IT WAS TIME TO MAKE SOME HARD DECISIONS.
After the Daylight Again TV special was in the can, Stills and I began work immediately on a live CSN album drawn almost entirely from that show. Croz was in no shape to make a new studio record, and lately he’d been making himself scarce. We couldn’t count on him for much of anything to do with business. Meanwhile, there was plenty of new, unreleased material to work from, so it wouldn’t seem like a cut-and-paste job made up of loose ends.
It was pretty difficult getting it together. Croz’s vocals were too lifeless on most of the tracks. We could isolate and soften them, but we needed more of him on a CSN album. So we added a couple of tracks—“Shadow Captain” and a version of Joni’s “For Free”—from a gig in Houston that we’d done in ’77. The patch job we did was remarkable, if I do say so myself. So with all of that, we had an album we called Allies. I chose the cover, a picture of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill with our heads superimposed, but it got scrapped at the last minute for photographs of us performing live.
Yes, we had to tour, and for the life of me I don’t know how we managed to pull it off. David was more than a mess. His health had deteriorated, which hardly seemed possible. He was freebasing around the clock. He was filthy, always sickly, irrational, covered in sores. And blisters—he and Jan would nod off while using a torch to light their pipe and were constantly burning their furniture and bodies. He had trouble speaking because his windpipe was coated. David was also broke, heavily in debt to drug dealers of all shapes and stripes. He went through all his cash, including the money set aside to pay for income taxes. And he’d been selling off his prized possessions in order to score. Guitars and collectibles from two decades of rock ’n’ roll went for small amounts of cocaine. The Mayan lay in disrepair. The Mill Valley place was a ghost house, overrun with drug dealers and hangers-on. I was paying for the schooling of his child, Donovan, named after Debbie. God only knows how he got through these days.
Even so, we were going on the road, touring Europe. Right before we left, David’s Texas court case came up on June 3, 1983. I watched it on CNN from my home in Hawaii, with Croz falling asleep and snoring loudly in the courtroom. And, I later learned, freebasing in the bathroom. The judge got pissed because of David’s fame, notoriety, and lack of respect for the legal system—and found him guilty, convicting him of two felonies. Two felonies! He faced up to thirty years in prison. In Texas! Hardball. I was pretty freaked. My heart sank as I watched the reports. For his mug shot, David wore a CSN jacket. Could it get any worse?
Sentencing was postponed when we came back from Europe. I phoned the guy who was chaperoning David and said, “Get out of Dallas, baby!” Simple as that.
We did the entire Allies tour on a Viscount jet prop. No wives or girlfriends came along. We didn’t need any additional distractions. Jan’s appearance was awful and would have attracted attention at passport control. She was pale and frail, with sores and burns—dreadful. So sad. We were nervous about being busted, afraid about being associated with Croz. We had an advance man who had to travel ahead, buying dope for Crosby from local suppliers. If Croz didn’t have drugs, he couldn’t function. The dope was kept in safe deposit boxes in local banks so no one had to carry. Crosby was too visible, an easy mark. Officials were just looking for him, waiting to pounce.
Somehow, the tour functioned. Music, as usual, wiped out the bad feelings. We did decent shows across Europe. In Germany, we ventured into East Berlin. I was always fascinated with the Berlin Wall, watching home movies of courageous people trying to escape from east to west, getting caught on barbed wire or shot. So I wanted to see Checkpoint Charlie. Man, was it different over there, like going from Hawaii to North Korea: sunny on one side (the west), gray and miserable on the other (the east). Bleak cement buildings, awful architecture.
Even though Daylight Again had been a hit, ticket sales at our shows were soft. Many times we booked three nights in a city, but demand was such that we only played one. Venues were too large, prices too high, expectations too great. Who really knows the reason? Shows in France and Spain were canceled at the last minute. Many of the shows in Italy were rained out. Out of the original twenty-five or so dates that were booked, nine were canceled.
That’s how we dragged ourselves back to the States, overcast and with restlessness galore.
