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David Crosby
Interview by Ben Fong-Torres
In his third year as a Byrd, David Crosby was kicked out of the
band. There were a number of reasons, none of them made public,
but several of them easy enough to guess. Crosby, rhythm guitarist,
singer, and composer, was continually at odds with Roger McGuinn,
acknowledged leader of the group. While McGuinn steered the bands
uneasy course from "folk-rock" through space-rock to country,
Crosby equally opinionated, equally brilliant, kept tampering
with the wheel. Crosby worked out and executed the intricate harmonies
for the group's three-part vocal lines, but he went beyond "folk-rock"
early in the game. He wrote "Mind Gardens", "Eight Miles High",
"Everybody's Been Burned", "Why", and "What's Happening?!?!".
He called Byrd music "folk bossa nova, jazz, Afro."
Away from music, but still on stage, Crosby insisted on speaking
out on politics, and he did it articulately and abrasively. At
the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, he delivered a rap challenging
the credibility of the Warren Report. Four months later he was
no longer a Byrd.
Crosby hasn't changed much if anything, he's younger than yesterday,
freer with his music and his iconoclastic ideas. Since leaving
the Byrds, he produced Joni Mitchell's first album; Jefferson
Airplane recorded a love song of his that the Byrds couldn't take:
"Triad". And now he is the proudest and loudest member of Crosby,
Stills, Nash, and Young. On stage, it is David, Leo/ lion round
face fronting a neat mane of wild hair, with freak fringes flying
from his old Byrd jacket, who dominates the between-song raps.
It's like the man can't stand dead air.
Where Stephen Stills is the restrained Capricorn virtuoso boy
wonder, where Neil Young is the earthy balance to the other three's
often-angelic approaches, and where Graham "Willie" Nash is the
boyish, stretched-out Englishman, Crosby is the most obvious catalyst
working hardest to keep the four adamant individuals together.
He does it with looks, grins, vibrancy bouncing off the balls
of his feet, and most of all, with raps.
Introducing a Neil Young tune called "Only Love Can Break Your
Heart," Crosby rumbles: "Here's a song about President Johnson,
Spiro T. Agnew, Richard Nixon/Ronnie Regan/Vietnam/Cambodia/the
moon and refuse" ..... pause..... "but it's not a bummer!" Talking
about "Guinnevere," a song he had written for his lady Christine
before she was killed last summer, he now says: "This is a place
that Tricia Nixon does not get to go." At the Oakland Coliseum
last week, Nash come-nowed: "She might be groovy," to which Crosby
replied, slowly" "The odds are stupendously high against it."
Then the irreverent capper: "She's the kind of girl that would
give bad head." Nash choked, turned away, and laughed. McGuinn
would have kicked him off stage.
"Yeah sometimes I rap too much," he admits. But you gotta understand:
Crosby has had alot of past, and it all stays with him, and he
builds on it. All that music dating back ten years when he started
at 19, when he made the folkie Troubador/Gate of Horn/Bitter End
circuit. All the reading-science fiction books; books on sea life
and survival methods; titles like 'Ice Station Zebra' and 'True
Experiences in Telepathy.' All the women who inspire him to weave
sex raps everywhere and anywhere. All the love for the sea, for
his 60 foot schooner 'The Mayan.' And of course, all the months
of personal crystallization as a Byrd.
Crosby was an easy interview; he's become a friend through past
meetings for different stories. He said he found a journalist
he could trust. I'd found a musician/spokesman I knew I could
believe. When the tape machine wasn't running we spent time on
the deck of 'The Mayan,' docked at Marina del Rey, and talked
about London, about women, and about trips he had made in the
waters and the winds while he planned and sanded down hatch doors
and revarnished various pieces of the boat's woodwork. Downstairs,
whenever we talked, friends would invariably gather to listen.
At dinner at Stephen Stills house in Laurel Canyon, he made pitches
for the rest of the band to support campaigns being waged by Jess
Unruh, Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock. He taunted and debated
Stephen and Graham about "Yo Yo Lennon" and about the impossibility
of carving out a perfect male-female relationship. But he conceded
that Yo-Yo and John Lennon might have one worked out.
A few weeks later, Nixon and the National Guard in Ohio did their
numbers, and Crosby Stills Nash and Young fell apart and David
called up to tell about it, to say he's thought it'd be together
again soon. Days later Neil Young had written "Ohio" and Crosby's
prediction came true, the band was back on the road. We met again
and talked some more, over breakfast at a restaurant in Hollywood,
after the waitress had finished hounding him for concert tickets
for her kids-promising an incredible blow job in the restroom,
("And I've got false teeth," she said.)
He spoke not too specifically, or certainly about the band, and
it sounded like maybe Crosby Stills Nash and Young might be staying
together just long enough to save their legal necks on the concert
tour. Young and Stills were at it again. Broken arrows.
But last week speaking after the Oakland concert, Crosby the catalyst,
sounded very certain: "The music has been so good," he said, "that
as far as I can see, we'll do one tour and one LP a year for the
next ten years. Steve and Neil were fucking hugging and shaking
hands after shows. And if me and Willie and the others can get
those two cats up and keep them up..... Well we can work it out."
And meanwhile, he and Nash will do a joint LP this summer, and
Stills will have a solo album out, and CSNY have six Fillmore
sets recorded for a possible live album this fall, so David Crosby
has alot to talk about.
BFT (Ben Fong-Torres)
*************************************
Q&A
BFT: You were talking when we first met, about what your hopes
for Crosby Stills and Nash would be. And you were saying something
about the fact that what a joy it was to be able to not have to
just sing three-part harmonies, to be able to find your voice.
You were hinting about limitations as a Byrd and the whole range
of things you went through as a Byrd.
DC: Man there's limitations inherent in anything, I suppose. The thing
ya gotta do in a group is fill whatever needs to be filled that
you can fill and try not to be too specific about it. No, the
limitations worked out are usually in the areas of there being
nobody else to sing the harmony.
The way we did the first three Byrd albums I guess, was Gene and
McGuinn would sing the melody together and then I would sing the
melody together and then I would sing the harmony parts and then
finally we got Christopher to start singin' and along about then
Gene dropped out. Then we got to singin' parts more. But for most
of it, it wound up bein' me singin' harmony because I could sing
that high and I could stay in tune, and that's about it. And also
I really love singin' harmony and I love thinkin' up weird ones,
and they used to enjoy the weird ones. So I wound up never singin'
the lead. Now, I'm not a great lead singer. But there are songs
that I like to sing; and then they could all sing it. So ....
he used to want to, and is used to be a matter of habit within
the group to try to keep everybody in roles, you know what I mean?
When we started out makin' groups the first time around, we thought
it was sorta like Hard Days Night, and we thought everybody had to have a role.
It got to be a matter of habit that I would do that and this would
be that and that ..... and it's hard to break habit, man. Habit's
even harder to break than some kind of deliberate plot, cause
it's not maliciousness on anybody's part. There wasn't anybody
in that group trying to hold me back. There was no real maliciousness
in that group until right near the end, y' know. Along around
"Eight Miles High" and Monterey Pop Festival , y' know. They used
to get uptight that I was playing with Stephen and Buffalo Springfield.
They got uptight behind Monterey, me saying that shit about Kennedy
and the Warren Report.
BFT: What exactly did you say?
DC: "Who killed the President?" basically. It was a standard introduction.
We used to do it - you saw us do it a hundred times. We used to
do it every single time we did "He Was a Friend of Mine". The
introduction for a year solid was: "We'd like to do a song about
this guy who was a friend of ours. And just by way of mentioning
it, he was shot down in the street. And as a matter if strict
fact he was shot down in the street by a very professional kind
of outfit. Don't make you sort of wonder? The Warren Report ain't
the truth, that's plain to anybody. And it happened in your country.
Don't you wonder why? Don't you wonder?"
And then we would sing the song. Now, admittedly that's a little
extreme for an artist to get into those areas at all. Got no right
talkin' about that. But I was pissed about it, and I'm still pissed
about it! I guess I overstepped my bounds as an artist. By rights
I shouldn't get into that area at all. I'm sure no political genius.
I don't fuckin' know what to do. I sure am sure I was tellin'
the truth. But I sure am sure that it didn't fuckin' do no good.
I mean he isn't alive, he's dead, and nobody still knows why.
Or how or who. And everybody's guessin' and everybody's scared.
So I guess it didn't do a hell of a lot of good for me to mouth
off.
BFT: You say "overstepping your bounds." It sounds like at first, the
whole band was with you. They knew just what you were saying.
DC: They all believed the same thing, but I don't think any of
them would've said it... well, they didn't say it.
BFT: Did they feel it was improper for Monterey?
