David Crosby still maintains that the state of the world today could only be helped along by a Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young reunion. Crosby, who has publicly been on the outs with both Neil Young and Graham Nash, is still on good terms with Stephen Stills.
Rolling Stone asked Crosby if he believes a reunion of the quartet seems likely: “No, I really don’t. I got as out-front with it as I could. I sent an email to Neil, saying, 'Listen, I know you’re pissed at me because I slagged your girlfriend (now wife, Daryl Hannah). And I’m sorry.' I’ve apologized a couple of times publicly, but that’s not really relevant to what’s going on in the country. I said, 'What we’re faced with, and now that you’re an American too, you got to pay attention to this: Our country’s broken. We’ve got an idiot, an imbecile running the country, and taking apart good stuff left and right as fast as he can, and putting us in a very bad situation. We could have a strong voice, and we could do some real good for whoever the nominee is going to be. . . We’re faced with a horrible situation and we have a big voice, we could probably sway the outcome.”
Crosby underscored that some of CSNY's worst behavior over the decades has often been aimed at one another: “We’ve all been horrible to each other over the years. . . Neil left Stephen in the middle of a tour, twice! Twice! It was a really good email, man. It was very sincere, very straightforward. I’m not buttering his toast, trying to suck his d***. I’m just telling them what the real truth is. We’re faced with a situation where we could make a huge difference. I would love to do it. I know Stephen would love to do it, because Stephen is a very political guy and has been working with the Democratic Party his whole life. He’s very savvy about politics.”
He went on to say, “Nash? I don’t know. Nash, I haven’t talked to in a long time. And he has been, in the past anyway, a ball of anger, and not somebody fun to have anything to do with. But he’s good at what he does, and he’s a pro. We all are. We know how to do it. So I would gladly do it. And I sent that message to Neil and it was totally sincere. And I got a large, empty, echoing silence back.”
When asked if he's checked out Neil Young's recent online “Fireside Sessions” on his official website NeilYoungArchives.com, “Croz” admitted: “No, I didn’t. Well, he’s usually really good. What can I say? I haven’t liked his writing lately so much. I keep waiting for a song that really makes me feel something. He set the bar very high, man: 'Helpless,' 'Country Girl,' 'Old Man,' 'A Man Needs A Maid,' (and) 'Cortez.' It’s Neil. He wrote a lot of great songs. So it’s tough for him. Everybody is always going to compare his work now to his work in the past.”
Crosby is resigned to the fact that his upcoming tour is scrapped in light of the ongoing pandemic. He admitted he's terrified to tour in the current climate: “I’m a textbook case, man, I’m 78 years old. I’m a transplant, so I have a suppressed immune system. I’m a diabetic, type 2, for 30 years. I’m absolutely the center of the demographic. I worry about it. . . . What (I think) is gonna happen is this: We’ll be able to tell you in each region when it’s peaking. And when it starts to peak, then people are going to start figuring out what to do afterwards, and then they will start re-booking all of us work, and then we will go back to work, and then the world will go back to roughly normal, except we have an idiot for a president.”
David Crosby explained how 50 years on, Crosby, Stills, & Nash ended up where it is today — and how things got so bad: “I quit. You start out being very much in love with each other and you love each other's music, and you're havin' a blast — and you wind up 40 years later, not likin' each other and it's down to just turn on the smoke machine and play your hits and it's no fun. And it was stifling music for me. It was making music be no fun. It's sort of like jumping off a cliff and then, halfway down, I put out (my solo album) Lighthouse, and that was like growing a set of wings.”
David Crosby was set to kick off his spring North American dates on May 14th at Santa Barbara, California's Lobero Theatre.
