Episode 751 - David Crosby

Episode 751 • Released October 16, 2016 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest:Lock the gates!

00:00:09Marc:Alright, let's do this.

00:00:10Marc:How are you what the fuckers?

00:00:12Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:13Marc:What the fucksters?

00:00:14Marc:What the fuckineers?

00:00:15Marc:What's happening?

00:00:17Marc:I'm Mark Maron.

00:00:17Marc:This is WTF.

00:00:18Marc:This is my podcast.

00:00:20Marc:I've been doing it since 2009.

00:00:23Marc:Twice a week.

00:00:25Marc:Every week.

00:00:26Marc:Always a new show.

00:00:27Marc:Happy to do it.

00:00:29Marc:Thank you for listening.

00:00:31Marc:Today on the show, David Crosby.

00:00:34Marc:The David Crosby.

00:00:36Marc:Who, uh...

00:00:37Marc:I actually kind of contacted on Twitter, and we went back and forth.

00:00:41Marc:We had a couple phone conversations.

00:00:42Marc:He came over.

00:00:43Marc:Sweet man.

00:00:44Marc:And also a dude with a history.

00:00:48Marc:I don't know what you know, but some of us went through those couple of records, those Crosby, Stills, and Nash records, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes, and I listened to them before I had David on.

00:01:01Marc:And no matter what's going on in the world today with singer-songwriter, sweet country stuff, folky business, thoughtful acoustic-y things, you put those on and you put Sweet Judy Blue Eyes on.

00:01:18Marc:And I'm not diminishing anybody.

00:01:20Marc:I think everybody's doing a fine job out there with their guitars and their mouths.

00:01:25Marc:But those guys singing together, I hadn't listened to in years.

00:01:29Marc:You know, I don't know why.

00:01:30Marc:It's just not one of the ones that I put in rotation.

00:01:33Marc:But Jesus Christ, nothing sounds like that.

00:01:36Marc:Nothing sounds like those fellas, those titans of harmony.

00:01:41Marc:David's here.

00:01:42Marc:In a minute, he'll be here.

00:01:43Marc:He's got a new record out that I just got sent.

00:01:46Marc:It's lovely.

00:01:47Marc:His new album's called Lighthouse.

00:01:49Marc:Comes out this Friday, October 21st.

00:01:51Marc:He's gonna go on tour next month.

00:01:53Marc:These guys, they go out and they do it.

00:01:55Marc:These 70-something-year-old fellas.

00:01:58Marc:They got to go out, man.

00:02:00Marc:What's the point of living?

00:02:02Marc:You can also pre-order the album at davidcrosby.com and figure out if he's coming to a place near you.

00:02:08Marc:Still donning or manning that mustache of his.

00:02:12Marc:He's doing well with his incredibly hardcore history and new liver.

00:02:19Marc:And it was a pleasure to talk to him.

00:02:20Marc:Glad he came over.

00:02:21Marc:He's a radical dude who's lived through some shit.

00:02:26Marc:All right.

00:02:28Marc:I also wanted to say the Now Hear This Festival is next week.

00:02:30Marc:Come check out more than 30 podcasts live all weekend.

00:02:34Marc:It's October 28th through 30th at the Anaheim Marriott.

00:02:38Marc:And the special WTF show with me and Brendan McDonald is on Saturday, the 29th.

00:02:43Marc:Go to NowHearThisFest.com to get tickets and see the full lineup, and now you can use the offer code WTF when you buy tickets to save 25% off general admission.

00:02:54Marc:That's NowHearThisFest.com, offer code WTF.

00:03:02Marc:What is on my mind?

00:03:03Marc:I seem to be festering about something, about the general condescension.

00:03:08Marc:To those people, myself included, I will include myself in this, in show business.

00:03:15Marc:Show business.

00:03:18Marc:The show business industry.

00:03:21Marc:There's a lot of, you know, it comes from the right, it comes from whoever, but there's some sort of dumb idea that those of us who work in this industry don't work somehow.

00:03:36Marc:and it's fucking it's it's disrespectful and snotty do you know what it takes to make fucking three minutes of television now look i'm not saying i'm some sort of fucking hero do you know how many people are involved on how many levels it's not just writers not just actors there's lighting guys there's caterers there's hair and makeup there's truck drivers there's there's people that are operating cameras

00:03:59Marc:camera operators there are stand-in people there are props people there are people in charge of transportation managing porta potties trailers and it just keeps building out from there locations people people who hold mics light you know people who are hanging things from ladders

00:04:16Marc:People who are risking their lives on some level, 12 to 15 hour days.

00:04:22Marc:We do.

00:04:22Marc:It's just it's it's just it's it's just shitty when people think that celebrity culture, maybe celebrity culture is what it is.

00:04:32Marc:But the industry is show business.

00:04:34Marc:employs a lot of fucking people on a lot of different levels you know who who have families who do real work i don't know where you get out thinking it's not real work and again this is not some heroic diatribe it's just it's fucking work this is the job we chose i don't know what you chose i don't know how it's working out but it certainly hasn't been easy and it's not easy on a day-to-day level

00:04:55Marc:I'm not just talking about me.

00:04:57Marc:I'm talking about everything that goes in to the industry.

00:05:00Marc:Now, you may not like what we produce.

00:05:03Marc:You may think it's shit, but it's a fucking business.

00:05:05Marc:It's an industry and a lot of people work really hard.

00:05:07Marc:So shut the fuck up with this condescending attitude about celebrity culture, which is different than the actual nuts and bolts of show business.

00:05:18Marc:I'm not even sure who I'm talking to or why it got stuck in my craw.

00:05:21Marc:There's just this general dismissal of something that, you know, is a major business and industry in this country and where people work very hard and many of them are not appreciated.

00:05:37Marc:Okay.

00:05:39Marc:We're trying to make stuff that resonates some of us.

00:05:44Marc:We're trying to make things that add and don't just distract or take away, that provoke, that confront, that entertain, but move you through things.

00:05:56Marc:Humane and humbling.

00:06:00Marc:Yes, show business.

00:06:03Marc:And look, I'm grateful that it finally worked out for me and I can earn an honest living, which it is.

00:06:10Marc:That's another thing people don't realize.

00:06:12Marc:As cable and things level off and options expand and the market diversifies and fragments, not all of us are running away with a billion dollars an episode.

00:06:25Marc:You dig?

00:06:26Oh.

00:06:28Marc:Pow!

00:06:29Marc:I just shit my pants.

00:06:30Marc:JustCoffee.coop.

00:06:32Marc:Available at WTFPod.com.

00:06:34Marc:Classic ad.

00:06:36Marc:WTF ad from our original sponsors.

00:06:40Marc:Here's a nice email.

00:06:42Marc:A nice email.

00:06:43Marc:Don't read the comments in the subject line.

00:06:46Marc:I like this idea, by the way.

00:06:47Marc:What you're about to hear.

00:06:49Marc:it's from sam greetings mark and or person people that read mark's mail i thought of a good preamble to this pitch i was kind of bummed this morning when i saw there was another singer songwriter guest on the wtf podcast but decided to listen anyway i was delighted to hear the margo price interview and even went back and listened to the hutch harris interview resulting in even more delight lesson learned and as i have recently heard the same sentiment espoused on a listener mail segment on the show

00:07:17Marc:In parentheses, don't skip interviews.

00:07:19Marc:I would also like to compliment WTF on incorporating a testimonial that actually rang true.

00:07:24Marc:That was the preamble.

00:07:26Marc:Here's the pitch.

00:07:28Marc:Toward the end of the Margot Price interview, before I had ever heard any of her music, Mark and Margot were talking about how awful it is to read the negative trolling comments on Twitter.

00:07:37Marc:Margot spoke very passionately and truthfully about saying, "'It ruins my happiness.'"

00:07:43Marc:While Mark had the tone of a seasoned cynic with his time-worn refrain, don't read the comments, which is when the light bulb came on, so to speak, because I had already been primed for the idea because Mark and Margo were talking about collaborating on a song.

00:07:58Marc:I didn't know if it was a good fit, and I played with the idea until the end of the podcast.

00:08:02Marc:Ten minutes later, when Margo sang Desperate and Depressed, it was then that I realized I wanted to write this email.

00:08:09Marc:So there it is.

00:08:10Marc:Don't read the comments.

00:08:12Marc:A duet sung by Marc Maron and Margot Price.

00:08:16Marc:I don't feel like I should elaborate any more than that.

00:08:18Marc:Either you get it or you don't, I guess.

00:08:21Marc:Except to say the challenge here seems to be not make it sound like a parody type Weird Al kind of song, right?

00:08:27Marc:To make it sound authentic and not synthetic.

00:08:30Marc:Anyways, food for thought.

00:08:31Marc:Keep up the good fight.

00:08:33Marc:WTF.

00:08:34Marc:Your podcast makes my job raking leaves as I try to finish my first novel.

00:08:38Marc:Somewhat more bearable.

00:08:39Marc:Sam.

00:08:41Marc:All right, Margo Price, if you're listening, it's not a challenge, but I think it's a solid idea.

00:08:48Marc:I think it's a solid idea.

00:08:49Marc:I'm going to be in Nashville soon.

00:08:51Marc:I don't know if you're going to be there.

00:08:53Marc:I could just text you this, but why not make it public?

00:08:56Marc:Why not make this public?

00:08:59Marc:I'll scribble some stanzas.

00:09:02Marc:You do too.

00:09:02Marc:We'll go basic country, three chords, maybe with some sort of chorus.

00:09:08Marc:You know, maybe with a refrain that might throw in a minor chord or something.

00:09:12Marc:But I'm ready to work on this.

