David Crosby spoke at length about Donald Trump, the current state of race relations, and the recent drug-related death of his biological son. On Trump's presidency, he told Rolling Stone, “I’ll tell you how I envision this guy. He feels to me like an 8-year-old kid that has never been allowed in his dad’s office and he’s broken and he’s peeing on the papers, running around madly with his d*** flopping out, peeing on the papers saying, 'I’ll show you!'”
He went on to say, “He’s not even really sane. And he is far more dangerous than (Richard) Nixon because he’s got a gigantic ego and he was raised by monsters. His dad must have been one of the most horrifying people you ever could have encountered. The signs are all over him.”
On the ongoing backlash against police brutality, he said, “I don’t know if you’ve ever been arrested, but they are rough. Those boys are rough. And it’s easy to murder. The guy (Derek Chauvin) is a murderer. Why was he still in the police force? He has had (multiple) complaints against him.”
When pressed about what he would change about how America is policed: “Well, moral superiority. If a policeman comes onto the scene and he’s uniformed and armed normally and isn’t trying to pretend he’s a combat guy going into the Iron Triangle or some s***, he’s a normal guy where he can look me in the eye and I can look him in the eye, I have respect for him. A guy who comes up to me in combat gear and armed with armor-piercing rounds and multiple clips of ammo, probably carrying 1,000 rounds and he’s got a full-auto war machine, that’s completely wrong. That’s not what it’s for. That is not their job.”
Crosby went on to talk about Joe Biden: “I think he’s trying. Here’s how I feel about Joe. He’s a good guy. There’s a decent human being in there and he’s paid lots of dues, which makes him humane. He understands what pain is. These other d*** don’t. He knows. He’s had serious, weeping pain. I like that in a human being. I like scars on a human being because that is how you learn. He has. He’s very humane and a very decent guy.”
He added, “I believe in him as a human being and I am working for him. I have already worked for him. I joined up with Joe Walsh and Whoopi (Goldberg) and some other buddies of mine and we already did a thing for him. We raised a couple of million and that’s good. We have to do a whole s***load more.”
He explained why he's backing Biden: “I believe in Joe because I believe in his values. What matters to him is the same stuff that matters to me: Intelligence, humanity, compassion, curiosity, humor. These are all qualities that I really care about in a human being, and he has them all.”
David Crosby spoke about the recent drug overdose death of his 21-year-old biological son, Beckett Cypher — whom he fathered for Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher: “The biggie is my kid died. I didn’t get to raise that kid and I didn’t mean to raise that kid, but he was here many times. I loved him and he loved me and he was family to me. (Pause) It’s hard. You’re not supposed to have your kids die before you die. That’s a real punch in the face. It’s like a train hits you and then you have to get back up. So I’m having a hard time. It’s a real hard one and I haven’t yet cried and I’m gonna and it’s hard.”
Croz went on to say: “In the middle of all that, I get trigger-finger tendonitis in my hands. I went in to get it fixed and it didn’t work. Now I’m in a tremendous amount of pain in my right hand. It’s entirely possible that I may never play guitar again.”
David Crosby told us that for him, being a songwriter and having a social conscience are one and the same: “Well, y'know, you start out simply seeing something that's dishonest, or wrong, or harmful and saying: 'That's dishonest, or wrong, or harmful.' You start out seeing America shooting its own children and watch Neil Young write 'Ohio' and think, 'Yeah, I wanna be a part of that.' Then you have children of your own and the universe shifts. Humbling and a responsibility that you cannot — if you are a human being — you cannot ignore, you cannot sit out.”
