he was a man that really - he was a sensualist. So how was he important, then, to the sound of both bands? Here with more on the legacy of David Crosby is Michael Walker, author of a book about the Laurel Canyon scene. But the three of them together is absolutely unmistakable. And it's a tribute to his talent and his perseverance that he was able to end his career performing again. He was the co-founder of two iconic bands. But his voice, this little keening tenor, was the glue that held that all together. And this is a man that could con a 76-foot schooner across the Pacific for thousands of miles with a joint in one hand and a sextant in the other. The Byrds were early pioneers of psychedelic rock. GRAHAM NASH: Whatever vocal sound that Crosby, Stills & Nash has was born in less than 40 seconds - no rehearsing that vocal blend. Folk-rock legend David Crosby has died at the age of 81.

David Crosby, who died in January 2023, had four children and was the sperm donor of Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher's children.

"Melissa and Julie are good people," he said of the couple, who split in 2000. His music and legacy will inspire many generations to come. "My son Beckett, who was just 21, struggled to overcome his addiction and finally succumbed to it today. I will forever be grateful to him, [son] Django, and [wife} Jan. In 1995, David and his wife, Jan, welcomed their only son, Django Crosby. His legacy will continue to live on through his legendary music." The two continued to perform and tour together through the years. In the 1990s, as David was preparing for a liver transplant, he ended up reconnecting with his son. James contacted David just before his transplant, and the two met for lunch three months later. Additionally, David had a close relationship with Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher's children, Bailey and Beckett, for whom he was the sperm donor. In the years following, the two began playing music together and soon formed the jazz-rock band CPR (Crosby, Pevar & Raymond). When David was 21 years old, he welcomed his first child, James Raymond, in 1962.

The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash singer also belongs on the Mount Rushmore of posters.

[Beatles](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1615679396765134850) and [Greta Thunberg](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1615688486350381057) and [love](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1615678905985404934) to [Reps. [@theDavidCrosby](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby), represented by a profile photo from his younger days of enthusiastic toking, the two-time Rock Hall inductee weighed in on all manner of topics: [music](https://twitter.com/search?q=lame%20from%3Athedavidcrosby&src=typed_query), [politics](https://twitter.com/search?q=bernie%20from%3Athedavidcrosby&src=typed_query), [education](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1477705835589476352), [acting](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1241791878971809792), [prestige TV](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/720246885999517696), [pets](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/988294991373045760), [climate change](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1205735686008999936), and [weed](https://twitter.com/PotCzach/status/1616209423789072385). Bush](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/exclusive-csny-vs-the-red-states-on-their-anti-bush-2006-reunion-tour-813659/), and [Donald Trump](https://www.masslive.com/entertainment/2017/11/david_crosby_calls_president_t.html). Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1615678905985404934). Turn!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M5Zdn4)” (both No. … eh, well, probably not the best of the bunch. It seems appropriate to kick off with some of his thoughts on his peers: Tambourine Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swqw5a8I4b4)” and Pete Seeger’s “ [Turn! He’d always written politically conscious songs, regarding [hippies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBWbw3KTU0g), [drugs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Il9q397lL0), and [free love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgfiN0rbdpI), but his complementary screeds made him particularly notorious. 1 hits), and for CSN(Y), tracks like “ [Guinnevere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT9EKqXDl68),” “ [Wooden Ships](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q3j-i7GLr0),” and “ [Almost Cut My Hair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lk2KHajp4Y).” He also played with several other notable artists of the period, adding his jazzy six-string licks and vocal harmonies to recordings by James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, and onetime girlfriend Joni Mitchell (whose career took off because of Crosby, and who later [broke up with his cheating ass by penning a song about it](https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/brutal-joni-mitchell-broke-up-david-crosby/)). As the co-founder of two of the greatest American rock bands—the Byrds, and Crosby, Stills & Nash (& sometimes Young)—Crosby played an indelible role in some of the most influential tunes of the folk-rock era: for the Byrds, songs like “ [Eight Miles High](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxyOhFBoxSY)” and their covers of Bob Dylan’s “ [Mr. [died Thursday at the age of 81](https://variety.com/2023/music/news/david-crosby-dead-dies-byrds-crosby-stills-nash-1235495467/) following a “long illness,” embodied the rebellious, abrasive, creatively innovative spirit of late-’60s California as well as anyone of his time.

