David Crosby the Poet: Leap Year Post

I've known David Crosby all my life; one of the first sixties anthems I fell in love with as a child was Wooden Ships.  Later, in university days, a song called Bittersweet blew me away when I first heard it, for its immense beauty with the outstretched harmony vocals occupying literally octaves, and the mystery of the lyrics capped off by the line 'why does it always have to be so bittersweet?'  And whenever something positive happened to me in my life I found myself repeating that line, because just as every cloud has a silver lining, every vein of silver is clouded by impurity.

A few years ago I decided to revisit all of his music in case there was some I was missing and it absolutely blew my mind when I looked at the totality of his songwriting, spread throughout a bunch of different duos, trios, and the famed early quartet CSNY.  All of his best music (I mean his own songs) would probably fill up a double-LP, but so far as I know, there's no such compilation available.  And yes, there were a lot of songs I had never heard before.

Of the four artists he worked with, we have to set aside Neil Young who I think you might agree is in a class of his own (well I sure hope you agree), but thereafter David is the most amazing of the rest.  Of his life, the only thing I knew was that he had a liver transplant in the 90s, presumably either from alcohol abuse (leading to cirrhosis) or iv drug abuse (leading to chronic Hepatitis C) or most likely both.  When I used the fabulous resource we love so much wikipedia I was then shocked at the contrast between the philosophy of his lyrics and the reality of his life, which was somewhat sordid and horrible.   Should I have been shocked?  That's the question I am putting here on this page.  Of course, I shouldn't have been-- we all know artists who lived despicable lives but created beautiful art.  I'm going to throw in Michael Jackson into that category btw, knowing though that many out there still give him the benefit of a doubt.  The higher the genius it seems the crazier the living.  And it does make sense in a way, for two reasons, since the origin of creativity comes from emotion, and the stronger the better in that sphere, and because mental illness has always been closely matched by creativity, presumably one of the evolutionary reasons that the 'genes' for such disorders as schizophrenia are perpetuated in our species.  And for those of us who love art, I think we can agree maybe mental illness is OK as the price we have to pay for beautiful art-- as long as it's not ours to suffer.

Going back to the song Bittersweet I can't make out what he is saying, or what is the background story.  In that respect I think it can stand valid as a poem, due to its haunting mystery.  I'll use youtube links for these song samples, but of course frequently for DMCA reasons links get pulled there.  All the early songs are full of those mysterious lyrics, another genuine poem being Page 43 (presumably written after reading some kind of buddhist book):

Look around again
It's the same old circle
You see, it's got to be
It says right here on page 43
That you should grab a hold of it
Else you'll find it's passed you by

Rainbows all around
Can you find the silver and gold?
It'll make you old
The river can be hot or cold
And you should dive right into it
Else you'll find it's passed you by

Pass it 'round one more time
I think I'll have a swallow of wine
Life is fine
Even with the ups and downs
And you should have a sip of it
Else you'll find it's passed you by

On another song called Whole Cloth after a questioning and inquisitive, melancholy intro, suddenly he declares he's been lying

On what do you base your life, my friend?
Can you see around the bend?  
Can you see?
On what star do you take your sight
On a cold and blowy night; 
Alone, alone?
Old man can you make a mirror for me?
It's got to be clearer than air for me
'Cause you see I can't see me, no
And I always thought that I meant what I said
But you know that lately I've read
We were lying, All of us lying
Just making it up, yeah
Cutting it out of whole cloth

To what is he referring?  It could be many things, but I always thought it referred to the innocent naivete of the sixties, the kind he promulgated in the unforgettable song Wooden Ships:

When you smile at me, I will understand, 'cause that is something 
everyone everywhere does in the same old language...

Some of my favourite lines of lyrics in all of rock.

David Crosby loved to sail and spent hours, days, years on his ship called the Mayan, sailing all over the Atlantic apparently.  This experience was immortalized in the gorgeous and descriptive song called the Lee Shore returning to the Wooden Ships theme of sailing away to freedom and describes the romantic allure of sailing on an empty sea and exploring deserted islands:

From here to Venezuela, 
there's nothing more to see
than a hundred thousand islands
flung like jewels upon the sea, 
for you and me

Sunset smells of dinner, 
women are calling at me to end my tale
But perhaps I'll see you
The next quiet place I furl my sails

Later he seems to have acquired a measure of equanimity, with a gorgeous early 80s song called Delta describing achieving that peace of mind whereof the singers sing:

I love the child who steers this riverboat
But lately he's crazy for the deep
And the river seems dreamlike in the daytime
And someone keeps thinking in my sleep
Of fast running rivers of choice and chance
And time stops here on the delta
While they dance, while they dance

And of course I won't get into the beauty of the backup vocals, which, many have pointed out, are so transcendentally gorgeous, perhaps because of the addition of 7th or 9th intervals or other relatively non-generic triadic added notes.  Suffice it to say he had a gift for really interesting backup vocal intervals.  So get this.  In 1982 he spent nine months in jail on drugs and weapons charges in Texas.  I believe the story is he brought a shotgun and aggressively threatened someone in a drug-related incident.  The album from which Delta is taken was released that same year.  How do we coordinate or reconcile these two, the song full of gentle depth, and sitting in the pen?  In some ways, it's so unfathomable.

He had a liver transplant paid for by Phil Collins in 1994, I recall how odd that was at the time, I mean, you're not producing an album here, you're investing in a human organ.  And it was definitely a joke on late-night comedy for a long time.

From the 1979 CSN album (the one with the mega-hit about airports and flying, Just a Song Before I Go, written by Nash) still one of my all-time favourite songs, I didn't find out until last year it was Crosby again, has always been the gentle and amazing Anything At All.  I heard this album in university days and right away fell in love with this track.  Back then I thought it was a (very gentle) parody of some know it all that he met.  In reality I'm pretty sure he's referring to his own personality, this realization of course coming to me after reading extensively his bios and his own words.  The clincher is that after repeating:

Is there anything at all you'd like to know?
Just ask me, I'm the world's most opinionated man

At the end, the supremely evocative and philosophical last line is truncated to:

Is there anything at all?

To this day, that last stanza gives me the chills when I listen to it, not a little bit thanks to the ethereally breathless backup vocals:

Is there anything, you want to know?  
On any subject at all?
I've got time for one more question here, 
before I fall--
Is there anything at all?

I mean, those lines are pretty incredible aren't they?  Yet I remember reading that none of his collaborators want to work with him again due to his 'difficult' personality.  By this I assume they mean arrogant, self-absorbed, and aggressive.  He managed to alienate all of them, which is why a reunion of CSNY is not possible.  Although I suppose one could also blame this on Neil Young, the maverick canuck loner genius.  (Like Joni Mitchell his gifted female songwriting counterpart I think Neil is sui generis, in a category by himself.)

So despite the jail, the guns, the drugs, the hep c, the transplant, the fact no former band member wants to go back on stage with you, not even the kind brit Graham Nash: I love you, David Crosby.