American singer-songwriter and musician, a founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, also noted for his later solo career. He is known for his use of alternate guitar tunings and jazz influences. After the release of their debut album CSN won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist of 1969. Crosby released six solo albums, five of which charted. Crosby was outspoken politically and depicted as emblematic of the 1960s counterculture.
His parents were Aliph Van Cortlandt Whitehead (a descendant of the prominent Van Cortlandt family) and Floyd Crosby, an Academy Award–winning cinematographer and descendant of the Van Rensselaer family. He was the younger brother of musician Ethan Crosby. In 1960, his parents divorced, and his father remarried.
David Crosby joined Roger McGuinn to form the nucleus of the Jet Set, later called The Beefeaters and finally, The Byrds, in 1964. Four years later he moved on to team up with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash to form their superstar group.
Songs Crosby wrote or co-wrote include “Lady Friend”, “Why”, and “Eight Miles High” with the Byrds and “Guinnevere”, “Wooden Ships”, “Shadow Captain”, and “In My Dreams” with Crosby, Stills & Nash. He wrote “Almost Cut My Hair” and the title track “Déjà Vu” for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 album.
With decades of drugs including heroin and coke, he was in and out of jail on drug charges 1983-1986. By 2 November 1994, his liver could not process any more abuse and he went into the hospital to either get a new liver or die. A donor was found and the seven-hour operation successfully completed on 19 November 1994. He underwent surgery 21 October 1997 in L.A. for a torn muscle in his abdomen and gigs were cancelled in August 1998 while doctors watched closely a fever and infection.
Crosby was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with the Byrds, and on 6 May 1997 for Crosby, Stills and Nash.
In 1997 Crosby was reunited with a son who was once given up for adoption: James Raymond, 34, born 1962, a musician following in the footsteps of his father. The pair formed a group named CPR and did a complex three-part harmony of guitar and piano.
In addition, Crosby had three other children: a daughter, Erika, with Jackie Guthrie, a daughter, Donovan Crosby, with former girlfriend Debbie Donovan and a son, Django Crosby, who was conceived with wife Jan Dance after extensive fertility treatments while Crosby’s liver was failing.
Nash reunited with Crosby and Stills to release a new album Looking Forward on 26 October 1999, followed by a U.S. tour; their first since 1974. Nash said that they were “a little more mature, compassionate and sensitive of each other’s feelings.” Stills said that he was finally playing the guitar the way he had been striving to for 15 years and Crosby said that he would be “awake” for this tour, alluding to his former drug habit.
His first book Stand and Be Counted: A Revealing History of Our Times Through the Eyes of the Artists Who Helped Change Our World was released in 2000, followed by Long Time Gone: The Autobiography of David Crosby (2005) and Since Then: How I Survived Everything and Lived to Tell About It (2007).
In March 2000 it was revealed that Crosby had fathered the two children of lesbian couple Julie Cypher and singer Melissa Etheridge. On 13 May 2020, it was announced that Etheridge and Cypher’s son, Beckett, had passed away from opioid addiction at age 21.
On 6 March 2004, the rock musician was arrested in a Manhattan hotel and charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, a felony, as well as other lesser offenses. Evidently, a maid found marijuana, a loaded gun and several knives in his room.
David Crosby died on 18 January 2023 at the age of 81 following a long illness.
Link to Wikipedia biography