DC: Probably. Maybe they thought the focus was there. I know that
everybody was conscious of the cameras because it was the first
time anybody was filmin' rock and roll, y'know. We were all very
camera-shy. I was camera-shy to an extreme degree.
Stephen Stills: Being convinced that you were ugly.
DC: Well, there are mirrors in this world. For god's sake, man.
I mean, Lord. The truth hurts!
BFT: So you're up to Monterey and the uptightness begins. Was Stephen
really a big part of it?
DC: Stephen has been a big part of my life, man, for the past
three years. The cat came over to my house and played one evening
with me, and it was very clear to me that he was a stoned goddamn
genius. And I don't know whether anybody else knew it then, but
I was firmly convinced of it. He plays rings around everybody.
Everybody! He plays everything better than anybody. So, I wanted
to hang out with him.
BFT: How'd you meet him?
DC: How the fuck'd I meet you, man? I guess I came and heard you.
SS: You guys paid us $125. dollars for our first gig.
DC: First gig? Were you paid on those Byrds concerts?
SS: Yes, you.....
DC: No wonder you guys were really loose. I wondered why you were
loose. (The Byrds producer Jim) Dickson didn't tell us that. That's
groovy. You sang really good. You put me uptight, as a matter
of fact. I felt competitive.
SS: I know. We watched. We laughed a lot.
DC: Oh, you mean guys . Kicked out plug out, too ... I caught
you, bastard! Yeah, so, but they were good, man. That was early
Springfield. I didn't really know what he was, man, until he came
over to my house one time and we played acoustic guitars. And
then I knew what he was . I wanted to obviously do some of that,
'cause it's groovy. Like, I don't know, we like music, we like
a lot of music.
At that point, see, my band was turned off to playing. Everybody
goes through that stage some time or another, I guess. Right then
they were all really turned off to playing. I mean Roger would
stop in the middle of a song to look at his watch and see how
much more time he had to do in the set. And I'm not kidding you,
he'll tell you it's the truth. He's seen him do it. I've seen
him do it.
SS: I watched Chris, though, right in the middle of a song stop
playing and turn around and take a draw on a cigarette and then
start playing about six bars later. Seven and a half.
DC: Twenty to one it was one of my songs.
SS: As a matter of fact it was.
DC: Ok, so now, anyway, it got to be a point where one time I
was tryin' to sing a song where my energy level was so dissimilar
from theirs that Christopher turned around to me and said, "Ah,
the David Crosby Show." And it pissed me off so hard that I got
frozen up like they were. I mean there was a real disparity between
how we wanted to get it on in music
Now I saw this cat, man, I mean he loves to play. He will play
25 hours a day. Now, didn't I just want to hang out with somebody
that loved to play, man. And fuck, we would get it on. We would
have a good time playin'. And I was fuckin' starved for that.
I mean I was going on a stage, man, with a band that was a burn.
It was like going out and selling parsley on the street and havin'
to meet the people the next day. Byrdshit! It wasn't the Byrds;
is was the fucking canaries.
It was a burn, but it didn't start out to be, so it really was
a turn-off to watch it go that way, you know? So I had a very
negative scene on one hand that was rapidly turning into a worse
psychodrama because I had made a terrible mistake and led everybody
to a cat who was taking us to the cleaners. Manager cat. Pure
poison. Ruined a lot of people and I led them all in. The only
thing that I can also say is that I tried to lead them all back
out again.
BFT: How did he ruin people?
DC: Stole their money. He was a very direct fellow. Wasn't subtle
or anything. He would steal. That was his trip. Anyway, so I an
intensely bad scene on one side, and then I had Stephen on the
other side; Springfield was falling apart too. Neither Stephen,
nor I could wash the taste of bein' in a bad group out of our
minds. For us, you gotta remember, those two groups - and they
were not bad groups - for us they were intensely painful psychodrama's
at the time. A mismatching of purposes, of motivations. Everybody
was windin' up doin' it for different reasons. Well, Stephen and
I hung out, and hung out, and we made some demo tapes, and played
'em for Atlantic and Atlantic said "Sure kid. I'll buy that."
And I was shopping around. Capitol offered me a better deal. I
was gonna sign with Capitol as a single. And when Graham came
to the United States......
BFT: And a twinkle lights up your eye.......
DC: Yes indeed. At that point it started to get good. Now Graham
Nash - this is gonna sound like a hype - Graham Nash is one of
the most highly evolved people on the planet. He is my teacher
and he's certainly the finest cat I know. Excuse me for usin'
that word, because I know alot of fine cats. He is just an incredible
human being. And don't just trust me. Ask anybody that knows him
and they will tell you that he is just one of the major joys in
their life. And he started bringing my spirits up.
We started singing together and one night we were at Joni Mitchell's
- Ah there's a story. Cass was there. Stephen was there, me, and
Willie (Graham Nash), just us five hangin' out. You know how it
is this night, so we were singin' as you would imagine. We sang
alot. What happened was we started singin' a country song of Stephen's
called "Helplessly Hoping." And I had already worked out the third
harmony. Stephen and I started singin' it, Willie looked at the
rafters for about ten seconds, listened, and started singin' the
other part like he'd been singin' it all his life.
That's how Willie does things. And the feeling of that, man, was
like havin' somebody give you head all of a sudden in a sound
sleep. It was like waking up on acid. I couldn't begin to tell
you how that was. That was a heavy flash, cause that's a nice
thing. You know it was. Especially if you're a harmony singer
and you love singin' harmony. And I am and I do and it got me
off. So that's what we were doing.
BFT: That time in Chinatown when you were having dinner, you made a
comparison between yourself, and your relationship with McGuinn;
and the roles adopted in the movie by Dennis Hopper and Peter
Fonda, in 'Easy Rider'.
Yeah, well, Dennis and Peter used to watch us a lot. Peter's been
a good friend for years, and Dennis, too, for that matter, although
I don't know him as well as I know Peter. I wouldn't say that
Dennis had me down exactly. He did grow a pretty good mustache,
I'll say that for him. And, as a matter of fact, although it's
a really technical detail, he got the knife right, too. Pete's
a sailor, too. Dennis - I really dig Dennis. He's outrageous.
I went to a wedding party the other day and he's still outrageous.
Michelle Phillips in a girl scout uniform. No underwear. God knows
I love her.....
BFT: How about the relationship between Fonda and Hopper in the movie
and the relationship between you and McGuinn?
It was frequently that. Brash extrovert that I am. Energy source.
And McGuinn, a laid-back, highly complex, good multi-evaluating,
highly trained brain.
BFT: And optimistic?
DC: Probably not as much as that praise would have gotten everybody
to believe, but certainly intelligent, about planning the odds.
I think he used me as an icebreaker more than he used his optimism,
I'm naturally going and already moving. Easy enough to slide in
and then try and get me to go which way he wanted. McGuinn's really
a good one for trying to figure out the least effort way to accomplish
something. Me, too, for that matter.
BFT: So how did it come to be that you left the Byrds?
DC: Roger and Chris drove up in a pair of Porches and said that
I was crazy, impossible to work with, an egomaniac - all of which
is partly true, I'm sure, sometimes - that I sang shitty, wrong
terrible, made horrible sounds, and that they would do much better
without me. Now, I'm sure that in the heat of the moment they
probably exaggerated what they thought. But that's what they said.
I took it rather much to heart. I just said, "OK. Kinda wasteful,
but OK." But it was a drag.
BFT: In a later interview, McGuinn would say that the Byrds missed
your musicianship and the kind of music you contributed. And later
on he said different things again.
DC: Well, I don't know. I wish he'd said it at the time..... Say,
its OK. Rog's doing fine.
BFT: Compared to the Byrds, does this band offer you something closer
to total freedom.
DC: This isn't totally freedom, no, of course not. I have to -
not only am I not free to just express myself, but that can't
even be main concern. Not if I really wanted this to be a healthy
group, which I really do, cause I really love it. And I love the
cats and they can really play. That's nice. They all also really
get off playing. They're doing it for the right reasons, thank
god. It's really part of it. Why you do it really affects the
flavor, man. And I do it cause it gets me off, every time, man,
that I get stoned and put on a guitar and somebody points me at
a microphone, I have - I can't say every time - 99 times out of
a hundred - I have as good a time as most people do balling. And
wouldn't anybody want to do that? And wouldn't anybody want to
do all they could? I want to do it all I can, 'cause it gets me
off. I love it.
I mean - you know , I did it - all I can say is that I've done
it for every single reason I've been able to find. I've done it
for money and I've done it for the glory and I've done it for
the chicks and I've done it cause I was Woodie Guthrie on the
road, man and it was hip to sling my guitar over my shoulder.
