Tuesday 16th December

He of Croby, Stills, Nash and occasionally Young; this may have been the very first supergroup, and when they burst on the scene in 1969 I didn’t realize that David had actually been in The Byrds.  The only Byrd I had known by name was Roger McGuinn, but David was one of the original Byrds, though he left, or got kicked out, in 1967 because of musical differences.  The Byrds had at one time almost rivalled the Beatles but were split between staying a ‘pop’ group or moving with the increasingly psychedelic times.  David moved on.  He already knew Stephen Stills who was in Buffalo Springfield along with an almost unknown Neil Young.  When Neil broke up the Springfield, Stephen and David hung out in Laurel Canyon and largely got stoned. But it wasn’t until Graham Nash of The Hollies visited his then new girlfriend Joni Mitchell in early ’68 that the three met and started singing together and then released an album.

The rest is, as they say History; mega sales, super stardom, furious rows and splits and lots of drugs.  In David’s case, industrial quantities of the stuff and increasingly Heroin, which nearly killed him on more than one occasion.  Eventually he spent all his money and could hardly even sing without freebasing during concerts.  He ended up spending a few years in jail where he did manage to straighten out somewhat, and even had a liver transplant which seems to still be working.  A remarkable survivor, and through it all there was the music.  He made a few solo albums, especially “If Only I Could Remember My Name”, with its lovely spaced-out vocals.  He carried on sporadically making CSN and Y albums, but I think his best records were with Graham Nash where the two of them had enough space to sing solo and together, and they seemed to bring the best out in each other.

A great survivor, and one whose sole creed had been to live life to the full, which no one can deny he has done.  He was also blessed with a great voice and though he is well into his sixties now he still tours almost every year and has just recorded another album.  Not bad for a junkie who nearly killed himself several times.