Crosby still dashing, young
By Steve Morse
Globe Staff, 8/22/2001

 

From CPR to CSN. That's been the path this summer of David Crosby, who is known as a laid-back hippie guru but has really been living more like a crazed workaholic in recent months on the road. 

CPR is the band with his son, pianist James Raymond, and guitarist Jeff Pevar, which just finished touring the States and Europe. CSN is his longtime partnership with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, who will join him for a sold-out Crosby Stills & Nash show at FleetBoston Pavilion tonight. 

''I went home for about 15 to 20 minutes between tours,'' says Crosby, 60, who has made up for lost time since a life-saving liver transplant seven years ago. ''I love doing the gigs, but the travel is hard. All that bad food on the road.''

His frenetic summer has been compounded by the fact that CPR is ''a struggling baby band - we need all the help we can get,'' while CSN is an established powerhouse that reunited with Neil Young last year (look for them to do it again next summer) and is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

''We have an unfair advantage in CSN,'' Crosby says. ''We can do 20 songs in a row that you know. The other night it was kind of ridiculous. We finished with `Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,' `Wooden Ships,' `Woodstock,' and `Teach Your Children,' right in a row. The crowd loved it.''

Despite the familiarity, though, CSN is not resting on its laurels. The group is performing a new song, ''Dirty Little Secret,'' written by Nash about a 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Okla. ''A lot of people died, but very few people know about it,'' Crosby says.

When Young returns next summer, that will again pump up the CSN&Y legacy. But in talking to Crosby, it's clear that he doesn't want his lesser-known band, CPR, to get lost in the shuffle. It shouldn't, because the latest CPR album, ''Just Like Gravity,'' is filled with rich vocal harmonies and a resonant, almost art-song depth that should land it on a number of Top 10 lists this year, though radio programmers have generally been clueless about it.

''You know a lot of radio stations don't play any of this stuff,'' says Crosby. ''The CD has good music with interesting words and harmonies. That's not always what radio is into anymore,'' he says with a cynical, though understated, edge.

The last two years have been an unusual time for Crosby, who was the much-ballyhooed sperm donor for two children for rocker Melissa Etheridge and film director Julie Cypher. Etheridge, just before playing last week in Lowell, said, ''David Crosby is a god. Tell him that. He'll love that.''

''Well, that's sweet, but she's joking,'' says Crosby. ''But I am enjoying being a distant father to those kids. They are spectacular kids. There's nothing better than children.''

Now all he needs is a break to enjoy life apart from music. ''I need to take some time off and be with my own family. And maybe go diving or flying. I'm a pilot, did I tell you that? And a sailor, too.''

Definitely not your average hippie guru.


This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 8/22/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.