I've done it cause of every reason I've ever heard of, and doin'
it cause it's fun really is an absolutely out of hand good trip.
BFT: Neil Young writing a song about Kent State. He surprised
everybody.
DC: Yeah. He said, "I don't know, but I never wrote anything like
this before, but ..."
There it is. I watched him do it. We were at .... Actually we
were up in Chicago. We all came back and it was really crazy and
really a drag. I couldn't get mad at anybody, make myself feel
righteous, so I split. We went up to Pescadero, and I watched
him do it. It wasn't like he set out as a prophet to write a protest
song. It's a folk song. I'll admit that, it is definitely a folk
song. But he didn't set out to write it man. It's just what came
out of havin' Huntley-Brinkley for breakfast. I mean that's what
really happens. We've all stopped even watching the TV news, but
you read the headlines on the papers going by on the streets.
He didn't seek out his subject matter, it's what forced it's way
into his consciousness, when he had defended his consciousness
against it and tried strongly to keep his head in personal good
trips all the time. But its very hard to ignore that Kent State
thing. They were down there man, ready to do it. You can see them,
they're all kneeling there, they're all in the kneeling position
and they got their slings tight and they're ready to shoot. And
there's this kid, this long-haired kid standing there with a flag
wavin' it ....I mean, I can not be a man, and be a human, and
ignore that. I don't think. I don't think I can. And I'm not political. I don't dig politics. I don't think
politics is a workable system anymore. I think they gotta invent
something better. And man, it's really right down to there. It's
really not happening for me to live in a country where they gun
people down in the streets just for that, for saying they don't
dig it that way. You can't do that. President Nixon, you can't
do that!
BFT: How did Graham and Stephen react to the song?
DC: They said, " Well, how soon can we record it?" And there was
no question in anybody's mind. We all felt the same way about
it. As a matter of fact, as soon as played it to Stephen and Graham
we all just went out to the studio and recorded it. We cut the
whole record, both sides, in one night, and finished it the next
day. We went in, we played it like that. Those extra words on
the end: "Why?" "Why?" "How many?" How many more?" You know that?
That wasn't even part of the song, that was just what happened
when we got to the end. It was all one live take, man, of cats
just reacting to our world. I don't see any holy word or any panacea
or answer in what we did, we're just people. We live here too,
and they just kicked us in the face.
BFT: Do you think it'll just keep getting worse?
DC: Well now, they way I see it, the seeds of the better are already
here. There's the new ways for people to relate to each other
and live with each other and grow up. A whole new society inherent
in the way that young people are relating to each other now. And
communicating with each other on levels that squares never achieve,
man, it's that simple. They do not communicate with each other
that well.
The shared experience of people who've been high together, the
multiplicity of levels that they can relate on and do relate on
is not frequently found in straight people. It's a new way, OK?
It's only a matter of degree, and not really kind, but it's really
quite a change in degree of communication. I mean when you and
I relate to each other on an awful lot of levels . You're reading
my skin temperature, my tension, my stance, my position in the
room, my tone, inflection, pitch, attack, rise, fall, tension,
my blink-blink, my respiration rate, my heart rate, and in the
middle of all those you're copying me telepathically, and I know
it. Empathetically, anyway for sure. If you're not doing that
then it's different. I see people doing that, man, I see people
relating to each other in ways that haven't happened before for
people. There are huge numbers of them doing it. I see, for me,
quite plainly a new humanity, I mean a bunch of people who are
concerned with being human. I also think that I can see that it's
going to get worse before it gets better.
It's something like we have only this one plot of ground, y'know,
and we've built a house on it and it's an old wood frame house
and we didn't use redwood. And it's rotten. And we have propped
it and shored it and buttressed it and sky hooked it and everything
we can think of to keep it up, man. And I don't think it's happening.
I think atleast we're gonna have to kind of bust it up for the
lumber. And I don't dig it, man because I don't dig destruction,
man, I'm a builder. I've always been a builder.
But I'm afraid that's what's gonna happen, man, I'm afraid that's
what has to happen. I told that to Albert Grossman last night
and he got so angry with me he wouldn't talk to me anymore. I
played "Ohio" for him last night and he got angry. He said, "What
are you tryin' to do?" And I said, "Well, actually if you really
want to know, I'm not really trying to do anything. But I think
we're gonna help tear it apart a little bit." And he said, "Well,
man you're just children, and you don't understand what's going
on." Went into that kind of rap, and I said, "Albert, you're comin'
on hip all the time, but in truth you're just another old man
who's really got all his marbles in this system. And the real
truth of it is man, that I just scared you. You don't want that
system to go. You got every fuckin' egg in one basket, Jack. If
they burn the bank you're screwed, Albert."
And he got really scared. If they burn the bank I've still got
my two hands and I ain't scared of it. I've done it, a lot. I've
caught my own fish and ripped out their stomachs out, and cleaned
them, and cooked them. And done the same for the animals. It isn't
as if I don't dig civilization, I do, and I don't want to blow
this political system. I had a long talk, man, with the head of
the Democratic party in California. Like, there's a cat who's
got alot more information than me.
BFT: Jess Unruh.
DC: Right. He's firmly convinced that if we don't change something
radically, soon, that it's gonna come apart at the seams, too.
BFT: When did you talk to Unruh?
DC: He came down to the boat. He wants us to help. I kind of dig
it that he's atleast willing to go out and talk to long hairs.
Because quite frankly he's a very shrewd politician, and he must
know that he doesn't have to cater to us at all. We have absolutely
no choice in this election but to support him.
BFT: But it's a gamble for him to alienate more of the moderate voters
by associating with the long hairs.
DC: Yeah, that's what I felt, too. I thought it was kind of brave
for him to do it.
BFT: Maybe he's trying to envelop you so that there's no third party
formed to maybe take a large chunk of votes from him.
DC: Maybe so. He's up against pretty heavy odds, y'know He's up
against California oil money and the original power block of this
state. And they've got idiots - just full-out clowns, front men
- Yorty, and they've got truly dangerous people like Reagan.
BFT: What's Reagan's importance in terms of what he's done to the state
or to people, to the youth movement - what has been his contribution?
DC: Crystallization. The more pressure you put on coal the sooner
it turns into diamonds. I mean the cat has polarized the entire
minority so that it isn't a minority anymore. It's a majority
of the minorities. He got the intelligentsia and the blacks, and
the "kids" and the "hippies" and he's got everybody, man sort
of universally aligned against him because he has sort of gone
physically insane right in front of us and threatened our freedom,
and our right to breathe, move, think.....
BFT: You wrote "Long Time Gone" and Almost Cut My Hair" right after
Robert Kennedy was shot. What exactly did he mean to you?
DC: See I didn't know him, I never talked to him, I believe in
him because he said that he wanted to change stuff. And I believed
also that in my probably naive conception of politics he had not
made so many deals that he was unable to change course at all,
which is the case in Johnson and Nixon both. They're cats, politicians,
who've made their deal. Years ago. They've sold out to the special
interests and controlling powers in this country in order to gain
power. Now I thought Bobby Kennedy was one more opportunity to
have a leader who had not made those deals.
BFT: You believed that, even knowing who his father was and what that
family meant in terms of seeking political power?
DC: I can't defend the father of the family. The cat was young,
Right, wrong, or indifferent, he was interested in change. He
still had balls. He still had the willingness to change and grow
... I think. Who knows what he could have done, man. I mean we
didn't ever get a chance to find out about him, right?
BFT: We found out what kind of reaction there could be to that kind
of person....
DC: We found out that he - in actual fact, man, the way I figure
it is, I was right. He was very close to getting that much power.
And he was also not signed, in a sense, to a company. Now Ronald
Reagan is a bought and paid-for man. And there's no question in
anybody's mind that looks at it, really. I mean, when the oil
interests are performing ecological crime on a mass scale, that
certainly is no less offensive to the human race as a long range
thing than Buchenwald or the worst examples of human depravity,
OK? And of that is not worse than what the oil companies are doing,
particularly in California. Multiple mass murder of living beings
and for nothing, For nothing man. For bread, for money, dig? Well
now, I was quoted the tax figures on those platforms off Santa
Barbara, and if the tax figures they quoted me are correct, then
the government ain't gonna shut them down. Cause they pull in
alot of bread out of there.
Now that same bread, man, not only comes in, in taxes from the
oil companies, but it comes in, in contributions. And I'm not
just saying the oil companies, but in California they happen to
be a controlling interest. And he very definitely is totally sold
out to those people y' know. Otherwise he wouldn't keep instructing
them to let him have more and more new licenses to go out and
do it more and more. The Federals too.
The point is that the problems we're up against, and those include
environmental crime, race crime, political, total, obnoxious corruption,
and international crime, which is war - all of those problems,
man, relate to a power structure that is running this country.
