David Crosby, the singer/songwriter and guitarist behind The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, has died at 81, sources near Crosby have confirmed with Billboard.
Crosby was a founding member of The Byrds, who earned two Billboard Sizzling 100 No. 1 songs in 1965 with “Flip! Flip! Flip! (To Every thing There Is a Season)” and a canopy of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
In 1968, he shaped Crosby, Stills & Nash alongside Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. Their self-titled debut album spawned two high 40 Sizzling 100 hits — “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (No. 21) and “Marrakesh Categorical” (No. 28) — and the trio received the Grammy for finest new artist in 1969. Neil Younger was an off-the-cuff fourth member for infrequent stay performances, when the group would go by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Younger. The core trio stayed lively by 2016.
Crosby has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame twice, for his work in The Byrds and in Crosby, Stills & Nash.
In 2019, Cameron Crowe produced a documentary concerning the cantankerous rock icon referred to as Bear in mind My Title. In an interview concerning the warts-and-all doc, Crosby defined to Billboard why it made sense that his Byrds bandmate Roger McGuinn referred to as him “unbearable.”
“I could be contentious. Opinionated. I’m snug with that,” Crosby conceded. “If you’re in a relationship like that in a band, it’s like a wedding… you begin out, you like one another, you like one another’s music. You’re thrilled that you just’re doing this, and each time you play music, you are feeling brotherhood with the opposite guys. In CSNY with Neil [Young] and Graham [Nash] and Stephen [Stills], we have been a aggressive band. Not cooperative/aggressive. We have been additionally very shitty to one another over and time and again, unkind and disloyal.”
Crosby earned 10 Grammy nominations in his lifetime — together with a finest music movie nod for Bear in mind My Title — however the CSN finest new artist prize was his lone win.
This story first appeared on Billboard.com.