The remaining members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are paying tribute to David Crosby, who died Wednesday. 'His music lives on,' Neil Young said.

“I am deeply saddened at his passing and shall miss him beyond measure,” Stills wrote. His singing with Graham was so memorable, their duo spot a highlight of so many of our shows.” Young joined the founding members of CSN in 1969. The soul of CSNY, David’s voice and energy were at the heart of our band. From his pioneering folk-rock with the Byrds to his hippie classics with Crosby, Still & Nash (and Young), David Crosby was a pivotal figure in rock’s history. After sending love to the late singer’s family, Young thanked Crosby for his “spirit and songs.” “David is gone, but his music lives on. Crosby Stills praised Crosby as a “giant of a musician” in his Twitter thread Thursday. In his Friday tribute, those tensions took a back seat as Young noted that he and Crosby “shared so many great times, especially in the early years.” Graham Nash and Stephen Stills were among those in the music world paying tribute to David Crosby after news of the singer’s death. [had choice words](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-crosby-apologizes-to-neil-young-daryl-hannah-41358/) about Young’s then-girlfriend and now-wife Daryl Hannah in 2014, and in a [2021 interview with the Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/02/david-crosby-on-love-music-and-rancour-neil-young-is-probably-the-most-selfish-person-i-know?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1630582945), the singer called Young “the most self-centred, self-obsessed, selfish person I know.”

The musician relished sharing opinions big and small, sparring with fans and dispelling myths, often in sharp, hilarious quips. The vibe on the platform ...

[rating joints](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1612651571413934080), once again advocating for [the mood-setting capabilities](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1609821563377057793) of his own music and making plans [to perform again](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1608872502717210626). [playful](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1492927917357088768), and [sweet](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1582209811130654720). He praised younger musicians like [Jason Isbell](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1404947814774304768) and [Jacob Collier](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1221837610131148802). He solicited [movie recommendations](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1362668045576019971) and [promoted restaurants](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1229530935965573120). Even as Twitter [frays](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/technology/twitter-elon-musk.html) and [coarsens](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/technology/twitter-hate-speech.html) under Musk’s ownership, it’s still possible to have fun with others, one of the few things that keeps users from leaving. [Grammy.com](https://www.grammy.com/news/david-crosby-new-album-for-free-twitter-csny-interview) in 2021. [“Eleanor Rigby”](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1615679396765134850)). He loved to talk about his wife, and his appreciation for [his family life](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1458581447845974017). In a bit of poignant foreshadowing, he shared some thoughts [ about heaven](https://twitter.com/thedavidcrosby/status/1615681363600080899): “I heard the place is overrated,” he wrote, “cloudy.” His willingness to post so often and honestly did the work of several marketing budgets, and accompanied a late-career creative renaissance that saw the release of five solo albums in the last decade. (It’s hard to believe that Mick Jagger has anything to do with the Rolling Stones’ newly announced He was a boldfaced name for his brief prison stay on drug charges, his liver transplant and the revelation that he was the sperm donor for Melissa Etheridge’s two children with Julie Cypher.

David Crosby, the singer/songwriter and guitarist behind The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, has died at 81.

His last public performance was last February, when he joined Jason Isbell and Shawn Colvin on stage in Santa Barbara for “Ohio.” [the Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/02/david-crosby-on-love-music-and-rancour-neil-young-is-probably-the-most-selfish-person-i-know) in 2021 that he preferred the music he’d made with CSN and CSNY than the Byrds. Nash and Young had cut off contact with Crosby and were not believed to have reconciled by the time of his death. And it looks to me that the only contribution I can make, the place where I can help, is to make more music and do it really well. “As a writer and lead singer and (in particular) as a harmony singer his understanding of songs and harmonic structure was instinctive, inspired and magically creative,” wrote producer Peter Asher on his Instagram. Hard hit by the inability to tour during the pandemic, Crosby sold his recorded music and publishing rights to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group in 2021. Due to feuding with his bandmates Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman,” Crosby left the Byrds in 1967. We were also very shitty to each other over and over and over again, unkind and disloyal.” My heart is truly with his wife, Jan, his son, Django, and all of the people he has touched in this world.” 28) — and the trio won the Grammy for best new artist in 1969. He was without question a giant of a musician, and his harmonic sensibilities were nothing short of genius. His great songs stood for what we believed in and it was always fun and exciting when we got to play together.