We got a bunch of people who clearly identify that, and they say
"OK". Now we're gonna just shake this power structure by the roots,"
Right? I laugh at 'em. I laugh at the SDS and I laugh at those
fucking parlor-pink revolutionary kids going around saying "I'm
a revolutionary by trade." Bullfucking pukie. They haven't any
idea what it is man. They should go watch a newsreel of the last
three days of Budapest, and think it over. Asshole kids. They
don't know what they are up against, man. You can't convince this
power structure to change it's course. It's inextricably involved
in its course. I'm trying to explain to people that it isn't the
President, it isn't the Congress, it isn't the Governor's. It
seems like it, but as far as I can tell, it's an interlocking
whole socio-economic systems group. And they're all interlocking.....
There's this guy who makes the transistors for the guy who makes
the radios for the guy who makes the wars for the guy who mines
the tungsten and the transistor,
It's all interlocking, man, and I don't see how they're going
to change the course. I had to think up a phrase to describe it.
We have "societal inertia". And we're moving - Look, man, I'll
just bring it down to the basest of terms that made it clear to
me: How are you gonna get 'em to close the gas stations, what
are you gonna do with the pumps? That's inertia. How are you gonna
convince Chevy, Ford, Volkswagen, Cadillac, Honda to all take
four, ten, twelve, years of profit loss re-tooling to another
power source. The men who run those companies do not own them.
They are there only as long as they win. They cannot make that
decision. It's not that they won't. They can't. They've got to
show a profit every year or they'll get another man. That's the
truth. Environment be screwed. That's how those companies are
run.
That's not the only place. The oil companies are not the major
criminals in this world; they are amongst the major criminals,
and that example of inertia is not the only one. I'm talking about
5000 or so people who run the world. I would like to see these
fucking SDS bullshit kids come up with a list of those cats' names
and address'. They, they'll convince me that they're serious.
OK? As long as they fucking stand around on the steps and shout
and yell, and wait for the cops to come in and bash 'em on the
head so they can look heavy: "I've got hit by a pig." Far our.
You probably kicked him, y'know? And I don't like the police at
all, man. I'm not making any bones about it. I am just really
sick of the talk and I'm really sick of the kids I see at the
rallies and stuff. Hey, they're jokes. Fuckin' revolution man.
They forget that they already ate the revolution alive. That's
not happening man. It's not happening even with AR-16's.
It ain't even happening for the Panthers. And I don't blame them.
The Panthers feel, and quite rightly so, that they're kind of
in a Warsaw ghetto situation. I don't blame them for buying guns,
not even alittle man. I ain't aligning myself with anybody, but
I sure don't blame them. Boy, I sure don't - uh uh. It's hard
to make 'em forget how many people voted for Wallace. It isn't
like they didn't do it or anything, they did, you know. Hard to
make them forget that. So, to get back to interlocking systems
and what we're up against, the reason I feel hopeless is because
I have no way to communicate with those men, those nameless cats,
man. I mean we only know the names of a handful, and they're the
loan-shark, robber baron, the last remaining few or another generation
of billionaires: Hughes, Getty, Hunt, Kaiser, he's still one,
Ford, Rockefeller.
I mean you know a few of them. Who are the other guys? And what
do they care about? Does J. Paul Getty like seagulls? Does H.L.
Hunt care about pelicans? I don't know how to make the point,
but I am struggling with it. I don't think that they're bein'
realistic when they judge this power structure that they're up
against. I think they attack its lowest and best-defended levels.
I looked at it ten years ago and came to, on less data, the same
conclusion and decided that the only thing to do, the only crack
left was that they didn't really consider time - being sort of
blind and being sort of in love with the fact that they were on
top and in power. They would figure that..... Well most of those
cats, man, always make the mistake of thinking they wanted more.
It looked like it'd make it a thousand years. It made it about
30, I figured the only thing to do was swipe their kids. I still
think it's the only thing to do. By saying that, I'm not talking
about kidnapping, I'm just talking about changing their value
systems, which removes them from their parents' world very effectively.
And I didn't change 'em, I just offered an alternative. On one
side you got war, death, degradation, submission, guilt, fear,
competition; and on the other hand you got a bunch of people lying
out on the beach, walking around in the sun, laughin', playin'
music, makin' love, gettin' high, singin', dancin', wearin' bright
colors, tellin' stories, livin' pretty easy. You offer that alternative
to a kid, man, and the kid ain't crazy yet. They ain't had time
to be crazy. He can make a very clear decision about alternatives
like that. I think that they've probably lost the majority of
the kids by now. I don't know, frankly. I guess we'll have to
wait and see.
BFT: If you knew, then it might wipe out a lot of the hopelessness
you expressed.
DC: But see, man, how can you pin down to a statistical chart
the degree to which a person, or even a statistical universe of
persons, have changed their value systems. There are certain key,
surface symptoms of value system change that you can watch: dress,
manner, hair length. These are y'know all good indications, but
they don't indicate it all.
BFT: How about rock and roll?
DC: To a degree. I wouldn't limit it to rock and roll. The artists
in every area of art in the United States have been saying what
the rock and rollers are now saying, for a lot longer than we
have. I mean let's not forget the writers. I mean those are the
cats who've laid it out a whole lot more complexly, more heavily,
more literately, more multi-valuedly, and more multi leveledly
than most of us. For the poets, I mean we can go right on back
throught the history of artists, man, who were willing to tell
the truth about their environment and include all the environments.
It ain't just us that are doing it now. What the trick is with
us is that we are mass artists, and there's never been that kind
of stuff before Gutenberg, y'know, and that didn't really happen
until to get up into the electronic mass. And that's simultaneity
and interaction on simultaneity and numbers of a very wide scale.
It's far out, man. That's the main difference.
It's a tricky thing. I could be dead wrong, man. Richard Nixon
might be right, and I'm crazy enought to admit it. I just don't
think so. Gotta do what you believe. I believe that all those
cats are wrong. I believe what they say matters is not it. Now,
I also believe everybody is underestimating the amount of inertia.
I believe that that big conglomerate blob of interlocking systems,
all moving down this one big socio-economic path. ... I don't
think it can change it's course. I'm sorry.
BFT: So you can't escape. Now, how does your boat tie into this? Sever
times in crises - mental crises - when the Byrds fired you, when
your lady Christine died - you went to the boat. So in a sense
there can be an escape.
DC: Well try to understand. When the hassles in my head, and confusion
and pain, I guess - there's no hiding or running, there's only
working it out. That's when the boat helps, because the boat has
great beauty and constancy and meaning, on a very, very, close-up
level. It was grace and comradeship. And all those things get
to your head.
BFT: It also keeps you very busy...
DC: Yeah, but it's on extremely high levels that it works on you.
It's not just the mechanics of keeping yourself busy. It's really,
truly, right up to very highest levels of it, a rearrangement
of how you think. And it's helped me a lot, each time that I've
had to try and put myself together and figure out what to do.
I'm like everybody else, man. I walk along and stumble and crash
straight to the ground, cause I sure don't have it figured out.
I didn't pick the boat as an escape route. When I started wantin'
to sail I was eleven and a half years old and I wasn't thinkin'
about escape. It happens that this is a good way to go elsewhere.
But the reason I do it is..... Well I tried a lot of different
philosophies, and none of them worked. So I came down to, "if
I can work out any logical, overall ethic to work by, then I've
gotta just do what gets me off - which points of consciousness
were the highest ones, the peaks. And do whatever it was that
got me there - a lot. I mean, God, sailing puts me in the highest
kind of consciousness I have, makes the best person out of me
I know how to be. It takes me to the same levels balling does,
the music does, and being high and doing both of those things
does. Y'know. It's not a philosophical or a political decision
at all. It's just me wanting to enjoy it.
BFT: Talking about Altamont, you compared it to "My Back Pages." Altamont
attempted to re-create the spontaneity of Woodstock. What was
"My Back Pages?"
DC: It was a formula, it was a cop-out, it was a total backward
shot. It was, "Oh let's make 'Tamborine Man' again." It was a
formula record, anybody could hear it. It was a piece of shit,
had all the commitment of a four day old mackerel.
BFT: At what point of Byrds history did that come?
DC: A point of desperation. At a point when it was just the four
of us and we were kind of uptight. And we had done an album that
was good, Younger Than Yesterday, and we needed a single. And
so we sat in a studio and tried to figure out how many different
ways we could sell out, essentially. I don't think anybody thought
they were doing that, but the point is we came down to making
a formula record. And that's a mistake.
BFT: It's also a surprise, because you know how all the talk was about
the Byrds emerging with a new musical form, taking the roots,
and experimenting with raga, and blending different kinds of music.
