What the hell is wrong with freedom, man? That’s what it’s all about,” asserted Billy, Dennis Hopper’s wideeyed, mononymous antihero in search of America during a memorable scene in the groundbreaking 1969 road movie Easy Rider.
Billy – along with Wyatt, his travelling companion, played by Peter Fonda – represents the hedonistic and rebellious cult of youth, endeavouring to survive in a straight and intolerant society. That Hopper, also the film’s director, chose to model his adventuring and idealistic character – complete with a drooping walrus moustache, shoulder-length hair and fringed jacket – on David Crosby was testament to the pervading influence the free-spirited countercultural icon held on a generation at the tail end of that revolutionary decade.
When Easy Rider was released in July that year, Crosby, Stills & Nash, the self-titled debut album from the supergroup trio who would spearhead the gilded Californian scene that would dominate the early 70s, were only two months old, but already the band’s co-founder David Crosby (looking every bit the happily stoned blueprint for Billy on the album’s cover) was considered an outspoken, anti-authoritarian, puckish prince of the hippie era.
It was a role in which Crosby thrived, where an imperial appetite for sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll was fulfilled beyond excess alongside a nagging predilection for contention – through the years, the brunt of his raw distemper would be especially felt by politicians, lesser pop stars and, most notably, his own bandmates. But it was his voice – that rich, mellifluous, gliding expression of his soul – that truly set him apart, endeared him to the world’s greatest talents, and endured to the very end.
By the time of his death, aged 81, in January 2023, Croz – as he was affectionately known – was an elder statesman of music, a Grammy Awardwinning, two-time inductee into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (as part of The Byrds and CSN), whose twilight streak of wonderful solo albums more than made up for the wilderness years that preceded them. He was a quick-witted, acidtongued Twitter raconteur, attracting new followers across generations with his honest assessments of their joint-rolling skills.
His artistic revival, however, was not without its share of personal torment. Beset with health and financial hardships stemming from the depths of his addictions, the mercurial Croz died estranged from the peers with whom he created his greatest works. His freedom, it seemed, had come at a price.
Roger McGuinn was wary of Crosby from the moment their professional paths chanced to meet. A folk guitarist formerly of the Chad Mitchell Trio who had rocked the Greenwich Village scene by infusing traditional ballads with a Beatles beat,