00:09:15Marc:I'm ready to work on Don't Read the Comments by Margot Price and Marc Maron.

00:09:19Marc:I'm just putting that out there.

00:09:21Marc:Neither one of us need it, but I think it would be fun.

00:09:24Marc:I can sing.

00:09:25Marc:I can sing a little bit.

00:09:27Marc:All right?

00:09:27Marc:You hear me, Margot?

00:09:28Marc:Do you hear me?

00:09:31Marc:Did a lovely charity event last night.

00:09:33Marc:Seth Rogen asked me to do a 10-minute spot on his hilarity for charity.

00:09:38Marc:Alzheimer's benefit was me and Jen Kirkman and Morgan Murphy and James Corden was there and Courtney Love was there and Snoop Dogg closed the thing out.

00:09:52Marc:There was dancing.

00:09:53Marc:It's nice when dancers are employed.

00:09:56Marc:I like seeing dancers.

00:09:57Marc:I don't see enough dancing.

00:09:59Marc:How amazing is it when you see somebody who's a pro up there doing whatever it is they do, right?

00:10:06Marc:David Crosby, for instance.

00:10:08Marc:This guy stood in the front of thousands singing.

00:10:14Marc:Just a human.

00:10:15Marc:A human with a voice.

00:10:17Marc:Great guy.

00:10:18Marc:I might have to, maybe someday we'll talk again.

00:10:21Marc:He seemed to want to hang out.

00:10:23Marc:I thought he might move in.

00:10:24Marc:Kidding, kidding.

00:10:26Marc:It's a joke, David.

00:10:27Marc:It's a joke.

00:10:29Marc:I love talking to you, so I'm going to share it with the people right now.

00:10:32Marc:This is me and the legendary David Crosby.

00:10:38Guest:You can turn the bird off.

00:10:47Guest:Do you know how?

00:10:48Guest:Yes, I am, but I'm going to tell my wife where the garage is first because she'll get here and not know what to do.

00:10:55Guest:I'll get her to text me when she gets here.

00:10:57Marc:There you go.

00:10:58Marc:But then we're going to have to deal with that noise the whole time.

00:11:00Guest:No, I'm going to turn the noise off.

00:11:01Guest:Oh, okay.

00:11:02Marc:I'll leave the phone where I can see it.

00:11:03Guest:Got it.

00:11:05Guest:Ding, ding, ding.

00:11:07Marc:Oof.

00:11:09Marc:I literally thought you were making that noise, and I thought, like, well, that's this weird David Crosby thing.

00:11:13Marc:He just makes bird noises occasionally.

00:11:15Guest:He's very impressed.

00:11:16Guest:R2-D2 ringtone.

00:11:18Marc:Okay.

00:11:19Marc:So the fella that dropped you off...

00:11:23Guest:that's your son that's one of my one of your sons that's the oldest one yeah that's james and there it is the um and you from what from what relationship was that david um uh one of a number yeah uh i you know what i was kind of irresponsible man i i i

00:11:51Guest:I don't want to say I was trying to wear it off, but I was trying to...

00:12:00Guest:Jesus, there's got to be a euphemism I can use here.

00:12:03Guest:Get as much in as possible.

00:12:05Guest:Yeah, something like that.

00:12:06Guest:That's even more graphic than I was going to be, but yeah, okay.

00:12:10Guest:Live life.

00:12:12Guest:Yeah, to the fullest.

00:12:16Guest:His mom put him up for adoption.

00:12:20Marc:You were part of that choice?

00:12:21Marc:No.

00:12:21Marc:Oh, that just happened.

00:12:22Marc:You were alerted of that later.

00:12:24Marc:Later.

00:12:25Marc:Right.

00:12:25Marc:And I knew he existed.

00:12:26Marc:Right.

00:12:27Marc:I didn't know where.

00:12:27Marc:And so you reunited.

00:12:29Right.

00:12:29Guest:Well, yeah, you know, you can't track from the parent down, only from the kid up, right?

00:12:34Guest:So I didn't know where he was, and I wondered about him, and I tortured myself about it, you know, thinking, oh, God, he's, you know, cold and hungry and living in a dumpster.

00:12:44Guest:You know, normal things that you'd torture yourself with.

00:12:46Guest:And so then I'm in the hospital...

00:12:51Marc:With which ailment?

00:12:53Guest:I'm dying of hepatitis C, and I'm very close to dying.

00:12:56Marc:Yeah.

00:12:57Marc:Very close.

00:12:58Marc:This is before the liver?

00:13:00Guest:This was the liver.

00:13:01Guest:Okay.

00:13:01Guest:And so I'm about a week away from dying, and then they finally got a match, and they transplanted me, and all of a sudden...

00:13:09Guest:It's a really strange thing.

00:13:11Guest:You go from being sicker each day, dying, and you can feel the systems collapsing, right?

00:13:15Guest:It's like a house of cards.

00:13:16Marc:Yeah.

00:13:17Guest:And then all of a sudden they operate on you and all of a sudden now you're not sick.

00:13:20Guest:You're wounded.

00:13:20Marc:Yeah.

00:13:21Guest:And you're getting better every day.

00:13:22Marc:Yeah.

00:13:22Marc:Well, you're lucky it took, right?

00:13:24Guest:Oh.

00:13:24Yeah.

00:13:24Marc:Yeah.

00:13:25Guest:Have you yet?

00:13:26Marc:Yeah.

00:13:26Guest:It's kind of science fiction, but anyway, I'm getting bags.

00:13:30Guest:Yeah.

00:13:30Guest:Like Santa Claus bags.

00:13:31Guest:Yeah.

00:13:32Guest:Of mail.

00:13:33Guest:Yeah.

00:13:33Guest:They're bringing them in every day.

00:13:34Guest:Yeah.

00:13:35Guest:In the middle of those, there's a letter that says, hi, we're John and Madeline Raymond, and we raised your son.

00:13:40Guest:Oh, my God.

00:13:41Guest:They had told him.

00:13:43Guest:That he had just gotten married and he was about to have his first kid, Grace.

00:13:52Guest:And they said, you should know who your genetic dad is.

00:13:55Guest:So he went and found out and he goes, no way.

00:14:00Guest:and then he checked and then way it's you it was me and so he knew somebody that knew me and uh actually got it was my sponsor and uh and um he uh got a hold of me and we connected up and those things usually go wrong do they because of the resentment maybe yeah right people bring too much baggage to the deal sure you know hey why did you leave me and mom we weren't good enough for you yeah yeah yeah uh

00:14:28Guest:he didn't do that uh he gave me a clean slate which is a huge gift because he must have been they must he had good parents he had very good parents really sweet people uh-huh and he was by nature a a person who goes for the high ground uh-huh and so he gave me a shot yeah he gave me a clean slate gave me let me you know earn my way into his life and

00:14:51Guest:Which is not common.

00:14:53Guest:It doesn't usually go that way.

00:14:54Guest:No.

00:14:54Guest:So it was a huge, wonderful thing.

00:14:58Guest:That's happened twice now in my life.

00:15:02Guest:I have a daughter who was put up for adoption by her mom and...

00:15:06Guest:same period i mean that kid uh that i just met must be my age almost no yeah yeah and uh and she was raised in mexico and um and uh came back in asked her mom who her father was mom told her she got a hold of me and said i think i'm your daughter and i said well let's find out and so we found out and she absolutely was and she's really frustrating she's really smart and and english is her second language right but she beats me

00:15:36Guest:Every time I play her in Words with Friends, constantly.

00:15:40Guest:She beats me like a rug.

00:15:42Marc:And how old is she?

00:15:43Guest:50s, somewhere.

00:15:45Marc:So these were from that period.

00:15:46Guest:Yeah.

00:15:48Guest:You were just having fun.

00:15:49Guest:I really, you know, I like to kid around and say I have a PhD in fun.

00:15:54Guest:Yeah.

00:15:55Guest:But...

00:15:55Guest:It's a mixed blessing.

00:15:56Guest:I was pretty selfish and certainly irresponsible.

00:16:02Marc:But the funny thing about you is that your face, your mustache, your voice is one of the most identified emblems of the late 60s, really, mid-60s.

00:16:14Marc:Probably, yeah.

00:16:16Marc:The image I have in my mind is, I don't know what kind of house you were renting up there in the canyon or in the hills.

00:16:20Marc:Yeah.

00:16:20Marc:But it's just you, like just the hippie king of his fucking domain.

00:16:25Marc:Like I just pictured like it was nonstop up there at Crosby's place.

00:16:29Guest:I would be good at kinging.

00:16:30Guest:Yeah.

00:16:31Guest:I would.

00:16:32Guest:I really would.

00:16:33Guest:You'd have a good time.

00:16:34Guest:Comes totally naturally to me.

00:16:36Guest:Uh-huh.

00:16:37Guest:Do you have royalty in your blood?

00:16:39Guest:No.

00:16:39Guest:I got at least one signer of the Declaration of Independence and a couple of bishops and generals.

00:16:46Marc:Oh, really?

00:16:47Guest:Yeah.

00:16:48Guest:I don't keep track of it.

00:16:50Marc:But your family goes back to the English or the Dutch?

00:16:55Guest:Both.

00:16:56Guest:Uh-huh.

00:16:57Guest:Brit, Dutch, Irish, and Welsh.

00:16:59Guest:Uh-huh.

00:17:00Guest:Welsh, you know, hey, drunk poets.

00:17:02Marc:Yeah, sure.

00:17:03Marc:You got it all.

00:17:03Guest:It works, yeah, it works.

00:17:05Guest:Good mixture.

00:17:06Yeah.