DC: That's what it was about. Listen, our whole thing was opening
up like a can opener. We may have been less than sophisticated,
man, but we were a goddamned good fucking ice breaker. Cause we
were unafraid. We made mistakes, but in order to be unafraid,
you have to be willing to make mistakes - publicly! At the same
time, man, it was a bunch of human cats. And like one of the mistakes
they could make was to cop out on the whole thing. And you can
be sure, man, that in the course of a long and dreary career you
make alot of the mistakes that there are. That's one thing that
got me. Hey and that's not a slur on those cats, man. Roger McGuinn?
Lord knows, that cat has a far-out head and he's certainly one
of the farthest out musicians on the scene. Before, then, now,
probably always. And Chris Hillman isn't exactly a dope, either.
He did some things on the bass, man, that nobody up till then
had anywhere near enough balls to try. "Everybody's Been Burned."
Ever listen to bass on that? Its a running jazz solo, all bass,
all the way through the song. Never stops. Nobody else had done
that when he did that, man, not from any rock group. No Fender
bass player playing that kind of shit. So, I don't know .....
I'm proud of those cats, but that record was a cop-out. It was
a total sellout for me.
BFT: Given the economics of survival for a band, I can see where you
might say, "Well, let's do this one so that we can grow more later."
DC: It's pretty far out to be in a band, man. The economics of
survival of a band, - how far out is it that in order to be an
artist at all, in order to get your brush and your palette and
your canvas, you must sell a million or two of them. Isn't that
weird? In order for a group to really survive, man, to really
cook, and get it on, they gotta be some kind of success. And that
means they have to sell in the marketplace, just to have fuckin'
amps, and dope and food.
BFT: Stephen Stills and the rest of the Buffalo Springfield must've
gone through shit, just thinking about the total lack of recognition
that they were getting.
DC: It wasn't that total, man. There were people around that knew
what he was doing. Neil Young knew what he was doing and he knew
what Neil was doing. And I knew what they were both doing. And
the first time I heard 'em I went and I said, "Hey, you guys are
doing it!" ..... and you gotta do that a lot!"
BFT: So they knew for themselves, but in terms of public acceptance,
and support and survival....
DC: Public acceptance is a .......yeah, and survival. In survival
terms I'm sure that they paid their dues. I think everybody did.
I can remember times when I played five sets on a Thursday and
seven sets on a Friday and Saturday in the Peppermint Tree in
your fair city. When we first got there, man, there were a couple
of topless chicks workin' with us, and it was hip. And Lovin'Spoonful
started a few blocks away from there. Everybody pays their dues.
I did four, five years of coffee-house time before that, Y'know
in North Beach.
BFT: Where do you come from? Maybe you ought to give a quick autobiographical
sketch of yourself.
DC: I was born in LA, a movie family - my father was a filmmaker-
and therefore it was an unstable family. Nice, but unstable. Moved
around a lot, most of it in Santa Barbara, Went to a whole bunch
of different schools and got thrown out of them. Disciplinary
problem. The best one was for being, and I quote, "of dubious
moral character." Dut dut dut dummmm......
BFT: What did you do?
DC: It was a note passed between two girls in the junior class,
comparing notes, as it were, and it was not appreciated by the
faculty. Listed a number of other ladies in the same manner. It
caused some scandal in the school, as a matter of strict fact.
BFT: What school was this?
DC: Hmmmm I have to search for the name. Laguna Blanca. It was
high school age. I went through several high schools. Started
off in a prep school. Bad place to be, no girls, but a good school.
Didn't do a a whole hell of a lot of anything until I started
acting and singing and started doing that at coffeehouses and
little theatres and stuff like that. It got me off some, so I
went on doing that. Supporting myself mostly with a life of crime.
I was a burglar.
BFT: What mostly house jobs or what?
DC: Yeah
BFT: Where were you singing - mostly around home, too?
DC: Right in the coffeehouses in Santa Barbara. The first one
that I ever started in was called Noctambulist, the nightwalker.
I sang by myself. Thought I was goin' to be an actor, took a long
look at movie people and decided I didn't want to have anything
to do with that much ass-kissing and copping out.
BFT: Are you saying that's among actors in general?
DC: Pretty much anywhere. The channels into acting from the bottom
are so lame, man, that I don't blame anybody for quitting. The
only way to get into acting is to cross over from another field,
like we do, or as we are doing. I should say, or drop into it
through some other achievement or through some pipeline. It's
not worth it to try and fight your way up through the studios.
BFT: What'd you say could be the reward of an acting career?
DC: Mmmm... they're not as heavy as the rewards of a career as
a filmmaker, that's basically what I'm talking about. I'm not
trying to knock my medium. All I know how to do in the world right
now is sing harmony pretty good and write some songs and play
guitar. And I like making records with my friends. But the heaviest
art form on the planet is certainly films. Let there be no question
about it, it's the heaviest cross-fire on your senses that's possible
with our present day technology, so far.
BFT: At that point, did you consider, say, acting, and films to be
more pertinent than music?
DC: I changed my mind when I dug the people in the one and the
people in the other. People in music are almost universally crazy
but they're really quite a large percentage of really nice people
playing music. They are all goony, but at least I met a whole
bunch of cats that I thought were men and cats I can respect.
I met a whole bunch of really nice ladies.
BFT: Who were the first music people you met?
DC: The first were.... God knows, I don't even know where I started
listening to music. I started singin when I was a kid with my
family. People would pull me into the coffeehouses to see and
hear people. Travis Edmondson was the first folk musician that
would teach me anything. And it was a good trip.
But North Beach - yeah, it was just before Sausalito. Sausalito
was prime, just cream. And then, Dino Valente, who is a great
person to be on the same bill with, since he will go up every
set and just sing his ass off, y'know. Unless he's on some kind
of change, he will usually go up and just really do his level
best to stir your brains around with a spoon. He's a very alive
cat, y'know.
BFT: I was surprised to see him join a rock and roll band, after all
those years. He told me he was asked to join the Byrds at one
time.
DC: Yeah. Everybody was very surprised to see him join Quicksilver,
even though he's always had that very close friendship with them.
He and David Freiberg and I were dropping acid together years
ago. And David and I were livin' together for just a long time.
David and I and Paul Kantner, in Venice, with several others -
Steven Shuster, Ginger Jackson, and Sherry Snow...
BFT: What kind of scene was that?
DC: It was your basic little keep-your-money-in-a-bowl, share
your shit..... we never wanted for food nor smoke, nor a guitar
to play on, nor fresh strings, for that matter, to string up on
it. We had a Volkswagen bus, in the classic manner. And we spent
most of our time doin' exactly as we pleased. Which meant mostly
laying around on the beach, going back, playing, goofing off,
stuff like that. Kantner's really a fine cat to live by, man and
so's David Freiberg.
BFT: Were they into the same thing you were - single folk artists?
DC: Yeah. This was right after Sausalito. We were getting it together
here after the up there.
BFT: In terms of the music around this time, was this during the period
of the decline of folk-the hootenanny days?
DC: "Decline of folk." There's a phrase for you.
BFT: Or the over-commercialization of folk?
DC: There's a better phrase. Folk being eaten alive by the gigantic
entertainment monster. I mean the entertainment business is not
music. Or theatre, or culture, or filmmaking. The entertainment
business is the marketplace. Let's somehow desperately struggle
to remind ourselves of that fact, cause it's the truth, man. And
the fuckers are really twisting us up, a lot. They are the prime
reasons that people fuck up - in bands, anyway. Peripheral trips,
man, Money trips, and star trips, and selling it trips. "You want
to really be a hit, this is what you gotta do." (Sings:) "So you
wanna be a rock and roll star ...."
BFT: Can you at all get behind a person like Albert Grossman and his
ethic?
DC: No. Now mind you, I hung out with Albert and I kinda like
him. I even kind of respect him. But I would not do business with
him.
BFT: What's the difference between the way he operates and what Bill
Graham does?
DC: I'm not able to discuss it. Talking about other people's business
and how they work and what they think is important about it and
what they apparently don't think is important about it is a pretty
touchy area. Besides which, I'm no fucking businessman. I'm not
really capable of assessing their true motives or what they intended
to do with the money.
BFT: You're concerned to the point, though, that you want to be sure
you've got a man who knows how to handle the other people so that
you at least get a fair share of whatever.
DC: Oh, yeah. But we've got a human being. We've got a cat who
is like us. Well, now see, that's me patting me on the head, I
guess, claiming I'm a compatible type. But the cat is - I don't
know how to say it - he's our friend. Elliot Roberts is a good
dude. And he is not a fair-weather friend and he is not a bullshitter.
