CAPTAIN BILLY'S MAGIC 8 BALL - EPISODE #84: A MEMORIAL TRIBUTE TO DAVID CROSBY - IF I COULD ONLY REMEMBER MY NAME (ATLANTIC, 1971)

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLEIF I COULD ONLY REMEMBER MY NAME by David Crosby (1971, Atlantic)The Reaper continues its rampage, cutting swathes across the aging population of musical pioneers. Last week it was Jeff Beck, yesterday David Crosby. In fairness, it was actually amazing that the Croz lived as long as he did. He had diabetes, and In 1994 underwent a liver transplant (paid for by Phil Collins), after suffering for years with Hep C. But despite a notorious reputation for drug abuse that would cripple even a hardened junkie, David kept forging an unfettered path, making enemies with his thoughtless taunts, enduring break ups and reunions, yet still creating some of our greatest music with his frenemies, solo, and for the last mile in collaboration with his long-abandoned and rediscovered son, James Raymond.David Van Cortland Crosby, the son of Academy Award Winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby, was a California boy who became foundational to the California folk-rock soundtrack of our generation, and despite the fact that near the end of his life he had to stay on the road and sell his catalogue to pay off his mortgage, those songs will reside forever in the Laurel Canyon canon. Crosby was a notoriously difficult character who burnt nearly every bridge he ever crossed. His bandmate from the Byrds, Jim McGuinn steadfastly refused to work with him again despite David’s constant imprecations to reunite; he boldly dissed and insulted Neil Young’s soul-mate Darryl Hannah after the death of Neil’s former wife Pegi, and somehow alienated his biggest supporter in life, Graham Nash.  But, despite this, musician Melissa Etheridge solicited his sperm to make her babies. Maybe because, trumping all the difficulty, David’s harmonic acumen was unmatched and a divine gift from God. So, there he undeniably stands:  a twice inducted Rock n Roll Hall of Famer for founding two of the most important groups in Rock history.  And, this etherial, transcendent solo effort, recorded with the aid of Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Graham Nash, along with members of The Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead represents an artist whose questing musical imagination was always and eternally of a deeply spiritual nature. Humans are so complicated. As Dylan said: “I contain multitudes,” and David Crosby was an exemplar of that.