David Crosby at home in Santa Ynez, Calif., in 2021. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times). By Joe Hagan.

Few were as readymade for Twitter as David Crosby, who got on the platform in 2011 and began firing off tart opinions on Kanye West (“my dog could beat him at chess”), the Doors (“crap”) and Joni Mitchell (“the greatest living songwriter”). Even 50 years on, he smarted from the critical lashing his solo album had taken: “My first solo record, which is selling now to this day, and is a legendary f— record — they said it was ‘a mediocre piece of work.’” His 2014 album, “Croz,” sparked a late-life renaissance that led to a series of surprisingly inspired albums, his voice still supple and feathery after years of abuse. Through the years, Crosby took on a lovable, walrus-like mien, adding a dose of eyewitness credibility (and eyerolling self-regard) to numerous rock documentaries. But if Crosby acted like a guy whose place in history made him too big to cancel, maybe he had a point. As he told me a few years ago, the 1971 CSNY album “4 Way Street” “was the most accurate album title in history.” I first met Crosby in 1990 when I recognized him on a street in Freeport, Maine (he was shopping at L.L. [his death on Wednesday](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-01-19/david-crosby-byrds-crosby-stills-nash-young-dead) at age 81, Crosby leaves a larger-than-life hole in the culture. It was his art, of course, that built the edifice for his soap box. As recently as last year, he was still stoking public feuds with the men with whom he sang “Teach Your Children” in 1970. He played Jane Fonda’s birthday party in 1965, took LSD with the Beatles, performed at Woodstock, made the cover of Rolling Stone and allied himself with the Hells Angels, his fringe-jacketed hippie-rebel image inspiring Dennis Hopper’s character in “Easy Rider.” A cultural lion both beloved and criticized in roughly equal measure, Crosby defined the contradictions of his era.

Melissa Etheridge pays tribute to David Crosby, who helped her and her former partner have two kids by being their sperm donor. Crosby died Thursday.

Calling in to the CNN show with Cypher and his wife, musician Jan Dance, Crosby said that he was “very proud” that they came to that agreement. My Life in Love and Music,”](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jun-20-cl-12517-story.html) Etheridge also confirmed rumors that actor Brad Pitt and musician Jackson Browne were considered to father the women’s children. I think it’s a great thing, but I think that people are probably making more out of it than they should,” Crosby said. Etheridge and Cypher ended their decade-long relationship in 2000. “It just fell out of my lips ...,” Dance said at the time. According to Etheridge’s book, Cypher — who left husband Lou Diamond Phillips to be with Etheridge and later had an affair with singer k.d. “You know, the truth is ... But for Etheridge, the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer was more than a contemporary and friend, he was also the man who fathered two of her children through artificial insemination. Bailey is now 24; “His music and legacy will inspire many generations to come. I will forever be grateful to him, [his son] Django, and [his wife] Jan,” she added. “I saw a longing in them and a love, and I knew that it was deep and that it was pure and true.”

By 2000, the Grammy-winning musician had faced intense speculation over who had donated sperm for her and her partner Julie Cypher to have two children, born in ...

“But, I mean, I always wanted to be on the Nixon enemies list and I missed it. Crosby, a Laurel Canyon hippie who embraced his countercultural roots, told Rolling Stone that he was happy to play a role in helping people see that gay families were “not something strange.” I will forever be grateful to him,” and thanking his family. I will forever be grateful to him, Django, and Jan. (Etheridge and Cypher split up later that year, according to [news outlets](https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2000/09/20/melissa-etheridge-julie-cypher-separate/) citing a statement from Etheridge’s record label.) Rounding out the photo of “the new American family” was Jan Dance, Crosby’s wife.