However, he is, in his managerial capacity, capable of lying straight
faced to anyone, anytime, ever. But he's really a beautiful cat,
he really has a heart and its plain he does. You just naturally
do get to love the cat... unless you gotta write a contract with
him. In which case you may just not ever want to speak to him
again., cause he's really - he not only doesn't give away anything,
he's armed robbery in a business deal.
And if he doesn't rob you blind we'll send David Geffen (of CMA)
over; he'll take your whole company. And sell it while you're
out to lunch, you know. Those two guys, man, are not kidding.
And they understand what's going on and don't think it's any mistake
that Elliot Roberts could step into the managing of artists business
and in two years be holding a couple million dollars worth of
stuff. I mean he didn't do it by being stupid, right? And he didn't
do it by just picking the right people. He made good moves. I
could name a dozen. Y'know, he's really bright at it, but he's
really a human being. He's a rarity.
BFT: Which brings us to the ticket prices for your concerts. One of
the complaints on this tour was from people in St Paul Minneapolis,
who were boycotting your show there because tickets were $5.50,
$7.50 and $10. top.
DC: I don't think that's the case. Didn't you tell me that you
had investigated it and found out that it was not the case?
BFT: No, I checked it out and found that the "plush circle" was 100
seats for $10. each and that Elliot had just called and told them
to set aside 300 seats for $2. to balance it out a little. But
still, the bulk of tickets will be around $5.50 to $7.50.
DC: That's far out, cause Elliot told me that the last time that
I checked on it that our top scaling was $6.50. If it is $7.50,
I'm sorry it is, cause I think it's outrageous.
BFT: Well that's the price the boycotters quoted to me. They're screaming
about it.
DC: Well, you know where it is behind promoters and the sale of
groups coming to town, see. And like (a) the promoter may be trying
to pull a full out scam on us and the agency, in which case he'll
be blowin' it heavily. Or (b) maybe our management wanted to try
and get away with it this time. It might be any one of a dozen
answers, I don't know.
BFT: Did you ever have to deal with Derek Taylor?
DC: Sure he worked for us awhile.
BFT: What specifically did he do for the Byrds? What was his contribution
in developing the band as a force?
DC: He was an excellent myth-maker. He blew us up, made us bigger
than life. Turned our thing not into something else, but I'd say
he placed a lens in front of it that blew it up. Huge, it's huge.
BFT: As opposed to what is now known as "hype"?
DC: Derek hyped us, but the thing was, see, if you're out hyping
.... Hyping is like, you know when your dealer says to you, "Man,
say, man, I have some weed that is so rightgeous that you might
as well bang your head against the wall as smoke it. I mean now
that's a hype. But whatever he says, if he delivers, that's a
good hype! You go back to that cat, right? And, well, Derek Taylor
used to say that it got magical and weird and shit at the Byrds,
and that's a hype. Only thing as it did, sometimes.
BFT: What about the Byrds first major success at Ciro's on Sunset Strip?
Were you ready for that at all?
DC: Fuck, man, I was sitting there waiting an hour early! I was
prepared, all right. I didn't know what it was, but I wanted it,
whatever it was. If it meant money or glory and chicks, man, I
really wanted it a lot.
Ciro's was the first really good gig. The first place we ever
played and pleased anybody was San Francisco, at The Jack Tar
Motel. There were about 200 little girls who were there for Teen
Screen, 16, y'know, one of those.....We played three songs. They
loved it. That's cause we got all the way through without dropping
the guitars. .... Actually we cooked . It was the first time we
ever cooked. When we came off stage we nearly thought we would
fall down. It was great.
That was very early. And then Ciro's was amazing how they handled
it. The Trip, which was a little later, was not so wonderful.
But, as the Trip - it was groovy. Ciro's was really outrageous.
It was this great, big overstuffed, plush, 50's rock and roll
- no it wasn't even rock and roll - it was a 50's Las Vegas showroom
that had been done "cheap," right? And then it had gone out of
business so many times...
BFT: Something I could never attest to, cause I did not see the early
Byrds, was the criticism that on stage the Byrds were sloppy,
had an awful sound mix, never got it on, didn't care and were
in general, incredibly shoddy compared to the records. Were you?
Depending on when you heard us. There were also people - rare
but there are people, and some of them responsible musicians,
who will tell you - they heard the Byrds actually get you off.
They played like angels. Oh, it was possible, it just was not
all the time. Up until the time Gene left we were pretty good.
BFT: What was it that Gene Clark provided?
DC: Focus.
BFT: As opposed to leadership?
DC: Right. He did it well. He's an emtional projector on a huge
and powerful level. If you get him on a good trip, he can take
everybody, anywhere in the vicinity, on a good trip. Dig it.?
McGuinn can't do that.
BFT: What would you call yourself in your band now? You said,
"energy source."
DC: No, it's a slightly different role, frankly. Everybody in
this group can communicate to the audience. We all can do it in
conjunction with each other and they can all do it themselves.
It's a matter of some kind of personal honesty at some point and
the ability to communicate, and the ability to love, or something
like it.
BFT: Would you dig working with Jerry Garcia?
DC: Man, I would. Now I think Jerry Garcia probably needs me like
he needs a third eye. Excuse me, a fourth. He has a third. But
I would be just so knocked out to play, or sing, or do any kind
of music with that dude. I mean, you know I would! Hey, and he’s
not the only one. What about Lesh, man? Have you really considered
what kind of musician Phil Lesh is? I would like to make a record
sometime with him playing classical music on an electric bass.
He is certainly one of the most instrumental players on the planet.
Somebody somewhere, sooner or later, has got to realize that the
Grateful Dead is one of the best bands in the world. And I hope
that it’s more than just the people who occasionally see them
do a really stupendous set. But they’re man, on a good night the
Dead is as good as it gets. Period. I mean they can take people
and make ‘em just absolutely fucking boogie till dawn. And there’s
very little of that around.
BFT: You’ve called them a magic band, and you’ve said that the
Airplane - and Crosby Stills Nash and Young - are magic bands.
What’s the criterion?
DC: Magic is doing it so well that you get it up beyond levels.
Magic is making people feel good and stuff. Magic is, if you’re
high on psychedelics, having a great big love beast crawl out
of your amplifiers and eat the audience. I don’t know what it
is, man. Like they’re magic. Something happens when the Dead get
it on that don’t happen when Percy Faith gets it on.
BFT: The Dead have got an offspring band, now, y’know.
DC: I think it’s healthy. I don’t think man is naturally monogamous.
BFT: You’ve talked about doing things with Cass and with Kantner,
and there are people like Clapton and Harrison moving around with
different bands. Is there gonna have to be some new deal to free
artists from contracts that tie them up with specific groups and
labels?
DC: Yeah, it’s gonna have to go the way I think we’ve gone for
most of the people. And that is that they’ll be signed not as
a Burrito or a Spoonful or an Airplane; they’ll be signed as Michael
Santana and Joseph Stalin, Admiral Nimitz, Captain Beefheart y’know.
They’ll be signed as different cats, and well now, the record
companies.
I’m certain that for a mutual profit gain these companies can
be convinced to allow us to cross-pollinate, particularly if it’s
put to them as a revolutionary, “up against the wall, futher-muckers,”
it will no doubt fall flat smack on its nose, and they will tighten
up on the contracts. Be hard-ass, for four more years. If somebody
takes the trouble to convince them that it’ll net ‘em twice as
much money over the next ten years, we’ll get it Tuesday.
BFT: You mentioned that you had written a number of songs and
they all seemed to fall or end up in the same strain.
DC: The trouble is the words all come around to “Why is it like
this?” They are all mostly about Christine, and with that ....
and they’re good songs. I haven’t sung ‘em to anybody and I don’t
think I’m gonna. Cause they’re pretty sad and they don’t draw
any useful conclusions. Man, if I had learned something from it
yet that I could communicate to people, I would. I got no more
understanding than an ant does when you pull off his legs. I mean
it’s just a blind blind smash from God. I got no rationale behind
it, I got no explanation, I have no way to make sense out of it
or any useful wording to communicate from it to people. And what’s
the point of just communicating to them that I hurt? That doesn’t
do any good at all.
BFT: So what’s the point of blues?
DC: The point of blues has been pretty much to communicate it
and make it a shared experience, which can lighten it just enough
to keep you from going crazy. I’ll buy that. But who the hell
needs to hear about David Crosby’s bummer? It ain’t true, man,
it just ain’t true. Nobody needs to hear about it; nobody needs
to go on that trip. It was the most horrible trip of my life and
nobody needs to go on it. And the songs that I wrote are some
of the best that I ever wrote, as a matter of fact, and I’m still
not gonna sing ‘em for anybody. I’m waitin’ until I got something
good to sing about, some joy.