00:17:06Guest:I think the kinging thing, yeah, I would have.

00:17:10Guest:There was some of that.

00:17:11Guest:In any case, the kids that I have all wound up being pretty great kids.

00:17:18Guest:They are.

00:17:19Marc:And you have a relationship with the donor kids, too, as well, right?

00:17:21Marc:Melissa's kids?

00:17:22Guest:Yeah, definitely, yeah.

00:17:24Guest:I'm going to Melissa's house.

00:17:25Guest:When I finish up here, I'm going to Melissa's house.

00:17:27Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:17:29Guest:She's got a show on...

00:17:32Marc:on satellite radio yeah i had a i had melissa atherich here and it was great she was great she's a very brave woman brave and and and engaged and and still does very consistent great work yeah you know it's it's hard i i imagine for for maybe you as well that when you're as huge as like you were that and you're still doing great work that you know it's like it's hard to think that you're not doing it in a vacuum sometimes i would imagine

00:18:00Guest:You know, it's really hard to understand your place in the world.

00:18:05Guest:I don't look at myself the way everybody else does.

00:18:07Guest:Of course not, right.

00:18:08Guest:Because I know what a bozo I really am.

00:18:11Guest:And you try to tell people, and you say, no, no, I put my pants on one leg at a time, same as you.

00:18:15Guest:Right, right.

00:18:19Guest:But my life in relation to the rest of the world has been very strange.

00:18:25Guest:Making all the mistakes that I made in front of the world, that was not fun.

00:18:29Marc:Well, you were become because you were such an icon.

00:18:31Marc:The fall when you fell, you know, years after the 60s, you know, it was surprising.

00:18:37Marc:But, you know, that story, not as you definitely outdid most of your peers by living.

00:18:43Marc:Yeah.

00:18:45Yeah.

00:18:45Guest:yeah i'm baffled about that but yeah but uh but like you know there was sort of like this is how the 60s crashes in a way yeah i mean there we were and it had a lot to do with the substances we were doing you know we were smoking pot which i don't see much wrong with and back in the day you're talking yeah yeah and we were uh taking psychedelics and then along came came cocaine and that was uh it just destroyed the whole thing late 70s yeah yeah absolutely destroyed it and speed right

00:19:12Guest:not for me for the bikers yeah yeah but speed in the general culture seemed to be yeah it was there yeah i mean it was this cultural thing was if you had any money it was cocaine if you didn't have any money it was speed yeah the horrible yellow speed yeah bikers yeah yeah i had some friends in the health angels so i i i knew about it a lot but it's not something i i i did um

00:19:34Marc:Well, let's let's track it back.

00:19:36Marc:You know, this is a very surprising thing.

00:19:37Marc:And I'll tell you only because I think it's it's not it's there's nothing ironic about it, just the way shit worked out.

00:19:44Marc:But Neil Young was sitting right there yesterday.

00:19:47Marc:Yesterday.

00:19:48Marc:Oh, no, no, no.

00:19:50Marc:I mean, look, I didn't talk.

00:19:51Marc:I don't I don't do that shit.

00:19:53Marc:I you know, he you know, I very vaguely like everybody getting along.

00:19:57Marc:He's like, yep.

00:19:58Marc:But, you know, he's being diplomatic.

00:20:00Guest:Yeah, he just doesn't want to do the same thing I don't want to do, put your laundry out in public.

00:20:05Marc:Yeah, but there's no, the thing is that what you've put out in public, I'm not a big laundry guy, you know, if it's fresh laundry, old laundry we can talk about.

00:20:13Marc:Yeah, but it hurts me a little bit that all of you guys go in and out.

00:20:21Marc:You're humans, right?

00:20:23Marc:Yeah.

00:20:23Marc:But the work you did was so phenomenal.

00:20:26Marc:I'm proud of it.

00:20:27Marc:How could you not be, right?

00:20:28Marc:I'm totally proud of it.

00:20:29Guest:I mean, it is history, but it's good history.

00:20:32Marc:We did good work.

00:20:33Marc:Oh, man, dude, I put that shit on.

00:20:35Marc:I used to listen to the first CSN.

00:20:38Marc:record a lot you know when i was a kid and it was already you know like it was i'm 52 so it was i'm coming to it not in its time you know i'm coming to it like what's this you know and i just put it on this morning and i'm like no one does this you guys did something no one did you know and and no one sounds like that on any level it's not just the singing it's all of it it's the vibe it's it's like it's completely hypnotic and beautiful and elevating and and then no one can do it

00:21:05Marc:But you guys.

00:21:07Guest:Well, thanks.

00:21:09Guest:Thanks, he said blushing.

00:21:12Guest:You know that, though.

00:21:13Guest:I do.

00:21:13Guest:It really has a lot to do with the songs.

00:21:16Guest:and the magic of how you guys synchronize i yes we had a thing a vocal sound that that was exceptional three very different voices yeah and it was it was an exceptional sound and uh but i think it always in all performers comes down to the songs if you have a song

00:21:37Guest:And you can sit down with a guitar or a piano and sing it to somebody and make them feel something.

00:21:43Guest:Then you have the jacks are better, the openers, the sin and qua non.

00:21:47Marc:Right.

00:21:47Marc:You've got the tune.

00:21:48Marc:You've got the stuff to work with.

00:21:50Marc:Work the melody.

00:21:51Guest:If you don't have that, you can do all the production in the world and you're only just polishing a turd.

00:21:57Guest:There's no substance there.

00:21:59Guest:So we had them.

00:22:01Guest:Yeah.

00:22:01Guest:And part of the thing was we had three writers.

00:22:03Guest:When Neil was there, we had four writers.

00:22:05Guest:Yeah.

00:22:06Guest:Which means you get the very best songs of each guy, which kept the bar pretty high on being able to play you something that would make you feel something.

00:22:14Marc:How would that work, though?

00:22:15Marc:Would you guys bring in songs you'd written and then work them together?

00:22:18Marc:Yeah.

00:22:18Guest:We'd sit down with them and sing them a song.

00:22:21Guest:Yeah.

00:22:22Guest:And they would sit down and sing me a song.

00:22:23Guest:Yeah.

00:22:23Guest:And if it tripped our trigger, we'd say, oh, what if I do this?

00:22:29Guest:Yeah, right, right, right.

00:22:32Guest:And it was a very organic process.

00:22:35Marc:Which doesn't happen with everybody.

00:22:37Marc:No.

00:22:37Marc:I mean, you got to pay some due to the chemistry.

00:22:42Guest:Yeah.

00:22:43Guest:Yeah.

00:22:43Guest:And it was there.

00:22:44Guest:And I'm glad that Neil was here.

00:22:46Guest:It's smart of Neil to come talk to you.

00:22:48Guest:He's...

00:22:49Guest:Fascinating guy, don't you think?

00:22:51Marc:He's got a thing he's making.

00:22:53Marc:This player, the Pono thing is why he's out in the world.

00:22:57Marc:But what I noticed about him, though, was that there are guys who want to talk about back in the day and there are guys who could take it or leave it.

00:23:03Marc:And he's a take it or leave it guy.

00:23:05Guest:Yeah, he feels the same way I do.

00:23:08Guest:He's really concerned with what he can do today.

00:23:10Guest:Sure.

00:23:11Guest:And what he would like to do tomorrow and what he might be able to do this week or this month or this year.

00:23:15Guest:Right.

00:23:15Guest:He doesn't really look back at CSNY as much or at his past much, and neither do I. I mean...

00:23:24Guest:You've got so much time on the planet, just so much.

00:23:26Guest:Right.

00:23:27Guest:Do you want to spend your time looking over your shoulder, or are you trying to use every minute?

00:23:32Marc:Right.

00:23:33Guest:Because it's totally precious.

00:23:35Marc:Right.

00:23:36Guest:And he gets that.

00:23:37Marc:Yeah, but, you know, the thing for me in a conversation, though, is that I get sort of fascinated with, you know...

00:23:43Marc:where you guys come from what it looked like when you started what started to define you and your skills and you know and then you know what was the journey i think the journey is is a pretty beautiful thing i'm not saying you got to live there but i mean i i imagine that you know in your quiet moments when you're not thinking of a new tune or how the world is ending that you got to go back to some things and go like that was a fucking good time

00:24:05Guest:I don't.

00:24:06Guest:I don't.

00:24:07Guest:I understand what you're saying.

00:24:08Guest:I'm going to make you.

00:24:10Guest:Well, no, I can.

00:24:11Marc:Yeah.

00:24:11Guest:But I don't.

00:24:12Marc:Right.

00:24:12Guest:And I think that's very admirable.

00:24:15Guest:I think some other people who shall remain nameless probably do that more than I do.

00:24:21Marc:Right.

00:24:21Guest:But I think Neil...

00:24:23Guest:is very much looking forward.

00:24:26Guest:And I know I am totally.

00:24:27Guest:That's my entire focus is on today, tomorrow, next week, this year.

00:24:32Marc:Right.

00:24:32Marc:But the beautiful thing is, and this is something that people don't necessarily, it's not their responsibility to answer or they might not have answers, is that the magic of music.

00:24:46Marc:Is that, you know, especially the best of it, it's really a timeless thing.

00:24:51Marc:And any time you go to it, you can have a different experience with it.

00:24:55Marc:It can be nostalgic.

00:24:56Marc:It can mean something to you in that moment.

00:24:58Marc:It can bring you to a place that is timeless and not defined but beautiful in that moment.

00:25:05Marc:It's like it's a magic thing.

00:25:07Marc:It is.

00:25:07Marc:And so you have this magic, a career of magic, that as the wizard, you have to fucking answer for when you sit down with somebody on a microphone.