I WAS DREADING Crosby’s sentencing in Dallas. It didn’t look good. He’d been arrested too many times to skate, and the judge in the case had run out of patience. The thought of David going to prison scared the shit out of me. I wasn’t sure he had the strength to get through it. And it conjured up all the shit that my dad had endured. I couldn’t help remembering how much my dad had changed upon his release, the humiliation and loss of self-esteem, and I didn’t want to see that happen to Croz.
There was a chance to enter a plea on his behalf, and if anyone was going to speak, who better than me? Who knew more about David and his true worth, apart from all the bullshit that tarnished his image? I viewed him like one of those shiny metallic balls you put in a garden. It gets handprints all over it, then more handprints, and more—obscuring the reflection with each successive touch. But if you cleaned all that shit off, the shine was still there, which was very much how I viewed Crosby. I explained how, at his heart, David was a good man. He’d helped a tremendous amount of people through his music and had done countless benefits for worthy causes. At the moment he might be going through a dark time in his life, but have some faith and trust that his core humanity was still there.
“I truly believe that what David needs at this juncture of his life is help, guidance, and professional supervision,” I wrote. “Confinement in prison may make him suicidal or worse. Please don’t send him to jail.”
Little good it did. Judge Pat McDowell, who heard the case, sentenced David to five years in prison for the drug charge and three years for weapons possession, to run concurrently.
I hadn’t expected that severe of a sentence. Five years was a fucking long time, but it was obvious the judge wanted to make an example of him. In a way, I was more worried that David wouldn’t do time—that he’d either make a run for it, as he’d often claimed he would, or blow himself away. He was terrified of going to jail while still using. David told me that, if convicted and sentenced, he’d had plans to sail away: to stock the Mayan with food, take Jan, and head out to sea. But I doubted that he’d be able to pull it off. David needed money—for food, for gasoline for the boat, for repairs, and for drugs—and to get money, you’ve got to come back into society. He might have been able to escape for a month or so, but I think he concluded it was a foolish and untenable idea.
In the meantime, due to an appeal filed by his lawyers, David was released on $8,000 bond.
Once again, I needed a rest from all the debilitating bullshit and headed to Hawaii, as far off the scene’s radar as one could possibly get. Occasionally I’d hear from one of the other guys. David called a few times for money or help. He was trying to clean up, but he wasn’t having much success. There were reports from the road that David torched hotel rooms in New York and Connecticut after nodding off while freebasing. Still, intermittently, he attempted to sign in to hospital rehab programs in order to satisfy the terms of his release. At Gladman Memorial in Oakland, California, I wrote a letter at his request so that he wouldn’t be confined to a mental unit. David’s craziness, I explained, was limited to the drugs. Was he wild? Oh, yeah. Was he impetuous? Yeah and a half. Was he stubborn and argumentative? Double yeah. But he wasn’t crazy and didn’t belong in that ward. So I assured the authorities at Gladman he would sign in voluntarily and stay put. David swore to me he would do it, too. But he bolted in a matter of hours. He’d broken his solemn promise to me—not for the first time, and not for the last.
I spent my downtime with my family, being a full-time dad and husband. It was heaven for me, exactly what I’d been missing. My kids were growing up and I longed to be more involved. I found out I was pretty good at it, too. There was so much joy to be had from their unassuming routines—making them breakfast, buying them shoes, reading them stories, taking them to the beach, watching them grow. They centered me. They were the innocence I needed so desperately in my life to counterbalance all the decadence dragging me down. As Susan pointed out, “Nobody applauds a good father. They don’t give them gold records. But there are other rewards.” And I was reaping them in spades.
I also managed to find time to do some sculpting and work on my photography collection. Actually, it was Susan who initially sparked my interest in sculpting. Two days after that tree incident when I first met her, she came over to our bungalow at the Chateau to make dinner for David and me. She brought along a piece of alabaster that she was working on, a bird she was sculpting. I was talking to David about which songs we were going to cut the next day for the Wind on the Water album while Susan worked away on the grass right outside the bungalow. Distracted, I looked over at her and realized deep down that, incredibly, I really loved this woman. I was completely enamored of her. She fulfilled all my fantasies of what a perfect woman should be. So I walked slowly over to her, laid my hand gently on her back, and said, “I love you.” That gesture so shocked her that she chipped the bloody head off the bird. It was one of those moments you couldn’t invent if you tried. So David and I wrote the song “Broken Bird” about that incident, which eventually made it onto Whistling Down the Wire.