BFT: You’re saying that you’d like to provide answers as well
as questions.
DC: No, I don’t need any answers, I don’t even think there are
any answers. I would very much like to talk about something other
than the death of my old lady. I don’t think that’s a good trip
for anybody.
BFT: That one point you made to me, though, that time, “Well,
despite it all, at least you know that it can happen.
DC: ” Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice.”
BFT: Carry On.
DC: Yeah. Willie and I wrote that one. Willie and I are a great
combination. That’s mostly because of Willie.
BFT: That trip from Florida to San Diego ... You mentioned how
quickly Graham learned how to take over the boat.
DC: Typical example, man of Willie. There he is. Steps on the
boat in Fort Lauderdale, bravely having never been on a boat before
in his life, never at all, not one minute. And the cat steps on
the boat and casually -Well, man, it was nine weeks, Fort Lauderdale
to San Diego, and that’s a little under 5000 miles, right? And
by the time we got to San Diego the cat was standing three-hour
wheel watches, dependably. So intelligently that all of us looked
upon it as a good time to go to sleep if it was Willie’s watch,
cause he had it covered. The cat was doing celestial navigation
better than I do it. And faster.
BFT: What celestial navigation?
DC: Taking star sights and working out positions. The cat was
doing engine maintenance on a diesel, which is machined to tolerances
of about 20 times as close as a gas engine or something like that.
They’re hard to know what to do with, and he was doin’ a lot of
things that are simple really to a diesel mechanic but relatively
complex for a person approaching it from the outside. He got into
it, is what I am trying to say. He got into the whole thing just
so totally and so fast it was amazing. But it’s typical of him.
BFT: How does Graham see you, do you think?
DC: Well, I hope he sees me as a loyal friend. Cause I am, man.
If I was a chick I'd marry the cat. I think he's one of the most
highly evolved beings I've ever encountered. That's a heavy thing
to say about anybody. I don't know what he thinks of me. I don't
know what any of them think of me. They don't tell me. But they
play with me, ya know, and I can't ask for very much more than
that. I frankly don't know what anybody thinks of me 'cept a couple
of close friends. I don't know what the public thinks of me. I
have no idea of what the public image of me is and I would rather
not, y'know. Cause I got my feet firmly planted in the cheeseburgers,
here, man. You can't really do any grandiose numbers with the
ocean. It's not listening, you know what I mean? So it helps me
keep in perspective. I don't know .... I'd be curious to know
what they think of me.
BFT: I'd think you would be, because you would probably help to
shape or reshape your way of communicating with people.
DC: It would no doubt help me learn some stuff, too, cause they're
bright cats and they probably see ways that I could improve myself
as a person. But the point is, all I ask of them - all I ever
want to ask of them - is that they, excuse the words, love and
respect me enough to want to play with me. And I don't ask them
anything more than that. They don't have to approve of my politics,
my sexual attitudes, which I'm sure freak them out, and......
BFT: What about your sexual attitudes freak people out?
DC: Erk, erk. Excuse me while I eat my napkin.
BFT: Mr Crosby ..... what's so strange?
DC: Not strange, by me..... The problem is that I've explored
about every avenue of sex that I've heard of, OK? The trouble
is that I like 'em, most of 'em. I'm not fond of the bathroom
trips, but aside from that in the catalog of sexual history I
thnk that there are very few things that I don't like. Which makes
me, by most people's standards, a freak. There are some things
that have happened to me in my life, I haven't sought them out,
I wasn't trying to freak out anybody, but there were times that
it happened that I was part of a triangle, right? And there was
one that worked out long and really righteously, and like that
changed my attitudes about a lot of things, too. That's the song
"Triad."
BFT: It is a matter of when you "impose," let's say, your attitudes
on other people that they freak? It's not a matter of them delving
into your private life. ...
DC: No, I don't try to proselytize for sex. I'm really not trying
to convince anybody else to go my route at all, on anything, least
of all that.
BFT: It's hard to believe that a group of friends who worked with
you would be uptight about the song.
DC: Oh, you got me on that one. All I know is that they were...
At least one group of people was very uptight by that song. This
band is not uptight behind that song at all, having been through
similar experiences. At least three of the cats in the band -
four cats in the band, have been through that same experience.
BFT: Well, yes. They were singin "Change Partners" at the dinner
table. Now, you're planning an album of your own this summer.
Are you going to do more producing?
DC: Producing: I don't know if I'll do any more producing for
outside people. There's some people I would like to help: Dead,
Airplane. Not that they need much help, but I love playing with
them. There's a cat that I would've liked to have produced am
album for and I don't know if I'm gonna get a chance to. I'm sure
somebody else will snap him up before have to time to do it: Jackson
Browne. I think Jackson Browne is one of the probably ten best
songwriters around, maybe. He's from Orange County, and he's a
stunner. The cat just sings rings around most people, and he's
got songs that'll make your hair stand on end. He's incredible.
Yeah, I don't know. There's projects that I'd like to do. You
heard Paul McCartney's album, sure, right? What do you think?
BFT: Well, Paul by himself had said he could achieve the same
kind of momentum and excitement that he could get with a group,
you know, but it misses the band sound totally, in terms of each
person contributing, helping each other work up certain pace and
drama, and leading to climaxes.
DC: Right, I got the same feeling, and I got that same feeling
off records I made by myself. I made a couple of records by myself,
band records, y'know, and employed a drummer and a bass player
cause I don't play either of those instruments, right. But I mean
that kind of trip, it doesn't work. There's no bouncing off each
other. There's no excitement. And it seems to me Paul fell prey
to that.
When I do my own album I won't use anything but my big 12-string.
You should hear Stephen's. If you want to hear a cat go in and
do the "I-can-make-a-record-by-myself" trip, check out Stephen
Stills, 'cause he happens to be better at it than Paul McCartney
or Eric Clapton or anybody else. That's not my trip. I can't do
that, man, and I don't want to put anybody on that I'm a band.
I'm not.
BFT: As you said, Stills album is a thing like, "I can make a
record by myself."
DC: But he can! I remember a record that he made of "Mr Fantasy"
that nobody ever heard except a few friends. He made every noise
that was on that tape. Played every instrument, sang every note.
And goddamn, man, it made Traffic look like a bad second band
at the Whiskey, I mean it was tight shit. It was incredible, you
know. He's better at it than most anybody would suspect, even
knowing how good he is, even knowing the full Captain Manyhands
image, y'know.
Well anyway, me learning stuff yeah, I want to learn stuff. Every
kind of project, every kind of music. I can get into for the rest
of my life, but it's not directly related to making an album.
And I'm not waiting on the album, until I'm not doing something
I would rather be doing - namely Crosby Stills Nash and Neil Young,
which I would rather do than any other musical trip I can think
of.
BFT: With people like Stills Nash and Young around, do you find
yourself playing a particular role in the studio during the sessions
- when it comes down to production aspect?
DC: Yeah we all have things that we do. Like, I would say, if
anything, that Stephen and Neil are even better record makers
than I am. I would say Willie is unquestionably one of the finest
mixers around. I let him mix my songs, man, I mean, we work on
it together, but when it comes down to final mix it's very frequently
Graham, y'know. My role is my role. I don't want to get tagged
into it too tight, but on the most basic level I can approach
it, its energy source, communication, and focus. And I don't want
to get into the techniques of it too close because it's like talking
about balling; you can really blow it y'know. There's that and
then there's certain kinds of harmony-thinking that nobody else
does except me, that I've found, anyway. Willie don't think the
same about harmonies as I do.
BFT: What kind of reaction have you run across on your second
album? Is it anything close to what Rolling Stone said about it,
which was a putdown?
DC: No. See the point is that for me it's not our second album;
it's our first album. We're the new group. I don't know how the
other people in the world feel about it, but the first album was
Crosby, Stills and Nash; the second album was Crosby, Stills,
Nash, Young, Taylor, and Reeves, and that's from three to six,
which means that it's a different group. I think anybody should
know that anything Neil Young steps into is different thereafter,
y'know. I don't care if it's a bathroom. It wasn't a second album.
And it has stuff in it that makes me extremely proud. I figure
that the third album we put out will be maybe two or three times
better.
BFT: Were you really satisfied with the record?
DC: I wasn't. And also, I probably brought it down by sticking
to my guns on one thing. I kept "Almost Cut My Hair" in there
over the protestations of Stephen, who didn't want me to leave
it in cause he thought that it was a bad vocal. And it was a bad
vocal in the sense that it slid around and it wasn't polished,
but I felt like what I meant when I sang it, and so it always
puts me on that trip. Now, I don't know where that communicated
through to the people out there or not. See, I don't know whether
it communicated anything but just a bunch of raucous guitar and
me yelling. If it did communicate, then it was right.
