Guinevere Had Green Eyes

Note: There are numerous live links in the following blog; many lead to performances [some with written-out lyrics] of songs made famous by the Byrds and CSNY. Enjoy!

Just 24 hours before he died (Jan. 18, 2023), 81-year old singer/songwriter/icon David Crosby, in his first Twitter of the day, wrote about heaven. The musician, who was a founding member of 2 Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame bands (Crosby, Stills & Nash and The Byrds), responding to various posts about heaven and loneliness, joked "I heard the place is overrated….cloudy." The statement was so typical of the multifaceted Crosby. At once a stellar writer of songs that provided the lyrics of a generation who themselves are now in their late 60s through 80s (I Almost Cut my Hair, Teach Your Children Well, Carry On) and one of the best, most romantic ballads of all time (Guinevere), he was both a blueblood (related to both the Van Cortland and Van Rensselaer families; the son of, Floyd Crosby, the acclaimed cinematographer of such classic films as High Noon, From Here to Eternity and Tabu: A Tale of the South Seas, (for which he won an Oscar); a recovering drug addict, a twice-imprisoned felon, and a financial supporter of many progressive candidates for public office.

Despite all this, he somehow managed to live 81 years and continue recording albums until his late 70s. Even at the end, his singing voice was crystal clear, his ability to make great harmonies with his longtime friend and compatriot Graham Nash a miracle. In many ways, he was a freak of nature. I remember first seeing him at Doug Weston’s Troubadour in West Hollywood; then, he was in his early 20s, a thorough-going folkie sans the lion-like mane and fu manchu moustache. He was even wearing a coat and tie! Within a few years he became a seminal member of the Folk Rock group The Byrds, and catapulted to fame and fortune with such timeless classics as Mr. Tambourine Man (written by Bob Dylan), Turn, Turn, Turn (lyrics by Pete Seeger, originally from the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes) and The Bells of Rhymney (first recorded by Pete Seeger with lyrics by the Welsh poet Idris Davies) and Eight Miles High.

By this time, he had the iconic moustache he would wear for the rest of his life. As time went by, his long brown hair thinned and became white, until what was left made him look a lot like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. Almost from the day he received his first royalty check, Crosby began contributing to political campaigns and causes. Although I’m not 100% sure, I seem to remember that in the summer of 1969 he hosted a fundraiser for the California Assembly Speaker Jess “Big Daddy” Unruh, who was running against Governor Ronald Reagan. (I did check this out with my former boss in that campaign, Fred Taugher, who, despite making several calls, was not able to guarantee that my memory was correct . . .however, Fred could verify that Crosby had purchased a 59-foot yacht [the “Mayan”] just 2 years earlier). Crosby continued his political ways up until the 2020 presidential campaiign.

In addition to at one time being addicted to both cocaine and heroin, Crosby suffered from Hepatitis C (which led to undergoing a liver transplant (paid for by rocker Phil Collins) in 1994, and Type 2 Diabetes, which caused him to put on a great deal of weight. In January 2000, Melissa Etheridge announced that Crosby was the sperm donor of two children with her partner Julie Cypher by means of artificial insemination. On May 13, 2020, Etheridge announced on her Twitter that her and Cypher's son Beckett had died of causes related to opioid addiction at the age of 21. In February 2014, at the urging of his doctor, 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. And yet, he continued living up to the words of one of his earliest songs: “Carry on.”

More than most singer/songwriter/performers David Crosby, whose professional career lasted nearly 55 years, was both a symbol and vivid remembrance of an era of peace, love, long hair, beads and pot. His image as the twinkle-eyed stoner and sardonic hedonist of the cosmic age was said to have been a model for the obstinate free spirit played by Dennis Hopper in the 1969 movie “Easy Rider.” (Hopper died from prostate cancer in 2010). In one of his last interviews, the notoriously cantankerous Crosby spoke about how he had alienated nearly all of his old musical associates: “All the guys I made music with won’t even talk to me,” he said. “I don’t know quite how to undo it.” In the second of his two autobiographies he mellowed, writing: “I was tremendously lucky, surviving injury, illness and stupidity,” he wrote. “As for the music, I was blessed early and often, from the Byrds to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and singing with Graham”

The last time I saw David Crosby live was in 2015 nearly 55 years after I had first seen him performing with Les Baxter's Balladeers at the Troubadour; in 2015, he was playing with Stills and Nash. The 3 (now minus Neil Young) were note perfect . . . both on guitar and with vocals. Their complex harmonies brought tears to the eyes. Watching and hearing them was a truly emotional experience. It brought me back to my college days where protesting (the war in Viet Nam, the draft, Richard Nixon) took up far more time than attending class. The score for those memories was written largely by Crosby, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton. But without question, the most noteworthy of them vis-a-vis musicality were CSNY. To this day, whenever I hear them - or watch them through the magic of You-Tube - I feel a catch in my throat, youth in my veins and great purpose in my steps.

Those of us from the Berkeley, Kent State, Columbia, March on Washington days who still are privileged to walk this earth, have yet to give up the fight and the dream. David Crosby’s lyrics still suffuse our memory and motivation. To wit:

Carry on
Love is coming
Love is coming to us all.

As idealistic and saccharine as the refrain may sound in 2023, so long as we remember that Guinevere did have Green Eyes and we must continue to Teach Our Children Well, there is still a hope of succeeding.

Rest in peace David; you made a great contribution to a generation of (hopefully) gracefully aging peaceniks, some of whom have yet to cut their hair . . .