There’s a story I’d like you to listen to
About a lady and a broken bird
Broken by the hammer,
She took it so hard she hardly said a word
I continued to do what I do best: I wrote more songs. I worked on new material, intending to come up with enough stuff to make a new CSN album in the not too distant future. Call it a pipedream, but I truly believed in our ability as musicians, even though the horizon looked pretty damn bleak.
I MANAGED TO stay out of the spotlight until the summer of 1984, when it was imperative that CSN go on tour. We needed to keep the group in the public eye and earn a little money while we were at it. Crosby, in particular, needed the cash. As usual he was broke, up to his eyeballs in debt, and spending whatever money he had on coke and heroin, all while he was out on bail, awaiting appeal.
Just before we left, Mort, David’s dealer, talked David into leaving Jan behind in Mill Valley. What David didn’t know was that Mort had moved a couple of coked-up bikers into the house to bring her drugs and they beat the crap out of her. They kept Jan prisoner, sometimes at gunpoint, and stole all of her money. When Jan finally broke free and made her way to David, she had two broken ribs, a dislocated jaw, and many missing teeth. Lucky to be alive.
And it got even worse. At one point we took a flight from Kansas City to a gig in Denver. We’re all sitting in first class. David and Jan were sitting directly behind me across the aisle, trying to freebase under a blanket, but he’d left his drug paraphernalia and gun in suitcases that were checked. Wouldn’t you know it, the plane was delayed and David got agitated, worried he couldn’t fix. “I want those bags,” he demanded, and ordered one of his guys to recover them and bring them to the cabin. Of course, they X-rayed the bags and found the gun and the stash. When the police came on board, David denied the bags were his. He was out on appeal; another arrest would have revoked his bail and ended the tour then and there. Instead he said, “They’re Jan’s,” and she owned up to them. So the cops arrested Jan for federal air piracy. They took her, David waved good-bye, stared out the window, and didn’t say another word.
He was too far gone to have a conversation about the reality of what had happened. The rest of us wondered how a man did that—let them take his girlfriend and not say something or go with her, any of the things that someone in his right mind would have said. But David was not in his right mind. The freebase had completely transformed him into something almost inhuman.
I was shocked. Of course, I was equally to blame. I didn’t do anything to intervene or defuse the situation. The CSN tour was an enabler for David, and so was I. Absolutely. I enabled David because I wanted him to be able to make music. I tried to confront him, to prohibit the drugs. He’d say, “Want me to sing tonight? Want me to be there, man—awake?” So to appease a junkie, you say nothing while he is getting stoned and happy. And I have to take a certain amount of responsibility. I wanted the music. The music was always the most important thing for me.
Somehow, we soldiered through the tour. It was strangely reassuring. Comforting. There was a lot of good music. And nobody died. On December 9, 1984, at the after-tour party at the Kahala Hilton in Honolulu, we were all looking forward to moving on. Beforehand, in my room, I got loaded, smoking and snorting. The party was in a huge suite, everyone was getting completely whacked. When I came down to it and took in the scene, I realized that everyone there seemed to be faking having a good time. They seemed like marionettes, their faces fixed with superficial smiles, pretending to connect. Then I realized that I was like a marionette, too, the coke pulling my strings. Despite the drugs, it was a moment of extreme clarity. I thought that if this was how it appeared to me, then they must be seeing it in me as well. It made me cringe; it did a number on my head. Plus, David was a walking poster boy for the devastation of coke. He was bloated, some of his teeth were missing, his face was swollen, and he was in serious denial, insisting that he had his shit together. So I decided there and then: no more cocaine for me. It had been a part of my life from 1968 through 1984. I’d done enormous amounts of the stuff—enormous amounts. But I didn’t want or need it anymore. It wasn’t a very difficult decision. I’m a pretty determined man. So I swore off it for good. There has been no cocaine in my life since that night.