00:25:16Guest:i totally get that and i know and i don't have a problem doing it yeah i just my focus now yeah sure is is elsewhere i i'll be very corny with you man to me just as war is a depressing force on humanity and brings out the very worst in us yeah

00:25:33Guest:Music is a lifting force.

00:25:34Guest:Yeah.

00:25:35Guest:It is magic.

00:25:36Guest:Yeah.

00:25:36Guest:It's been mankind's magic since the first caveman dancer on his fire going.

00:25:40Guest:Yeah.

00:25:42Guest:Right.

00:25:42Guest:You know, and we, it's our party.

00:25:45Guest:Right.

00:25:45Guest:And it's something that it's one of the two things that link people all over the world constantly without it and transcend language.

00:25:54Guest:That's right.

00:25:54Guest:Math and music.

00:25:56Guest:Eskimo can play music with a Kalahari Bushman.

00:26:00Marc:Yeah.

00:26:00Guest:It's,

00:26:01Marc:a magical thing well that's what was interesting to me about just this morning uh listening to um uh is that i can't remember my name is that you know you in in particular that you know your approach to music and as you were talking this morning about open tunings

00:26:17Marc:That there is a meditative, almost trance-like quality to that album in particular.

00:26:23Marc:Because it felt like a group of people coming in and out, not working a lot of chords, but working a repetition to get some sort of communal environment feeling.

00:26:33Guest:Yeah.

00:26:33Guest:It was a very... A very...

00:26:37Guest:strange uh time in my life uh when we were we had just finished making deja vu and we were in the middle of deja vu yeah my girlfriend got killed in a wreck oh my god how long were you with her long time i've been with her several years that's sad and so i didn't know how to deal with it yeah at all and i would wind up sitting on the floor crying yeah just not knowing what to do

00:27:02Guest:And when we finished Deja Vu, the other guys went their own way.

00:27:08Guest:And I didn't have any place that I felt safe to be.

00:27:11Guest:I didn't have really anything to do other than be in the studio.

00:27:17Guest:That was it.

00:27:18Guest:That was the only place that really could exist without just, like, weeping.

00:27:23Guest:And so I stayed in the studio in Wally Hiders in San Francisco.

00:27:30Guest:And my friends...

00:27:31Marc:You were up in SF?

00:27:33Marc:Yeah.

00:27:33Guest:Yeah.

00:27:33Guest:And my friend showed up, notably Garcia.

00:27:36Marc:Yeah.

00:27:37Guest:Almost every night.

00:27:39Marc:Just to hang out?

00:27:40Guest:No, to play.

00:27:41Marc:And hang out though, right?

00:27:42Marc:Yeah, and hang out.

00:27:43Marc:I mean, he was a friend.

00:27:44Marc:He loved you.

00:27:45Guest:Yeah, and we played music really well together.

00:27:48Guest:Yeah.

00:27:48Guest:You know, there's a...

00:27:50Guest:we would take a lot of chances yeah and he that was his thing he wanted to be right on the edge you know and immensely creative human being yeah but also without being mushy about it he was pretty kind to me because he knew where i was at and that i was grieving you know shattered blown apart yeah and um he would come uh

00:28:14Marc:He's a funny guy, too, right?

00:28:15Marc:He was a funny guy.

00:28:16Marc:Oh, yeah, he was a very funny guy.

00:28:17Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:28:17Guest:And he would come.

00:28:18Guest:Cantner would come.

00:28:19Guest:Nash would come.

00:28:20Guest:Johnny would come sometimes.

00:28:22Guest:Grace would come.

00:28:24Guest:Paul Cantner and Grace would come a lot because they weren't.

00:28:29Guest:Grace still is a good friend.

00:28:31Guest:David Freiberg, guys from Santana.

00:28:37Guest:People would come.

00:28:38Guest:Lesh, Cassidy, two fantastic bass players.

00:28:42Guest:And I would sing them a song.

00:28:46Guest:I'd say, well, what about this?

00:28:48Guest:And we would start playing it.

00:28:49Guest:And very often that became the record.

00:28:51Marc:Right.

00:28:53Marc:The actual first groove of it.

00:28:55Marc:Yeah.

00:28:56Marc:Everybody getting in it.

00:28:57Guest:Became the record, yeah.

00:28:58Guest:Like the first song on there, Music is Love.

00:29:01Guest:Yeah.

00:29:01Guest:That's just me and Neil and Nash goofing off.

00:29:05Guest:oh he was there yeah and and uh and nash and we were in the studio and we were just goofing off and uh i had written some some words you know that were related to it but they weren't the same and it just happened and that happened a lot in that record uh because we were open to it and was it did it help you process yeah

00:29:28Guest:to be engaged and around friends and you know like i said music's a lifting force and it really is uh if i you know if there is anybody who puts people on earth to do something and i'm pretty i don't believe that there is but if there were they put me here to make music

00:29:47Marc:Oh, there's no question about that.

00:29:50Marc:And now the déjà vu process, that was different.

00:29:56Marc:That wasn't as loose, was it?

00:29:57Guest:No.

00:29:58Guest:It was very strange.

00:30:00Guest:Neil, you got to understand, was never in the band.

00:30:03Yeah.

00:30:03Guest:No, I got that.

00:30:04Guest:Not in his head.

00:30:05Marc:Yeah.

00:30:05Guest:It was a stepping stone.

00:30:07Guest:Mm-hmm.

00:30:07Guest:He had, what was the one he put out, Harvest, right afterwards?

00:30:11Guest:Whatever it was, he had it ready.

00:30:12Guest:Yeah.

00:30:14Guest:We went in there, and he brought his tracks in.

00:30:17Guest:Uh-huh.

00:30:17Guest:And we sang on them.

00:30:18Guest:Right.

00:30:18Guest:But he made the tracks to Country Girl and Helpless and like that.

00:30:24Marc:They were whole things already.

00:30:25Guest:Yeah, and he brought them in, and then we...

00:30:29Guest:arranged them vocally and and put the vocals on them and made them what they are so it was a kind of strange experience but it was good the music how did that happen did stills bring them in i guess we need to go back so you're when you when you grew up you grew up here right

00:30:46Marc:I was born here.

00:30:47Marc:Right.

00:30:48Guest:I grew up here about fifth grade, and then we moved up to Santa Barbara.

00:30:52Marc:Oh, so nice.

00:30:53Marc:By the beach and whatnot?

00:30:54Marc:Yes.

00:30:55Marc:Living that life?

00:30:56Marc:Yes.

00:30:56Marc:And when do you choose music?

00:30:59Marc:When does music choose you?

00:31:00Guest:I started singing harmony when I was about six.

00:31:02Marc:Uh-huh.

00:31:03Marc:Just natural.

00:31:04Marc:You got it natural.

00:31:05Guest:my my family uh used to play music my brother played guitar yeah uh he gave me my first guitar he was a professional musician right yeah and my dad played my dad played mandolin a little bit and my mom sang in the choir and stuff we used to sit around and sing folk songs oh yeah uh because we didn't have a tv yeah see my dad was a cinematographer he made films

00:31:26Marc:He was a big one, right?

00:31:28Guest:Yeah.

00:31:28Guest:He got an Academy Award and a Golden Globe and stuff.

00:31:31Guest:But anyway, so he, to them, back then in the 50s,

00:31:38Guest:TV was the devil because they hadn't figured out they could show movies on TV.

00:31:43Marc:It's still kind of the devil.

00:31:45Guest:It kind of is.

00:31:49Guest:But back then in the film people, well, they won't come to the theaters.

00:31:55Guest:They'll put us out of business.

00:31:56Guest:This is terrible.

00:31:57Guest:It's awful.

00:31:57Guest:So we didn't have a TV.

00:31:58Marc:Right.

00:31:59Marc:Which actually happened.

00:32:00Marc:That prophecy actually came true.

00:32:02Guest:Yeah, it did.

00:32:04Guest:But we used to sing folk songs and stuff.

00:32:06Guest:And that was what led me into singing.

00:32:08Marc:But it's an open family.

00:32:09Marc:You have a creative family.

00:32:10Marc:They were open-minded people that were in the arts to a degree.

00:32:14Guest:To a degree.

00:32:15Guest:Yeah.

00:32:15Guest:You know, my dad was actually a pretty stiff, old, crusty old guy.

00:32:20Guest:He was born in 1900, so he went through the Depression, was in a B-24 the entire length of the Second World War, doing photo recon kind of stuff.

00:32:31Guest:So he didn't get out after 35 missions.

00:32:33Guest:He just had to keep doing it.

00:32:34Guest:because he was a photographer right yeah and uh so he was he was kind of crusty and stuff but uh you know in any case the music thing happened quite naturally right and then i discovered the other half of the human race and i thought that if you could sing to them it was a good thing

00:32:54Marc:Yeah, good intentions.

00:32:56Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:32:58Marc:You got to find your gift somehow.

00:33:00Marc:You know you got to do something.

00:33:02Marc:Yeah, well, yeah.

00:33:03Marc:And because of your voice, then that leads us to what we started talking about.

00:33:08Marc:There's still a few kids you might not have met yet.

00:33:10Guest:No, I think... You are really... Okay, I'm going to find your weak point.

00:33:19Guest:I'll get you.

00:33:20Guest:What do you mean?

00:33:20Guest:It's all over the place.

00:33:21Guest:You want me to make a list?

00:33:23Guest:I'll shove it across the table for you.

00:33:24Guest:We can compare lists.

00:33:25Guest:Yeah, okay.

00:33:26Guest:I'm sure you did better than me.

00:33:28Guest:You know, like I said, I was pretty irresponsible.

