American rock has lost a legend, whose career spanned nearly sixty years. Guitarist and vocalist David Crosby has died at the age of 81, announced Thursday, January 19, the newspaper variety, citing a statement from his wife, Jan Dance, which refers to a ” long illness “.
The musician’s agent confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) his death. According to the press release quoted by varietyDavid Crosby died surrounded by his wife and his son Django, but it is not known precisely on what date. His Twitter account was still active on Wednesday.
“Although he is no longer with us, his humanity and good soul will continue to guide and inspire us. His legacy will continue to live on through his legendary music.”is it written. “I don’t know what else to say: I’m heartbroken”, commented on Twitter Brian Wilson, co-founder of the Beach Boys.
Rare survivor of a vanished generation
With his guitar and mustache, David Crosby was the young America of the 1960s and 1970s, between folk rock riffs and artificial paradises: David Crosby, co-founder of the Byrds before joining the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, had risen of his excesses to relaunch a solo career.
With five albums since 2014, the Californian with long white hair had begun a renaissance noticed by critics, hailing his clear voice preserved from tobacco, he who nevertheless touched so many drugs, a rare survivor of a generation that disappeared long before him.
“I don’t know why I’m alive, while Jimi [Hendrix] is not, that Janis [Joplin] is not…, he wondered at the magazine RollingStone in 2014. I was lucky. »
This course of back and forth between several groups, interspersed with arguments and cocaine, the singer takes great pride in it. “The important things in my life are not the problems I had, it’s this magic that happened to me, which allowed me to create all this music”he told the Guardian in 2021.
“Normally, with age, you die out. You write less », he observed with AFP, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. On the contrary, he rejoiced to have ” prolonged [sa] life “ thanks to his “simply love to make music”.
A lasting influence on other bands like REM
This exceptional life began in Los Angeles, California, on August 14, 1941, of parents descended from large New York families, with a mother at home and a father in the cinema, crowned with an Oscar for best cinematography .
Before his 25th birthday, David Crosby was one of the founders of The Byrds, a group mixing rock from England with traditional American folk. It is in particular he who brings this last component, full of melody, with his guitar and his voice. The Byrds’ lasting influence would especially be felt on other bands like Eagles and, later, REM.
We owe them the tube Eight Mile High, a pioneering piece of psychedelic rock whose references to illicit substances will keep it away from the puritanical American radio stations for a while. These substances, David Crosby knew them only too well. “At the end of a concert, you’re on top, that’s where I took a lot. It allowed me to hold on after the show”he recalls to RollingStone. In 1969, his partner was killed in a car accident. He made his first solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name. There, in distress and heroin, he saves himself singing. “The only place I could cope was the studio”he said, in 2021, at Los Angeles Times.
Since then, the singer, a great lover of sailing, has never ceased to surprise himself by surviving his roller coaster. In 1986, he spent five months in prison in Texas for having been arrested a few years earlier in a Dallas nightclub, in possession of cocaine and a loaded automatic pistol. Since then, his body has reminded him of his excesses: diabetes, heart attacks, a liver transplant in 1994.
These serious health problems had not prevented him from helping rocker Melissa Etheridge to have two children by donating sperm to the couple she formed with Julie Cypher. “He gave me a family”thanked Etheridge on Twitter with a photo of her and David Crosby on guitar.
I am grieving the loss of my friend and Bailey’s biological father, David. He gave me the gift of family. I will fo… https://t.co/756aH8S6Ix
“We were the best band in the world”
Its zenith, David Crosby had undoubtedly experienced it a few decades earlier. In 1967 and 1968, dismissed from the Byrds for disagreement, he had found Stephen Stills, of the Buffalo Spingfields, and Graham Nash, of the Hollies, in the chalet of Joni Mitchell, legend of folk and for a time his girlfriend. The group is joined from time to time by the Canadian Neil Young.
The following year, on August 17, 1969, at the legendary Woodstock festival, Crosby already had his mustache and long hair for the second concert of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Graham Nash said Thursday night on Facebook his “deep sadness”without hiding the “volatile relationship” between the two men. “But what always meant the most to David and me was the sheer joy of the music we made together, the sound we discovered and the deep friendship shared over all these years”he greeted about the disappeared who “wasn’t afraid of life, nor of music”.
“He was without hesitation a giant of musicStephen Stills said via an agent, and his harmonic sensibility was nothing short of genius”.
With Our House Where Ohio, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, a concentration of talent and ego, flooded the American FM band with its light, hippie folk, through albums, separations, and successive meetings. “I think when the Beatles broke up [en 1970], we were the best band in the world”said David Crosby.
Him, this “Gandalf of Woodstock”, according to varietywas with this trio at the concert against nuclear power in 1979 but also during the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. A few years later, he defended the carrying of firearms but also the young environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
His time in prison in 1986 served as a forced drug treatment. He says he has not touched a single hard drug since. “Actually, I feel pretty damn good”he said to the Guardian in his eternal flannel shirt with straps. “What I do is not just play guitar and sing. I’m not the best at either.”told the old bard to Agence France-Presse in January 2021.
“Where I’m really good is breaking down that fourth wall, taking you on a little journeyhe continued. Make you laugh, so that you can then make you cry. That’s my job. »