DURING THE NEXT YEAR, David hit rock bottom. He was arrested for drug and weapons possession, and after he failed to appear at a court hearing in Dallas to discuss his appeal bond, a warrant was issued for his arrest. It was a few days before Thanksgiving. For nearly a month, from mid-November to mid-December 1985, David Crosby was on the run. He sold his grand piano for $5,000 in getaway money that he immediately blew on dope, and he headed to Florida, a fugitive from justice, which also made him guilty of interstate flight. Ostensibly he was looking for the Mayan, which was somewhere in the Bahamas. But the boat proved to be unseaworthy; it was in complete disrepair. Meanwhile, the FBI began a search for Croz and Jan. They were hopscotching around the state, from one drug dealer to the next, one relative to the next, being turned away at every location. Somewhere in this madness, David realized it was over. He ran out of money—and hope. The drugs were killing him and he knew it. There was nothing left but to turn himself in.
On December 12 at around 3:30 in the afternoon, he walked barefoot into FBI headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida, and surrendered. I watched the news reports from my home in Kauai, heartbroken at seeing my best friend led out of a building in handcuffs, photographers swarming around him, being stuffed into the back of a squad car. At the last moment, before the door closed, he turned to the camera and said, “Wish me luck.”
Needless to say, I wished him all of that—and more. In a way, it took guts to turn himself in, but I think it was inevitable once he hit bottom and decided he needed help. That was the point at which he made the decision to live. But I admit, I was secretly hoping to see him go to jail. I thought it was the only way he could stop this downward slide into oblivion. How many of our friends had died in the grip of drugs—Jimi, Brian Jones, Cass, a half dozen crew members? We almost lost Stephen and David any number of times. Those guys must be built like fucking bulls! Like Keith Richards. I didn’t want to see anything happen to Croz. I really loved the guy.
DAVID SPENT SEVERAL months at Lew Sterrett County Jail in Dallas before being transferred, on March 6, 1986, to Huntsville, one of the most onerous state prisons in America. He wrote several letters to me from jail, and they were fucking bleak. I know that Jackson and Stephen wrote to him, too. And Neil—he told David that if he cleaned up his act and got straight, then he would gladly come back into the fold. Re-forming CSNY was a powerful incentive. It was all we could do to keep David’s spirits high.
While David was in the joint, Stephen kept busy making Right by You, one of his less-appreciated albums for Atlantic, with help from Jimmy Page; I was making Innocent Eyes, another solo album that I fear was inadequately conceived. I felt as though I had to do something more contemporary and probably pushed that concept too far. The music, much of which was written by other artists, was outside of my comfort zone. I used a drum machine on a lot of the tracks, which threw some longtime fans and reviewers off. In hindsight, there was probably less of me on that record than the music required.
Afterward, I did a string of small shows with Joan Armatrading, mixing a lot of CSN standbys into the set. I also joined Neil in performing at a Vietnam Veterans Benefit at the Forum in LA. We’d been such outspoken forces against the war—all war, in fact—that this gig felt strange and uncomfortable to me. Could I, in all good conscience, support those who had fought? Did I have any business being on that stage? I’d followed the war closely over the years, all the horror stories about the senseless brutality, the napalming of villages, leveling a gorgeous country that had defied America’s imperialistic interests, condemning so many thousands of American soldiers to their deaths. Yes, I was opposed to the Vietnam War, as I still oppose it, vehemently, to this day. But I began to realize that many of the soldiers sent into battle were forced to go there over their own personal objections. They were either drafted or felt a duty to serve. And now that they had returned they were treated indiscriminately like dirtbags, which was unfair. Not only weren’t they given the standard hero’s welcome, they never received even basic assistance in reentering society. Many were regarded suspiciously, forced to deal with the hatred expressed toward them. They sure as hell didn’t deserve that kind of disrespect. This forced me to reexamine my position about the men and women who had served. And so I joined Neil onstage to raise money for the veterans, singing spirited versions of “Ohio” and “Teach Your Children.” My days as a vocal antiwar activist weren’t over, not by any stretch of the imagination, but when it came to veterans there were so many complicated factors. I learned it wasn’t all so black-and-white.