00:33:31Guest:I had a lot of fun.

00:33:33Marc:But when did you start playing in bands?

00:33:37Guest:I was a folky for several years.

00:33:42Guest:Solo?

00:33:43Guest:Yeah.

00:33:43Guest:And then I started doing it with my brother.

00:33:45Guest:And then we needed to actually put some food on the table.

00:33:50Guest:So we were in a band, my friend Bob Ingram and another guy named Mike Clough.

00:33:55Guest:And my brother and I were in a band that I can't even tell you the name.

00:34:00Guest:It's too embarrassing.

00:34:01Guest:But we were in a folk, a commercial folk band.

00:34:04Guest:We can find it.

00:34:06Guest:Yeah, I know you can.

00:34:06Guest:That's where the problem.

00:34:08Guest:Yeah.

00:34:08Guest:But it was pretty terrible.

00:34:09Guest:And then I went out on the road some more.

00:34:12Guest:Solo?

00:34:12Guest:Yeah, by myself, just singing in coffee houses and stuff.

00:34:15Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:34:15Guest:And I came back to L.A.

00:34:16Guest:Mid-60s, early?

00:34:18Guest:Early, before, yeah, before that.

00:34:20Guest:Yeah.

00:34:20Guest:Like right after the Civil War.

00:34:22Marc:Uh-huh.

00:34:23Marc:Sure.

00:34:24Marc:The North won, and you were like, great.

00:34:26Guest:And I was doing great.

00:34:27Guest:Yeah.

00:34:28Guest:And I came back, and I walked into the troubadour, and Roger McGuinn, and he was then, he was Jim McGuinn, and Gene Clark were sitting there singing, Beatle-ish sort of stuff.

00:34:41Guest:Duo.

00:34:42Guest:Yeah.

00:34:42Marc:Yeah.

00:34:43Guest:And it appealed to me a lot.

00:34:45Guest:And so I started singing harmony.

00:34:47Marc:You stepped on stage with them?

00:34:48Marc:They knew who you were?

00:34:49Guest:No, this was just happening in the little front room there in the bar.

00:34:53Guest:Oh, okay.

00:34:53Guest:And we were just goofing around.

00:34:55Guest:And that became the Byrds.

00:34:58Marc:So you were there at the beginning of that.

00:35:01Marc:That was the Byrds.

00:35:02Marc:Yeah.

00:35:02Marc:That was the founding members having their moment, like, we're doing this.

00:35:06Guest:Yeah.

00:35:06Guest:And we knew that it worked.

00:35:08Guest:We liked it.

00:35:09Guest:So we found Hillman and Mike Clark and we made it into a band.

00:35:14Guest:That was the first real band that I was really in.

00:35:17Marc:And that was a pretty powerful band.

00:35:19Marc:It worked.

00:35:19Marc:Yeah.

00:35:20Marc:I mean, you changed the game a bit.

00:35:23Guest:We had a couple of really lucky things.

00:35:25Guest:We figured out how good Bob Dylan was early on before anybody else.

00:35:30Marc:In terms of like you guys respected him as a songwriter and as an artist.

00:35:34Guest:We knew those songs were really good.

00:35:36Guest:So we did that.

00:35:39Guest:And it put us on the map pretty much.

00:35:40Marc:yeah and uh with mr tambourine men and what other did you do other dylan covers no yeah later later on we did yeah uh um baby be good to you uh times of freedom uh yeah yeah yeah and there were several but you had your own you're writing originals too at some point you were writing yeah we started writing origin pretty quickly

00:36:04Marc:Yeah.

00:36:05Marc:And so, but you guys were doing something that had not been done, which was the transition from folk and more country music into rock music, which was really a new thing and a bit psychedelic as well later on.

00:36:20Guest:Yeah.

00:36:20Guest:You know, they kept trying to label this, which was pretty funny.

00:36:22Guest:I have no respect for labels at all because they're generally a way to not think about a thing.

00:36:27Guest:Oh, that's a blah, blah, blah.

00:36:28Guest:And then you don't think about it.

00:36:29Guest:Right.

00:36:29Guest:You've got it tagged.

00:36:30Right.

00:36:30Marc:but but but i'm i'm saying that okay so i'm using those labels but at that time in hollywood in this city you know when the birds are starting to do no we did do it the first wreck right but who were the other bands i mean who are you guys sitting around talking with who are you at the club with you know what we didn't there weren't any la bands that we liked the other bands were people like uh uh paul revere and the raiders really yeah who i normally call paul revere in the rear doors

00:36:55Marc:So it hadn't broken open yet.

00:36:57Marc:No.

00:36:57Marc:You guys were ahead of the curve.

00:36:59Guest:Yeah, way.

00:36:59Guest:Yeah.

00:37:00Guest:And the bands that we liked were the bands that I liked.

00:37:06Marc:Yeah.

00:37:06Guest:The ones that counted for me were Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, Missions of Service, Janus.

00:37:12Marc:So they were all just starting out too.

00:37:13Marc:Yeah.

00:37:14Marc:Mid-60s.

00:37:15Marc:So the first Byrds record is 65.

00:37:16Marc:Yeah.

00:37:17Marc:Mr. Tambourine Man.

00:37:19Guest:And a 64.

00:37:19Marc:Okay.

00:37:20Marc:So it's all just starting to go.

00:37:22Marc:Yeah.

00:37:23Marc:But most of what you liked was in the Bay Area.

00:37:25Guest:I liked them because they weren't Hollywood and they didn't give a damn about show business.

00:37:28Guest:Right.

00:37:30Guest:They did not wear little bellboy jackets.

00:37:32Guest:They played in t-shirts and they played what they wanted.

00:37:35Guest:Yeah.

00:37:35Guest:And they played the way they wanted and they weren't trying to have a hit.

00:37:40Guest:They were trying to play music that got them off.

00:37:42Marc:Yeah.

00:37:43Marc:Were you up against that hip-making sensibility in the birds?

00:37:47Marc:Was McGuinn about that?

00:37:48Guest:No, he wasn't about that.

00:37:49Guest:He was about good stuff.

00:37:52Guest:We were up against the old establishment.

00:37:54Guest:The only reason we got signed to Columbia, actually, we sent them a demo, and they didn't know what to do with that.

00:38:02Guest:They said, what the fuck?

00:38:03Guest:fuck is this really yeah and so they asked miles miles was on colombia yeah and they said what is this mouth he says sign him he told him to sign it and uh so they did but they really had no not one clue did you that's it but it's a surprising ally isn't it yeah i mean

00:38:24Guest:Long connection with Miles.

00:38:26Guest:Later on, he cut one of my tunes.

00:38:28Marc:Which one?

00:38:29Guest:Guinevere.

00:38:29Marc:He did?

00:38:30Guest:Yeah.

00:38:31Guest:Much later on.

00:38:32Guest:And I didn't get it.

00:38:34Guest:Because he called it Guinevere, but he really just played like a chord and went for the horizon.

00:38:41Guest:It's not recognizably Guinevere.

00:38:43Guest:So when he asked me if I wanted to hear it, he walked up to me in New York much later on and said, I am Miles.

00:38:49Guest:Yeah.

00:38:49Guest:I said, I know who you are.

00:38:51Guest:It's a hero of mine, right?

00:38:53Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:38:54Guest:So he says, I got one of your tunes.

00:38:56Guest:I said, Gulp, excuse me?

00:38:59Guest:What?

00:39:01Guest:He said, I got one of your tunes.

00:39:04Guest:I said, which one?

00:39:07Guest:He said, Guinevere, you want to hear it?

00:39:10Guest:I said, yeah, of course I want to hear it.

00:39:12Guest:So he took me up to his house.

00:39:14Guest:He said, follow that car.

00:39:16Guest:And this girl was like legs up to her neck, got in the car, and they drove up to this thing that was...

00:39:24Guest:Somebody had taken a brownstone and converted it to look like a mini castle.

00:39:28Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:39:29Guest:And he was living in there.

00:39:30Guest:And he played me in a tune, and I was really rude.

00:39:34Guest:I said, well, man, you could change the name and get all the publishing, because I don't hear Guinevere in there.

00:39:40Guest:And he threw me out of the house, because he was pissed.

00:39:42Marc:Really?

00:39:43Guest:Yeah.

00:39:44Guest:He almost didn't have a lot of patience with people.

00:39:47Marc:Was that in the 70s, like in that period where he was sort of... And in the 60s, right in there.

00:39:51Marc:So you couldn't identify any melody?

00:39:54Guest:No.

00:39:55Guest:I mean, you listen to it.

00:39:56Guest:You tell me.

00:39:57Guest:But I was kind of short-sighted.

00:39:59Guest:Obviously, it was a huge honor that he did it.

00:40:02Guest:And I brag about it readily now.

00:40:04Marc:Right.

00:40:05Marc:Well, I mean, I don't think it's a surprise.

00:40:08Marc:You were a little cocky, right?

00:40:10Yeah.

00:40:10Guest:A little?

00:40:11Guest:A little?

00:40:15Guest:Are you kidding me?

00:40:17Guest:I had an ego the size of a Mack truck.

00:40:20Marc:Mm-hmm.

00:40:21Marc:Mm-hmm.

00:40:21Marc:That comes across.

00:40:23Marc:Thanks, man.

00:40:25Guest:Good to know.

00:40:25Guest:I thought I had it under control.

00:40:27Marc:Not a chance.

00:40:28Marc:But I mean, but you, you guys were like, I mean, once you started to find, once Janice started, everybody started to come up like what you were, what you were interested in was actually slowly becoming what the audiences were interested in.

00:40:41Marc:Yeah.

