David Crosby died this week.
He was 81 years old, and if you looked at the rock stars of his generation, you would have to figure he would be high on the list of people you would have guessed wouldn’t make it to 81.
I forget who it was who said it, but someone once compared aging well to Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous poem about “The Wonderful One Hoss Shay,” the buggy than ran “a hundred years to the day” and then fell apart completely.
The idea is that you can live well, live out a good lifespan and then go just like that.
As the generation of musical giants we grew up with in the ’60s heads toward the finish line, news like this will come more and more frequently. I looked up a dozen or so names that mean a lot to me, and none were older than Crosby.
Bob Dylan is also 81, while Graham Nash, Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney are all 80. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are 79, and Stephen Stills and John Sebastian are 78.
Pete Townshend and Neil Young are 77. Linda Ronstadt is 76, Arlo Guthrie and Elton John are 75 and Jackson Browne is 74.
Not all of them have burned the candle at both ends, taking every drug they could lay their hands on and tearing up hotel rooms, but very few of them have lived quiet and healthful lives.
Plenty of others died young, some from their own shortcomings and others from things beyond their control. We were cheated out of decades of music from Elvis Presley, John Lennon, George Harrison and Michael Jackson, among others.
One rock star we used to joke about in the late ’60s was Cream drummer Ginger Baker, who supposedly had done so many drugs that his brain was half liquid. I looked up Baker and saw that he died in 2019. I wasn’t surprised that he was gone, but I was stunned to see he was 80 when he died.
As for David Crosby, he was a founding member of two groups that made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Of course one was Crosby Stills Nash & Young, but the one that probably ranks higher in the pantheon was the Byrds.
They were the band that essentially started folk rock and were one of the very first bands to come out of what was known as the L.A. Scene. Dylan himself said in the mid ’60s that the Byrds were the only rock band that was really meaningful. The song they are probably best known for was a Dylan song.
In the video above, Crosby is second from left and is the lead singer.
He survived years of drug abuse and lived a long and full life.
And just as is true of the others, he will live forever through his music.
Rest in peace, Mr. Crosby.