BFT: You've said a number of times that there were two dominant
images of you that you put out. One was the "troublemaker" thing.
DC: Fits.....
BFT: You said you were the troublemaker of the Byrds. The second
thing was, you said that "At one time I used to put people down."
Then you said you'd stopped it.
DC: I'm trying to outgrow it. I'm getting better at not doing
it.
BFT: When was it the very worst?
DC: At the peak of my uptight Byrd, when I though I should have
been really heavy and I knew perfectly well that my band was turning
into a shuck and I was paranoid, uptight and slightly on top of
it, but very uptight. I was playing very shaky paranoid king-of-the-mountain.
And at that point in my life I used to put people down regularly
- everybody, anybody. It was my thing. "Aw, that stupid son-of-a-bitch
doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about and I know what's
really going on, that cocksucker doesn't really understand what
the fuck he is - stupid cunt motherfucker." You know. And I would
just rage on and onto everyone about everything. But, of course,
that has something to do with irritability, y'know. There are
certain substances which we sometimes ingest through our nose,
particularly, that increase one's irritability factor, and they're
bad for you. There was a lot of that going on then, too. Mostly
just unbalance, a lot of unbalance, man.
BFT: Was that a reaction all the Byrds had when they "ingested
certain substances?"
DC: I wouldn't limit it to the Byrds. That's a tricky and very
dangerous subject to talk about, but I would say that the particular
substance induces irritability and a tendency towards extremes
in everybody that I've seen take it.
BFT: How were the Byrds a shuck?
DC: They weren't when they started. The last year that we were
working together they were a shuck because we would tell people
that they should come watch the Byrds play, and then the Byrds
would come there and be a mechanical windup doll. They didn't
play fuck.
We would get through a set, forty minutes long - just barely -
of material that we had done so many times we were ready to throw
up with it. We were bored, we were uptight, uncommunicative, we
were on an ego trip, we were defensive ... overall defensive.
Y'know after "Eight Miles High"/"Younger Than Yesterday"
period...there was no Byrds after that, that I know of. And it's
a provincial attitude, but as far as I'm concerned, there were
only five Byrds, ever. Period.
BFT: Have you seen McGuinn's group recently?
DC: Yeah. I've also listened to their records. I think they should
care more about what they're doing. If they're going to use that
name I think they should care more about what they're doing.
BFT: It's like McGuinn is the Byrds and the others fill in.
DC: Yeah, that's true. The other cats are sidemen.
BFT: What do you think of Van Morrison?
DC: We did a concert with them, and I watched him work at Croyden,
I think it was, one of the halls in London. And I was firmly convinced
then that he was a good singer, and if he's writing those songs
he's getting to be a good writer. There's other people whose writing
I like more, still. But I like what he's doing.
BFT: How about Leon Russell?
DC: Ha! Man, you go back and listen to the first Byrd album and
go on a couple of cuts you'll hear electric piano....... Listen,
Leon Russell, Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, and those cats.
BFT: And Joe Osborne?
DC: Osborne ..........has been there all along. I don't know why
somebody doesn't make a list. It would take you a whole page to
make up a list of records that those cats made.....starting with
"Tamborine Man." That was Knechtel playing the bass. And I'm talking
about everybody's records. Beach Boys, Raiders, everybody that
ever made records in LA, man, those cats made records with them
a few times. And like with us, they started out with us, and then
we said "no deal" to Columbia. "We won't even finish our first
album unless you let us play it." They wanted to make tracks and
just use enough of us to put the flavor in so it could easily
packaged, easily managed little material - and also wouldn't be
dependant on us to put out the record. Mmmmmm smelly.
So those cats were good, but there were some stupendous musicians
amongst the studio cats. And Leon, I guess, would be the most
highly developed of all of them. He's a stoned fucking genius.
BFT: You're saying that the entire band of session men were involved
in the early Byrd records.
DC: They were all involved in "Tamborine Man," those particular
guys. They were also involved at later points, when we started
losing people, they would sometimes come and play . Sometimes
there was another drummer - very often. The only Byrd that played
on "Tamborine Man" was McGuinn.
BFT: Who decided that?
DC: Jim Dickson. And Terry Melcher. Over our heads. I guess they
thought that they could make a hit record that way.
BFT: How often does that happen?
DC: It doesn't happen very much any more, but in those days the
groups that did come along not only had not been playing electric
music long enough to be good at it; there weren't any good electric
bands. There were none. I'm including the Beatles. The first one
I remember that played real good, aside from us, sometimes, which
we did at Ciro's, was Spoonful .... or Butter band. spoonful and
Butter band both happened about that time....
BFT: Butterfield being more polished, having worked it out in
Chicago.
DC: Heaven to fucking Betsy. Listen to Michael Bloomfield and
Paul Butterfield trading fours, man. God knows it'd rip your fucking
brains out, send chills up your back. Butter is the unquestioned
champion of the harmonica, for all time. There isn't even anybody
close. I love the way Sebastian plays. Sebastian can do stuff
on harp that Butter can't do. Sebastian's got one whole area that
nobody else can play. But Butter, he used to just tear me up.
Fucking incredible. We played on the same bill with him at the
Trip once for two weeks. And man oh man it was truly outrageous.
BFT: Was there a chance of Sebastian joining Crosby Stills and
Nash, before you added Neil?
DC: I don't know how to say it. John is on his own trip. I don't
think that he'll join a band again, ever. His band was an unfortunate
experience for him, and it didn't work out the way it should have.
And John Sebastian needs a band like a stag needs a hat rack.
But he does come and hang out with us, and he does play with us
whenever he wants to, and as far as I'm concerned, John Sebastian
can walk onstage with us anywhere, anytime in the middle of anything
- even if we didn't know he was there - and just pick up and start
playing, any instrument or microphone or anything he wants to
do, he's that good. He can take off his clothes and sit down and
start doing yoga exercises and I'll be just as glad that he's
there. John Sebastian is a member of our group ... he's definitely
one of the original "Reliability Brothers". There are some of
our other friends that we like having come and visit us and sing
with us and shit.
BFT: Who?
DC: Oh, it's not exactly hard to fit Cass into a harmony part,
and I don't exactly mind singing "Get Together" with Mitchell,
and, for that matter, if we're singing "Get Together," I can remember
times when there was John Sebastian and Joni Mitchell and Buddy
Miles and Elliot Roberts, and all of these people, all of our
friends that were onstage singing. And it was a goddamn trip too.
Gettin' high, it's a joy, man. Let there be no mistake about it.
Unfortunately my time has gotta be devoted to my highest priority,
which starts with trying to save the human race and then works
it's way down from there, with all the things to keep myself going,
like balling, getting high, making music.
BFT: So, after all is said, how are you gonna save the human race,
number one priority?
DC: You got me There is no answer that I know of to save us. It's
just that that's my highest priority.
BFT: But through your music, if you affect the people you come
in contact with in public, that's your way of saving the human
race?
DC: OK I'll buy that. But somehow operating on that premise for
the last couple of year's hasn't done it, see? Somehow Sergeant
Pepper did not stop the Vietnam War. Somehow it didn't work. Somebody
isn't listening. I ain't saying stop trying: I know we're doing
the right thing - to live, full on. Get it on and do it good.
But the inertia we're up against, I think everybody's kind of
underestimated it. I would've thought Sergeant Pepper could've
stopped the war just by putting too many good vibes in the air
for anybody to have a war around.
Now I am doing my level best as a saboteur of values, as an aider
of change, but when it comes down to blood and gore in the streets
I'm takin' off and going fishin'. It's nice to know that four
fifths of the planet is water and I'm gonna be able to go elsewhere
when and if it gets down to streetfighting. Let the cats who are
really into it do it. If they really want to.
BFT: So your guns and rifles are more of a hobby than anything
else?
DC: No. My rifles are mostly for another kind of thing. My rifles
are because I plan to live all over the world, not just here in
suburban America. And there's an awful lot of points in the world
where a rifle is a handy little thing. It's called a lunch gun,
you know, it's gets you lunch, or keeps you from being somebody
else's. Now, in this country, a weapon is another thing. In this
country my rifles might might buy me a great big 20 minutes sometime.
I mean, fat chance! You can't fight them on their own ground,
man, you can't take on the sheriff's department or the Army. That's
their game They got it covered in spades. Totally. But, like,
it might it might buy me ten minutes, and that might be the ten
minutes I got anyway.
Look I don't want to get into it from the level that that's what
I expect is happening. I think that we might end up just with
"business as usual" for a long time. But, man, "It can't happend
here" is number one on the list of famous last words.
~
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