00:40:41Marc:It must've been very vindicating and it must've been a good fuck you to the establishment on that level.

00:40:46Marc:And there were some record guys that were for fourth, uh, for had enough for thought, like who were the guys that championed you, you know, in the biz that enabled all you guys to happen.

00:40:58Marc:Nobody.

00:40:59Marc:As in fucking nobody.

00:41:02Marc:Everybody was sort of like, I guess we, let's see what happens.

00:41:05Marc:So they were rolling the dice.

00:41:06Guest:Yeah, you know, they would pay attention if you had a hit.

00:41:09Marc:Right.

00:41:09Guest:And that was the only thing they would really pay attention.

00:41:11Marc:So Mr. Tambourine Man was a hit.

00:41:13Marc:Yeah.

00:41:14Marc:Gigantic.

00:41:14Marc:Couldn't deny it.

00:41:15Guest:Yeah.

00:41:15Guest:But they really didn't pay attention.

00:41:17Guest:The first record people that really actually paid attention to us was a person.

00:41:23Guest:It was Ahmed Erdogan.

00:41:25Guest:The guy.

00:41:25Guest:Yeah, who ran Atlantic Records.

00:41:26Guest:And he was different from all the other guys because he really loved music.

00:41:30Marc:He was like, this guy seems like a real mystic to me.

00:41:33Guest:He was a great cat man.

00:41:34Guest:His father was the ambassador from Turkey.

00:41:37Guest:So he grew up going back and forth and being in the States a lot and he was very comfortable in the States and he loved music.

00:41:43Guest:He and that's what we both did.

00:41:44Guest:They were jazz guys.

00:41:45Guest:And then from that, rhythm and blues guys.

00:41:50Guest:And then they got into the record business.

00:41:52Guest:I could go to a Ray Charles concert and wind up weeping.

00:41:55Guest:I mean, it affected him.

00:41:57Guest:He loved music, and he was our mentor.

00:42:00Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:42:00Guest:He had Stills signed already because of Buffalo Springfield.

00:42:04Guest:So when Stills said, I want to do this group with David Crosby and this English guy, and he said...

00:42:12Guest:okay and he he helped us you know do some little trickery and and get ourselves on the same label and and create css well so so so you were in the birds and you guys had had you'd run the course with them yeah they threw me out because i was an asshole

00:42:33Guest:A moment of rare clarity.

00:42:37Guest:Oops.

00:42:38Guest:Were you upset at the time or were you like- Yeah, of course I was.

00:42:41Guest:He's a good band.

00:42:42Guest:Well, yeah, and I thought I was pretty terrific.

00:42:44Guest:Yeah.

00:42:44Guest:And they thought I was a pain in the ass.

00:42:47Marc:And so you're out of a band and Steven is in Buffalo Springfield.

00:42:51Marc:They only did a couple records.

00:42:52Guest:His band fell apart around him because, again, Neil.

00:42:56Guest:See, Neil's always had a through line.

00:42:58Guest:He's always had a plan.

00:42:59Guest:Yeah.

00:43:00Yeah.

00:43:00Guest:And other people aren't necessarily part of the plan.

00:43:05Guest:He will make music with somebody, but he's got a step beyond that.

00:43:12Marc:You think he was conscious of that?

00:43:13Guest:Yeah.

00:43:14Guest:But I'm not saying that he was mean or anything.

00:43:18Guest:He just had a plan.

00:43:19Guest:And look at, Neil's bigger than we are by a long shot.

00:43:23Marc:You know, he's a huge... He seems to stubbornly do his own thing.

00:43:28Guest:He does.

00:43:29Guest:Yeah.

00:43:30Guest:He follows fashion a little bit, but not enough to be bad about it.

00:43:35Guest:Right.

00:43:36Guest:He, you know, he'll listen a little bit to what's out there, but he doesn't really, you know, he tells you that he doesn't listen to other people at all.

00:43:44Guest:Uh-huh.

00:43:46Guest:When I sent him Cross, the Cross record, he said, oh, okay, I'll listen to two songs.

00:43:52Yeah.

00:43:52Guest:He was grudging, you know.

00:43:56Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:43:58Guest:Okay.

00:43:59Guest:But he's very bright.

00:44:02Marc:Yeah.

00:44:02Guest:And he's very, very much his own guy.

00:44:04Marc:Yeah.

00:44:05Marc:But it's interesting.

00:44:05Marc:But you guys, so like really when you think about it, like I know...

00:44:09Marc:Like, obviously, you and McGuinn probably were friends.

00:44:13Marc:Yeah.

00:44:14Marc:And, like, so now Stills wants out of Buffalo Springfield where it's falling apart.

00:44:18Marc:And him and Neil are childhood friends.

00:44:21Marc:But you and Neil meet later, really, right?

00:44:24Marc:Yeah.

00:44:24Marc:So you're not, like, you don't have this long relationship when you do deja vu necessarily, right?

00:44:29Yeah.

00:44:29Guest:There had been some.

00:44:32Guest:What happened, how that actually went down was I was sitting in Joni's driveway in Laurel Canyon and waiting for her to get back or her and I think she might already have been switched over from me to Graham.

00:44:48Marc:You both dated her?

00:44:50Guest:uh yeah she was my lady for about a year yeah i produced her first record right and then uh she went to graham yeah then to how did that not cause all kinds of bullshit well because i had already found somebody that i loved the girl who got killed and i and um

00:45:09Guest:Then James Taylor, then Jackson Brown, then there was a list.

00:45:13Marc:Of Joanie people.

00:45:16Marc:Talented people.

00:45:16Marc:Well, she liked singers, I guess.

00:45:17Guest:Yeah, I guess.

00:45:19Guest:And I was sitting there in a waiting and Neil drove by and he saw me.

00:45:26Guest:So he turned around, came back and pulled in.

00:45:29Guest:And at this point, we were thinking about how we were going to do going out on the road, CSN.

00:45:35Guest:We had the biggest record in the country.

00:45:36Guest:And...

00:45:40Guest:Neil comes up and says, hey, I want to hear a song.

00:45:46Guest:And I said, sure.

00:45:47Guest:And he sits down in the trunk of the car with me and with his guitar.

00:45:51Guest:And he sings me, Helpless.

00:45:55Guest:Helpless.

00:45:57Guest:God, I don't know, like three or four songs.

00:46:00Really good.

00:46:02Guest:Really good songs.

00:46:04Guest:And it blew me away.

00:46:06Guest:So I went back to Stephen and Graham and I said, we got to do it.

00:46:09Guest:He's got to be the other guy.

00:46:10Guest:Because when we'd made the record, Stephen had played keyboard and guitar.

00:46:14Guest:That's how he got the Captain Many Hands thing.

00:46:18Guest:So we knew that somebody had to be playing guitar while Stephen was playing keyboard and somebody had to be playing keyboard when he was playing guitar.

00:46:24Guest:Neil was the guy.

00:46:25Marc:So this is after the CSN record and before Deja Vu, and this is heading into what became Four Way Street?

00:46:32Guest:This was heading into Woodstock.

00:46:34Guest:Oh, okay.

00:46:38Guest:When he sang me those songs, I had been very iffy about having him there because I knew he wasn't my buddy.

00:46:45Marc:But he was Steve's buddy, no?

00:46:47Guest:To a degree.

00:46:48Guest:Yeah.

00:46:50Guest:But I knew how good he was.

00:46:51Guest:Yeah.

00:46:52Guest:I knew how good those songs were.

00:46:53Guest:And they were irrefutable.

00:46:54Marc:And you liked his voice?

00:46:55Yeah.

00:46:56Guest:Relatively.

00:46:57Guest:It's not, you know, he wasn't as good a singer as I was, you know, or as good as Steven was, you know.

00:47:04Guest:But he could tell the tale, and the songs were spectacular.

00:47:08Guest:And to me, songs have always been the key to the entirety.

00:47:11Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:12Marc:So you tell Steve, and Steve what?

00:47:15Marc:What does he say?

00:47:16Guest:He says, well, yeah, I was right, wasn't I?

00:47:17Marc:Yeah.

00:47:18Yeah.

00:47:19Guest:and you had played with steve before as a a little bit right before before csn in springfield right you did what would you do a tour with them or did you do it no i chris hillman took me down and said you got to hear this band got to hear them yeah and and it was uh stills and and neil yeah and i i went holy this is good shit yeah that was how i got turned on to steven and neil both

00:47:43Guest:and so now you guys start rehearsing for woodstock uh we started playing together i don't think i don't know if we ever really rehearsed you know legitimately yeah we would play together and and stuff would happen yeah

00:47:58Guest:This is so funny to talk through this history stuff because I'm very foggy about it all because I don't think about it very much.

00:48:04Marc:Yeah.

00:48:04Marc:Is it bothering you?

00:48:05Marc:No.

00:48:05Marc:Oh.

00:48:06Guest:No.

00:48:06Guest:I mean, what do I focus on?

00:48:09Guest:I focus on what I did last night.

00:48:10Guest:Sure.

00:48:11Guest:I mean, we created a new song last night.

00:48:13Marc:You did?

00:48:13Guest:Yeah.

00:48:15Guest:James and I, that's why this girl, Tao, is texting me because I tweeted about it this morning because...

00:48:23Guest:She wrote the music and I wrote the words.

00:48:26Guest:But we did a piece of really good work last night.

00:48:30Guest:Working with James is a joy, man.

00:48:32Guest:Your son.

00:48:33Guest:Yeah.

00:48:35Guest:You know, we listen to a lot of the same music.

00:48:37Guest:A lot of jazz, a lot of Steely Dan, a lot of more complex singer-songwriter stuff.

00:48:44Guest:Joni.