One of my greatest thrills as an ardent antiwar activist was singing “Teach Your Children” in Hiroshima, Japan, at exactly 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1986, forty-one years to the minute after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. It was a benefit for Children of War, an organization that helps kids who have lost their parents to war. As I stood before that crowd, I said, “I sincerely hope that in some small way this concert represents the hopes and dreams of millions of people throughout the world who struggle to balance the madness of war with the sanity of peace. As individuals, we must never forget that we are not alone. We are not helpless and we must work harder together to ensure that the tragedy that occurred here forty-one years ago is never repeated.” As I performed the song I’d sung hundreds of times, I was struck anew by its inspirational meaning and the power of the lyric to transcend all cultures. It humbled me, especially when those kids sang along with the chorus. It was incredibly emotional, which I’ll never forget.
I rushed home from Japan for another emotional event. Crosby was being released from prison—after eight months. There had been rumblings that he might be paroled early. I’d even written to the Texas Board of Pardons on his behalf. “No one has been affected or more deeply hurt than I by the hold that drugs had on him.” Really laying it on thick. “I fully realize that his imprisonment most probably saved his life. I feel that his release at this time would allow him to get back to the more positive side of his life and once again become the creative and sensitive human being I have missed so much throughout this painful ordeal.”
It seemed unlikely that he would make his first parole. Usually that first one lays the groundwork for others that follow. They mess with you a little to test your sincerity. But whatever luck had kept David alive through those grisly years continued to serve him at this latest crossroads.
On August 8, 1986, Bill Siddons, our manager, and I collected him from prison. We parked outside Huntsville and waited, just like in the movies. Soon enough, David came strolling through the gate, carrying a little brown paper bag of his possessions. He was wearing shades, his hair was still short, and his mustache had not yet grown out. He looked pale and overweight. But with a huge shit-eating grin on his face. He was out—finally! And there we were, his manager and his best friend. It was an indescribably exciting moment. Immediately we took David to the nearest restaurant and bought him the biggest steak he’d seen in a year.
Naturally I was worried that he might try to score, but everything seemed on the up and up. It wasn’t until a few days later that Siddons told me David actually did score freebase after the steak dinner. I was clueless. So Croz wasn’t cured. But he was definitely on some kind of upward path.
There was so much positive stuff for us to talk about. Jan, for one thing. She had gone through a rehab program and transformed herself, gaining about twenty pounds and improving her appearance. Her hair was clean and styled, her scars had mostly healed, and her eyes sparkled. Give that girl credit. She looked radiant, alive.
And David was beginning to focus on music again. We made plans to make records and do shows together. He’d been writing inside, a great song called “Compass,” along with sheets and sheets of lyrics. And he remembered Neil’s promise that if he ever got clean there’d be a reunion of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. That was a huge carrot.
Money, or the lack of it, was on his mind. Croz was broke and owed the IRS nearly a million bucks in back taxes; it was clear that he’d have to declare bankruptcy. That was the last thing I wanted David to think about. I assured him that his friends were willing to help get him back on his feet. Susan and I would certainly contribute—anything he needed, just as he’d done for me when I moved to America. Before David went to jail, I knew the IRS would come for every asset he had: his boat, his house, whatever possessions hadn’t been sold for dope, and eventually they would come for his publishing. To stem that possibility, Susan suggested that our financial guy Gil Segal and I buy his publishing, with the intention of holding it for the year or so it took to unwind David’s debts. Then we’d give it back to him. So he had some income coming in from his songs, which helped, considering the circumstances. I also cosigned a lease on a house for him and Jan around the corner from us in Encino, and fronted them for a couple months’ rent. They needed a home, a nest. They needed dentists, clothes, and other essentials—they needed. So I was happy to be there for them any way they wanted. Friendship means friendship, no questions asked.
But David’s concern always pivoted back to music. Coincidentally, I had a gig booked nearby, at Rockefellers, a club in Houston. I was beginning a solo tour with three other guys: a ménage-à-tech, Bill Boydston playing patterns on a drum machine and playing keyboards, and Hugh Ferguson on guitar. I asked Crosby, who was turning forty-five that night, if he wanted to come to the show and sit in with me on “Wind on the Water.”
