That was the designed purpose.” What does he prefer – the music he made with the Byrds or CSN/Y? “No contest. I tell him I’ve been listening to lots of his music and it has put me in a good headspace. He’d already been a musician for 20 years when we met up so anybody who tells you it’s not genetic, you tell them come talk to me.”Ĭrosby is Zooming from central California, where he lives with his wife, Jan Dance, and their 26-year-old son, Django. “So he went to check and he sees my name there and he thinks: ‘Nah, couldn’t be.’ So he checks first names and middle names and realises, yeah, it is me. When Raymond and his partner were about to have their first child, his adoptive parents suggested he might want to track down his biological parents. “She gave him up for adoption and didn’t tell me he existed,” he says. “I just never grew up.”Ĭrosby was in his early 20s when Raymond’s mother became pregnant. “The only peculiar thing about my relationship with James is he’s the resident adult and I’m the kid,” he says. Look at him and he could be 100, listen to him and he could be on the brink of manhood. And yet his voice when he sings and talks remains as boyish as ever – high-pitched, honeyed, usually enthusiastic, often giggly, sometimes querulous and boastful. His hair is white and wispy as a passing cloud, his face profoundly contoured, his arms a patchwork of pink and purple. This is the third album they have made together in this seven-year creative surge – the other two have been with a group of young musicians known as the Lighthouse Band.Ĭrosby does a passable impression of Old Father Time. His latest album, For Free (named after the Joni Mitchell song he covers beautifully), is produced and co-written with James Raymond, the son he didn’t know existed for the first 30 years of Raymond’s life. What’s more, they are extremely good.Īnd still we’re not finished with the miracles. Now he has made five albums in the past seven years. Over the next 22 years he released two solo albums, then nothing for another 21 years. In 1971, Crosby released his first solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name, rubbished at the time by many critics but subsequently reappraised – it was gnomically named in 2010 by the Vatican City State newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, as the second best album ever (after the Beatles’ Revolver). And perhaps the biggest miracle is that at 80, after epic barren periods, he is more prolific than he has ever been. Everything about it has been on a biblical scale – the addictions, the love affairs, the tragedies, the fallouts, the miracles. Photograph: Michael Putland/Getty ImagesĮven more remarkable than the music has been Crosby’s life. Both the Byrds and CSN have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.Ĭrosby, Stills, Nash and Young at Wembley Stadium in 1974. Their first two albums, the eponymous debut and (with Young) Déjà Vu, sold millions and produced any number of classic songs including Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Our House, Helpless, Marrakesh Express, Guinnevere, Long Time Gone and Almost Cut My Hair (the last three written by Crosby). All four were exceptional singer-songwriters, their harmonies as gorgeous as they were intricate, and, when they wanted to, they could rock with the best of them. With Neil Young, they became a super-supergroup. After Crosby was sacked from the Byrds, he joined forces with Graham Nash from the Hollies and Stephen Stills from Buffalo Springfield to form Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN), one of the first supergroups. The Byrds pretty much invented folk rock in the 1960s with their jingly-jangly pop (covers of Bob Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man and Pete Seeger’s Turn! Turn! Turn! were No 1 hits). Crosby had huge success with two seminal bands. He flunked school, briefly studied drama then pursued a career in music. His mother doted on him, his father was as cold as he was brilliant. He grew up in Los Angeles, the privileged son of the Oscar-winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby. Hehehehe!” His high-pitched giggle is surprising – as is so much about him.Ĭrosby’s life story would make an incredible, if possibly unbelievable, movie. “I expected to be dead when I was about 30. As he has often pointed out, it’s a miracle that he’s alive. Back then, and for many years afterwards, Crosby was addicted to alcohol, cocaine and heroin. Those would have involved sex.” Well, if he’d had the energy. I bet your birthday celebrations were different half a century ago, I say.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |