Mar. 12 - Among the members of the iconic folk-rock supergroup Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young, the rabble-rouser is David Crosby. Take a listen to the new CSN&Y album
"Looking Back" - his soulful protest song "Stand and Be Counted"
advocates political activism with genuine emotion (and, musically, the return of those
Stills-Young dueling guitars).
It's also the name of a book. "Stand and Be Counted" recounts the role musicians
have played in advancing human rights while raising social awareness through the last
half-century. Crosby and co-author David Bender (a contributing editor at George magazine)
document the memories and conversations of more than 40 artists who put themselves on the
line for causes they believed in, including Don Henley, Jackson Browne, Elton
John, Peter
Gabriel and Whoopi Goldberg.
"I did a good thing. I did not ask people how many benefits they've
done, or what's a
funny anecdote, or what's the worst or the best, any cornball question," Crosby
says.
"I asked them why - 'Why did you do this?' "
The two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a founding member of the
Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash) has had a longtime commitment to the environment,
free speech and other causes, and his work brings a first-hand perspective to his
accounts.
"I've always loved people having the courage to stand up against
oppression, injustice, racism, war, every kind of divisiveness.
"I realized that nobody had ever written about how the whole thing came out of Woody
Guthrie's songs and Pete Seeger's doings and the union movement, up into the songs that
provided the sound track to civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam war moratoriums of the
'60s.
"Then it grew a lot bigger at the Concert for Bangladesh and 'No
Nukes' in the '70s,
into Live Aid, Farm Aid, the Amnesty International tours of the '80s. People helping
people.
"It continues through the Tibetan Freedom benefit concerts of today with these young
kids that I don't even know. I had such an interesting time talking to Eddie Vedder
(Pearl
Jam) and Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) and Adam Yauch (Beastie Boys). They're
great; they get it.
And they didn't need an instruction manual. There is an ethic that goes out on its own and
just bubbles up in people: 'Oh, that's not right. I just can't let that go
on.' "
Talking to rock's voices for change, Crosby hits pay dirt when the legends reveal moving
events.
Seeger, who's cited by everyone as an inspiration, explains that activism is
inclusive.
He's spent most of his life trying to bring people together. With great
dignity, Harry
Belafonte recalls the night he performed at a Martin Luther King Jr. rally for nonviolence
in the South.
Joan Baez and Bonnie Raitt describe how easy it was to get behind the anti-war cause -
they both came from Quaker families. Parrotheads might be too busy partying to
notice, but
Jimmy Buffett is an extremely bright activist. Tracy Chapman's commitment shines
through,
and Melissa Etheridge talks straight to the point. Sean Lennon speaks of the peaceful men
who've been assassinated, including his father, John Lennon.
Crosby writes astutely about the music, notably Sting's "They Dance
Alone," a
song that communicated the reality of the military regime in Augusto Pinochet's
Chile.
"It's brilliant on so many levels, musically delicious and lyrically
courageous. It
named names, just like 'Tin soldiers and Nixon coming ...' "
Most poignantly, Bob Geldof tells the story of a nurse in the Third World who had to
choose 300 people out of 10,000, because that's all she could feed, and watch the rest of
them die - "No human being on Earth should ever be forced to have to do
that."
Boom! Live Aid - one guy making a difference.
"Being famous is a minor-league deal," Crosby says. "Being able to better
the human condition, to help people externalize stuff that's in them, is big. That's our
contribution."
The interviews Crosby conducted for "Stand and Be Counted" are being made into a
series of television documentaries.
"And then I have to write the David Crosby autobiography, Mach 2. It's going to be
called 'Since Then,' " he said.
In 1988, Crosby wrote "Long Time Gone," the best-selling story of his rock
'n'
roll rise and fall - a 25-year pattern of drug abuse that began with marijuana and ended
with cocaine and heroin. Arrested for possession of drugs and guns, he found himself
detoxing, cold turkey, in a Texas jail for a year. Miraculously, he got happily married
and sober, and successfully produced music again.
However, in the '90s, Crosby accumulated new troubles - a severe motorcycle accident,
financial woes due to criminal mishandling of his business affairs and serious earthquake
damage to his restored home, which was then lost through foreclosure.
The worst news was lifethreatening. Crosby's liver, damaged by substance abuse and a
previously undiagnosed case of hepatitis C, went into rapid deterioration. By 1995 he was
hospitalized, facing death.
But an organ donor became available, and Crosby's life was saved. At the same time, a son
he'd never met, James Raymond, suddenly appeared; the two formed a personal connection and
a musical one, teaming in the new band CPR. Crosby's wife Jan gave birth to a
son, Django.
Now Melissa Etheridge and her partner, filmmaker Julie Cypher, have revealed Crosby as the
biological father of their children.
"Dickens would have balked at some of this stuff! But it's all true," Crosby
says with a roaring laugh. "For 'Long Time Gone,' I thought, 'I've been through this
whole downfall and redemption. Finally I could use a breath - this has been a wild
ride.
I'll write it down.'
"And here comes the next bunch, and it's even wilder than the last
bunch! I promise,
I'm not plotting this. This is purely reactive."