Rockefellers was a tiny club, and it was packed that night with maybe three hundred people. Everyone knew that Croz was out of jail, and since I happened to be playing near the prison, the possibility existed that David might show up. So at the appropriate moment, the lights went down and a tape of “Critical Mass,” David’s a cappella sig- nature intro to “Wind on the Water,” came on. Crosby, in the dark, had already crept toward the mike. He had to push a curtain aside to come from the back onto the stage. With the dressing-room lights behind him—it was like seeing the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock— he was immediately recognizable. And the place erupted, they went crazy, fucking nuts. Crosby had a fantastic grin on his face. He was so happy to be there, to be free, to have paid his debt to society—to have all that shit behind him to some extent. A dark, dark period in his life was ending, and a brighter one was poised to begin.
AT THE END of 1986, Neil kept his promise to sing with us again. However, first he wanted to make sure all four of us could handle it. “We should be physically able to take on the job of setting an example for an entire generation that could be halfway to the fucking grave,” he said. “They have to see that we can go through all this shit and come back stronger and sharper than we were before. No matter what has happened to them in their lives, no matter how many good friends have died, how much shit they’ve piled on themselves, how many losses they’ve endured—if we can be so strong after everything we’ve endured, it would be like fresh water running over the entire audience.”
So Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young re-formed to do two benefits. The first was as part of the bill to raise funds for the Bridge School, which Neil and his wife Pegi had recently founded for kids stricken with cerebral palsy, from which both of Neil’s sons suffered. Then two acoustic shows—with us headlining—for Greenpeace at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara, one of the truly great places to perform. The four of us hadn’t played in a long time, and it was exhilarating sharing the stage together again. Especially acoustic, which is when the songs really live.
At the Bridge School concerts, there were two handicapped kids at the back of the stage. Susan noticed that a young boy started to cry, and the little girl next to him slowly put a hand out to reassure him that everything was going to be okay. When Susan described that moment to me, I was so touched that I wrote “Try to Find Me.”
I’m in here with a lonely light
But maybe you can’t see me.
But I’m here with my mind on fire,
Do your best and try to find me.
Right after that we began working on a new CSNY album, our first studio record together since recording Déjà Vu in 1969. All of us had been writing new songs. I brought “Don’t Say Goodbye,” about a rough patch that most marriages go through and that I’d hit with Susan when I was panicked that she might be leaving me; “Clear Blue Skies,” which I’d written earlier in Hawaii; my song “Heartland,” and “Shadowland,” written with Rick Ryan and Joe Vitale. Neil had “In the Name of Love,” “This Old House,” “Feel Your Love,” and “American Dream,” which became the title of the album. Stills brought “That Girl,” “Driving Thunder,” and “Got It Made,” and David contributed “Nighttime for the Generals” and “Compass.” We had songs.
We all went up to Neil’s ranch, just south of San Francisco, to record. He has a full studio there, along with multiple houses. I’d been with him the first time he saw that property in 1971. We were looking for real estate together and saw about five places, most of which weren’t very interesting. But the minute he laid eyes on this spread he was immediately sold, especially after seeing hundreds of red-winged blackbirds on the lake. Utterly beautiful, of course, with giant redwoods, and very isolated, the way Neil liked it. You have to go up Highway 1 to Skyline Drive and then find a little road that gets smaller and smaller until there is only room enough for one car on it. If someone’s coming toward you, you’ve got to pull off into the undergrowth and pray they can squeeze past. It’s a couple of miles to the main road—and God forbid you forget the milk! The buildings are ranch style, funky, and there’s a large barn in which Neil had recorded some of his Harvest album. I remember the day that Neil asked me to listen to the record. No big speakers, but a boat. That’s right, he asked me to get into a small boat and he rowed us both out into the middle of the lake. Once there he asked his producer Elliot Mazer to play the record. Neil was using his entire house as the left speaker and his huge barn as the right speaker. What an incredible record it was, and after the music stopped blaring, Elliot came down to the shore of the lake and shouted, “How was that, Neil?” and I swear this is true, Neil shouted back, “More barn!” That’s Neil, no doubt about it
All of us settled in at the Red House, as it was called. We were doing great, happy to be alive, David and Stephen in good shape. Neil always takes care of himself, eats well, exercises. We were all getting along like a house on fire. The couple of sessions took only two or three weeks, interspersed between April 24 and September 16. No ego problems other than a lot of strong opinions. Neil wanted to do it, wanted to be there, and that was a big problem out of the way. Besides, we were at his house, so he couldn’t run away. But, then, neither could we. A pretty clever strategy.