00:48:47Marc:That's a voice that it's almost hard to understand where it came from, isn't it?

00:48:50Marc:Joni Mitchell.

00:48:51Marc:Like, what is... How does that happen?

00:48:54Marc:It's never happened again.

00:48:55Yeah.

00:48:55Guest:No, I don't know if it will.

00:48:57Guest:And you know, she shot her voice to shit.

00:48:59Guest:Yeah.

00:49:00Guest:Smoking.

00:49:00Guest:Yeah.

00:49:01Guest:And she's gone through a, she took a bad hit, man.

00:49:04Marc:Yeah, I know.

00:49:04Marc:Recent.

00:49:05Marc:Yeah.

00:49:06Marc:Are you in touch with her?

00:49:07Guest:Distantly, yes.

00:49:08Guest:I'm supposed to go by.

00:49:09Guest:I have permission to go by.

00:49:10Marc:Yeah.

00:49:12Guest:I will go by her.

00:49:13Marc:Right, right.

00:49:14Guest:I love her.

00:49:15Guest:Yeah.

00:49:15Guest:I mean, we all do.

00:49:17Guest:We can't help it.

00:49:18Guest:You can't listen to the album Blue and not love Joni Mitchell.

00:49:22Guest:Right.

00:49:22Guest:It's impossible.

00:49:23Guest:Yeah.

00:49:24Guest:If you have ears on your head, you have to love her.

00:49:28Guest:When you get to the end of that record, you say, oh, I love that woman.

00:49:30Guest:so the new song you're working on how what is uh what's the uh how many like tracks how many people playing so far yeah just an incredible guitar player named greg lease uh-huh he's in jackson's band right now and uh but he's worked on dozens of records you and jackson tight yeah that's good oh i love the guy yeah he's terrific yeah you know he walked in somewhere back there he walks into a room at a friend of mine's house who said hey you got to hear this kid and he was like 19

00:49:58Guest:Who's this?

00:49:59Marc:The kid?

00:49:59Marc:Jackson.

00:49:59Guest:Yeah.

00:50:00Guest:And he walks into the room and I said, hey, a friend tells me that you write songs.

00:50:06Guest:And he says, yeah.

00:50:07Guest:I said, can you sing me some?

00:50:09Guest:And he sat down and he sang me Jamaica, Something Fine, and Adam in a row.

00:50:16Guest:And I went, holy shit, here comes the next wave.

00:50:23Guest:Wow.

00:50:24Guest:And I sang all those harmonies on his first record.

00:50:27Marc:On Dr. My Eyes?

00:50:28Guest:Well, there's a bunch of them.

00:50:30Guest:On Something Fine, on Jamaica, a bunch of them.

00:50:33Marc:Well, I remember when someone turned me on to that album, the one that Dr. My Eyes is on it, and they said that you were the back.

00:50:39Marc:And I just remember the first time listening close enough to identify your voice.

00:50:43Guest:And I was like, that is him.

00:50:45Guest:I'm sneaky.

00:50:47Guest:Sometimes you can't really tell it's me.

00:50:49Marc:There's a seamlessness to something that something happens when you sing with certain people where it becomes one thing.

00:50:55Guest:Yeah.

00:50:56Guest:If you're good.

00:50:57Guest:Yeah.

00:50:57Marc:Yeah.

00:50:57Marc:It's what you try for.

00:50:58Marc:Well, that's great that you got this great tune.

00:51:01Guest:uh i got a bunch of them and i don't understand it man this is a very strange thing yeah um most people they get to my age they kind of peter out maybe that's a bad turn to phrase you can fix that they have peter pills yeah yeah i was afraid i knew you were going there low hanging fruit you had to go i don't know how low it is david

00:51:24Marc:That's a little too much information.

00:51:29Guest:Jesus Christ.

00:51:30Guest:I forgot what I'm dealing with here.

00:51:32Marc:Okay.

00:51:32Marc:I don't always like that.

00:51:33Marc:You set me up.

00:51:35Marc:It was a softball.

00:51:35Marc:I'm sorry, man.

00:51:36Marc:I'm sorry.

00:51:38Marc:Well, I think they don't peter up, but there's certain things like what people want to spend their energy on.

00:51:43Marc:I think as they get older, it just changes.

00:51:45Marc:Some people are like, I'm fucking done.

00:51:47Guest:Yeah.

00:51:48Guest:And also, they think that they've said whatever they've got to say.

00:51:51Marc:Right.

00:51:51Guest:Or they just get lazy.

00:51:53Guest:Sure.

00:51:54Guest:Or their brain goes.

00:51:55Guest:Or their brain goes.

00:51:56Guest:Or they get too into the drugs or the booze.

00:51:59Marc:Yeah, that doesn't last.

00:52:00Marc:I mean, you're like the outside of the possibilities of living through that.

00:52:05Marc:Yeah.

00:52:05Marc:I mean, I have to assume that most of the guys that continued that lifestyle that you knew from back in the day are dead.

00:52:10Guest:Yeah.

00:52:12Guest:However, what happens is, normally, people get as old as I am, and I am older than dirt.

00:52:20Marc:What, you're 72?

00:52:21Yeah.

00:52:22Guest:Let's not even go there.

00:52:24Guest:I'm very old.

00:52:26Guest:I'm like 92.

00:52:27Guest:Okay, 92, David Crosby.

00:52:32Guest:But what's happened is the last couple of years, see, about three years ago, I decided I wanted to get out of CSN because there was just no forward motion.

00:52:43Guest:in terms of new work yeah and in terms of you know the dynamic between the three of us wasn't good and and it just wasn't exciting for me it wasn't exciting at all and you guys could still sell tickets right oh yeah yeah and we could still deliver a show that sounded pretty good because Nash and I could still sing harmony really really well yeah we Nash a fantastic harmony we do we do have a magic that we can do

00:53:07Marc:Well, you did how many albums just to two of you, like four?

00:53:10Marc:Yeah.

00:53:11Marc:Yeah.

00:53:11Marc:It's good.

00:53:12Guest:It's good music.

00:53:13Guest:But anyway, so somewhere about two years ago,

00:53:21Guest:I started a search, uh, I've always written, you know, in bursts kind of, uh, and then it'd be an empty part and then I'll sing, you know, write a bunch and then not.

00:53:34Guest:This is like two years now of really intense, uh, density of writing.

00:53:40Guest:It's just really coming a lot.

00:53:42Marc:And do you see the difference?

00:53:44Marc:Do you see a wisdom that has evolved in your writing?

00:53:48Guest:That's for somebody else to say.

00:53:50Guest:Yes, I feel that, but it's not good for me to say that.

00:53:53Guest:Right.

00:53:55Guest:I think I'm doing...

00:53:58Guest:Since we started CPR, James and I, I think I've been doing some of the best writing of my life.

00:54:04Guest:And the Cross Record, you know, that's good.

00:54:07Guest:There's pretty good songs on there.

00:54:09Guest:It's pretty good writing.

00:54:10Guest:And it's just gone on.

00:54:13Guest:I kept waiting for it to stop, and it hasn't stopped.

00:54:16Guest:I've made an entire... You ever hear of a band called Snarky Puppy?

00:54:19Marc:No.

00:54:20Marc:Good band?

00:54:21Guest:Oh, man.

00:54:22Yeah.

00:54:23Marc:Yeah.

00:54:25Guest:Holy shit.

00:54:26Marc:Great.

00:54:27Marc:I don't know why I don't know.

00:54:28Guest:Yeah, well, most people don't know.

00:54:30Guest:There's a band called Snarky Puppy.

00:54:32Marc:Look them up on YouTube.

00:54:33Marc:Don't blow your mind out your ear.

00:54:35Guest:I just finished making a record with Michael League, who's the band leader and composer for that band.

00:54:42Guest:And I still had so many songs, I could start another record with my son, James.

00:54:45Marc:Right, but I guess the question becomes for me just impulsively is...

00:54:50Marc:for whatever reason, these were not songs that you were like, well, me and Graham should do this, me and Stephen and Graham should do this, me and, no.

00:54:56Marc:They were your songs.

00:54:58Guest:The chemistry hasn't been good enough in CSN for a long time for us to want to go in the studio with each other.

00:55:04Guest:Yeah.

00:55:06Guest:A long time.

00:55:07Guest:uh but the songs are there and they're what i live for right you know and and i've been writing a lot with other people i wrote a really good song with michael mcdonald how's he doing oh terrific yeah he's one of the the only guy who can sing better than him is stevie wonder uh-huh i mean he's spectacular his voice holding up michael's voice is holding up

00:55:30Marc:Does he tour solo?

00:55:33Marc:Are the doobies going together?

00:55:34Guest:No, no, he doesn't want to work with them.

00:55:37Marc:You guys and your bands.

00:55:39Guest:Yeah.

00:55:41Guest:But he's fantastic.

00:55:44Guest:We wrote a really good song together.

00:55:46Guest:I've written songs.

00:55:48Guest:I found this girl when I was doing a benefit record with Snarky Puppy.

00:55:52Guest:I found this girl, Becca Stevens, who's excellent.

00:55:56Guest:She's got a new record called Perfect Animal.

00:56:00Guest:And this girl has her own take on singer-songwriter.

00:56:05Guest:She's really good.

00:56:06Guest:Wrote a great song with her.

00:56:07Guest:I think I'm writing a song with Donald Fagan.

00:56:12Guest:I think I'm writing a song with Van Dyke Parks.

00:56:15Guest:I think I'm writing a song with...

00:56:17Marc:What does that mean, that you've had a couple of emails and you've... Yeah, that means I've sent him words.