The opportunity to make music with Neil is always enticing. He always was and remains an utterly brilliant musician. When we play with Neil, I expect the unexpected. We make a different kind of music with him than we do with Crosby, Stills & Nash. It’s got a harder edge; there is tension and darkness in it. He pushes us into a different direction. And when you write for CSNY, you push back harder, hopefully giving him something to bite into. I never wanted to be in a band that demanded the same solo as the night before, the same one you played on the record and on the last four hundred shows. I’d rather stand there with my mouth wide open, and that’s what I got when Neil joined the group. As difficult as our relationship sometimes is, it was hard to argue with what he brought to the mix.
Even though we were getting along, musically I felt we were walking on eggshells. Croz was used to dominating a recording session, he was usually unflappable, and now it seemed, at times, that he was taking a backseat, letting the rest of us call the shots.
Stephen was a little fragile, too. He didn’t feel that he had great songs to offer. “Got It Made” was a decent number, but he didn’t have a lot of what I considered CSNY songs. I thought Neil indulged Stephen a little too much.
Music was changing a lot at this point. There was still a ton of disco on the airwaves, a lot of Donna Summer and the Bee Gees. New wave and electronica were each attracting their niche. But I have to say that none of it influenced us as we were making American Dream. We didn’t take any notice of that stuff. We just did what we do, made our music the only way we knew how. We weren’t following any trends.
David, if a bit fragile in the sessions, was straightening out his life, to my utter delight. He devoted himself entirely to Jan. It took all of us by surprise when he dropped the big one: that he and Jan were going to get mar … mar … mar … C’mon, Croz, say it! Married. Yeah, you heard that right: Crosby getting married, three words I never expected to use in the same sentence. But it was cool. Jan and David had come back from the dead. They were a team, inseparable. They held on to each other for dear life.
Don’t get me wrong, we gave him a lot of shit about it. There was a stag party where things got pretty raunchy. The usual shit—guys getting drunk, a couple of scantily clad ladies. Lots of unrepeatable roasts and toasts directed at David. The wedding was the next day, May 16, 1987, at the Church of Religious Science in LA, where Susan and I had gotten married ten years earlier. In fact, Susan and I decided to renew our vows, making the event a double wedding.
When I first married Susan, she gave me ten years. She was perfectly clear about her intentions, saying, “At the end of those ten, if I still like you I’ll renew.” It wasn’t a joke or said lightly. She’s an incredibly strong, independent woman. When those ten years were up, if she hadn’t been happy, she’d have been gone in a shot—and I knew it. Even though we had three kids together. If I wasn’t pulling my weight, she was out of there. And I always worried about it. Was it going to last? Would there be any magic left? I didn’t know. So it was a relief when she decided to re-up with me. And Jan and David were generous to share their ceremony with us.
It was a memorable affair, with equally memorable company. Stills and Jackson, of course—even Neil turned up—with guest appearances by Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, Paul Kantner, and Warren Zevon. The reception was in the yard of our house in Encino, during which we all jumped into the pool with our clothes on. Silly shit.
We deserved this, and we savored every minute of it. There’s no question that we had come through the madness. CSN, not just David, had gone off the rails, and for a while it seemed certain we were headed over the cliff. Smart money was betting we’d self-destruct again, but somewhere in the insanity we turned the mothership around. Don’t ask me how. David’s going to jail? Possibly that sparked things. My quitting cocaine? It certainly helped. Stephen’s coming to terms with his magnificent talent, no longer being intimidated by Neil, as he’d been in the past? All of this figured into the turnaround. Huge relief. From here on out, we stopped trying to live life to the extreme and, at long last, were looking to live life well.
“Croz alone, 1984” (© 1988 Graham Nash)