00:56:24Guest:And we'll see how it turns out.

00:56:26Guest:I like writing with other people.

00:56:29Guest:I write with my son constantly, and I write with this guy, Michael League, constantly.

00:56:34Guest:Michael came to my house, man, we wrote three songs in three days.

00:56:37Guest:Bam, really good ones.

00:56:41Marc:They're on my computer.

00:56:42Marc:How do you know when a... I mean, I've never written a song...

00:56:46Guest:what how does it work dude i mean like every which way yeah yeah do you start with words or do you play or that's funny that's the most frequent question i get asked on twitter oh really yeah what comes first and the answer is everything uh it happens every possible way it could happen here's the thing you have to be

00:57:10Guest:open to it you can't legislate it into being you know you can but it's not very good you can say okay i want to write a song about the eiffel tower it's big and it's tall and it's made out of iron which is my tendency to go direct to directly at it that way yeah but that's not it uh that's kind of like trying to force the issue

00:57:32Guest:What you can do is pick up the guitar or sit down at the piano or have a patent pencil or a computer and sort of go, okay, I'm ready.

00:57:41Guest:Yoo-hoo.

00:57:42Guest:Are you out there?

00:57:43Guest:And see what comes.

00:57:45Guest:I fool around in these tunings every day.

00:57:50Guest:I pick up the guitar in a strange tuning and I try to find new shit.

00:57:55Guest:And I do every time.

00:57:58Guest:Every time.

00:57:58Marc:how many tunings you working with oh maybe 10. yeah wow at least so you have like five or six guitars all tuned different hanging around yeah in the bedroom uh-huh yeah on the wall stands everywhere a bunch of them and um

00:58:15Guest:So when I find something, I noodle with it, and it becomes the music of a song.

00:58:24Guest:One of the best things that happened to me about songwriting was Joni Mitchell said to me, write that down.

00:58:31Guest:And I said, what?

00:58:32Guest:She said, you just said something really good.

00:58:35Guest:Yeah.

00:58:36Guest:You do that all the time.

00:58:37Guest:You toss off, you know, conversationally, other people would work something months to get, and you forget about it.

00:58:44Guest:If you don't write it down, it didn't happen.

00:58:47Guest:Yeah.

00:58:48Guest:Brilliant phrase.

00:58:49Guest:Yeah.

00:58:49Guest:Brilliant truth.

00:58:51Guest:So I started writing it down.

00:58:52Guest:So I have these scraps, millions of scraps, and I'll pick them up and look at them.

00:58:56Guest:I'll look at a line and say, well...

00:58:59Guest:that's actually a pretty good line.

00:59:01Guest:Maybe that needs to go, and bam, I'm off and running.

00:59:05Guest:But every day, I make a space for it.

00:59:09Guest:I work at it.

00:59:10Guest:I don't take it for granted.

00:59:13Guest:And I don't try to just create it by the pound.

00:59:16Guest:The song has to mean something to me.

00:59:17Guest:It has to take you on some kind of voyage, affect you in some way.

00:59:23Guest:And I love it.

00:59:24Guest:I love playing live, but I really love making songs up.

00:59:28Marc:And now there's technology to where you can almost do a studio record at your son's house.

00:59:35Guest:Yeah, I can.

00:59:36Marc:I have.

00:59:38Guest:We don't have any money.

00:59:39Guest:We don't have a record company giving us a big budget or anything.

00:59:42Guest:We made cross record on the grocery money.

00:59:47Guest:We couldn't have done it if James hadn't had a studio in his house and hadn't been really brilliant at it.

00:59:52Marc:I mean, but that's the world we live in now.

00:59:55Marc:Yeah.

00:59:55Marc:I mean, I imagine, like, you know, having survived, you know, I can't imagine, like, after deja vu, what was offered to you, it must have been pretty spectacular.

01:00:05Guest:Yeah, we were able to go in and do wretched excess.

01:00:09Guest:Yeah.

01:00:10Guest:You know, go to the studio for months at a time, order gigantic meals, take all afternoon to fool around with one thing, spend a lot of time getting stoned and laughing.

01:00:19Guest:And, you know, and...

01:00:21Guest:We didn't care.

01:00:23Guest:Somebody else's money always actually our money, but we didn't really pay attention.

01:00:26Guest:You didn't know that, yeah.

01:00:27Guest:It's coming out.

01:00:28Guest:No, it's like we're having fun.

01:00:31Guest:I don't do that.

01:00:31Guest:I can't do that.

01:00:32Guest:I don't have the money.

01:00:33Guest:I don't have very much money at all in my life, but it's not why I came to the party.

01:00:39Guest:I didn't come to be a star.

01:00:43Guest:To be rich.

01:00:44Guest:I didn't come to be rich.

01:00:45Guest:I didn't come to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.

01:00:49Marc:I came to- But you did get all those things.

01:00:51Guest:Yeah.

01:00:53Marc:Yeah.

01:00:54Guest:But they weren't.

01:00:55Marc:Sure.

01:00:55Marc:No, I get it.

01:00:56Guest:They weren't my raison d'etre.

01:00:57Marc:Was it the same with Ollie's?

01:00:58Marc:I mean, was it like, you know, did Graham and Stephen feel the same way?

01:01:02Guest:You from the East Coast?

01:01:03Marc:A little bit.

01:01:05Marc:Do you have family from Jersey?

01:01:06Guest:Did you say Ollie's?

01:01:07Marc:Yeah.

01:01:07Marc:Well, I mean, sometimes it switches up.

01:01:09Marc:Come see, I heard it.

01:01:10Marc:My family's from Jersey, but like I pick up things.

01:01:14Marc:Yeah.

01:01:14Marc:You got me.

01:01:15Guest:I gotcha.

01:01:16Marc:Yeah, the Jersey roots.

01:01:17Guest:Yeah, well, that's good with me.

01:01:19Marc:Was it everybody's intention just to make good music?

01:01:27Marc:No.

01:01:30Marc:Yeah.

01:01:31Marc:No.

01:01:32Marc:But you guys weren't making easy music.

01:01:34Marc:No.

01:01:37Marc:There's nothing really on Deja Vu or even on CSN that was like, this is going to be a pop hit.

01:01:44Guest:No.

01:01:45Guest:We didn't... You know, I've never had a hit.

01:01:49Guest:I've been in bands that had big hits.

01:01:50Guest:Right.

01:01:51Guest:Lots of them.

01:01:52Guest:But I've never had one.

01:01:53Guest:And for the most part, I don't think that's what we were aiming to do.

01:01:58Guest:Uh-huh.

01:01:59Guest:Maybe, you know, we were certainly happy about it with the birds.

01:02:02Guest:We were trying to get on the radio.

01:02:04Guest:But... How did Woodstock go?

01:02:11Guest:I can't remember.

01:02:13No.

01:02:13Marc:I can't even imagine what it would have been like walking into that.

01:02:16Guest:And we didn't walk in.

01:02:18Marc:Flew in.

01:02:18Marc:Yeah.

01:02:19Marc:In a chopper.

01:02:20Guest:Yeah.

01:02:24Guest:There's some significant stuff about what happened there that really gets missed.

01:02:29Guest:Yeah.

01:02:30Guest:Everybody gets off on how big it was or how significant it was.

01:02:34Guest:Right.

01:02:35Guest:Or a generation coming of age or a generation finding out that they existed.

01:02:41Guest:Yeah.

01:02:41Guest:Suddenly seeing themselves.

01:02:43Guest:There was some other stuff.

01:02:47Guest:There's never been a gathering that large that I know about where nobody got murdered, nobody got robbed, nobody got raped.

01:02:56Guest:Didn't happen.

01:02:57Guest:So there was something going on.

01:03:01Guest:Some sense of community, some sense of brotherhood, some sense of something going on.

01:03:07Guest:I remember seeing a girl walking barefoot in the mud, cut her foot badly.

01:03:15Guest:I remember a highway patrolman walking over to her and picking her up.

01:03:20Guest:and carrying her to his car.

01:03:23Guest:And then I watched about 15 hippies push the car out of the mud.

01:03:27Guest:And I said, wait a minute, that's working.

01:03:30Guest:This is a step up.

01:03:32Guest:I remember feeling really good right at that minute because cops were our enemy.

01:03:38Guest:And to see that all go away for a second, there was something there.

01:03:45Guest:There was something there.

01:03:47Guest:I hesitate to say spiritually, but there was something happening between the human beings there that I have not seen anywhere else.

01:03:55Guest:And you can't recreate it.

01:03:57Guest:They tried to adopt him on.

01:03:58Guest:Whoa, what a mistake.

01:04:00Guest:You can't really do anything twice.

01:04:02Guest:Whatever you do is going to be a different thing than no matter how much you try to copy the first thing that happened.

01:04:08Guest:Sure.

01:04:08Guest:The second thing that happens is going to be different.

01:04:10Marc:And also, did you stay for the whole thing?

01:04:13Guest:Yeah.

01:04:14Marc:I just recently saw footage of people that I didn't even like, because I'm always a little late to the party, but I just recently watched Tim Harden at Woodstock.

01:04:22Guest:Good songwriter.

01:04:25Guest:The really funny shit is that a bunch of people, because the Woodstock people who were making the movie, themselves brothers, didn't have any money to pay you.

01:04:36Guest:Right.

01:04:37Guest:a lot of people wouldn't consent to be in the movie right a lot of people made a huge mistake neil young for one yeah uh grateful dead for another jefferson airplane for another they they weren't in the movie uh-huh because their managers or they thought well you know where's the cash and they didn't realize it was going to be a giant

01:05:00Guest:hit and that being in it was worth far more than any cash they could have gotten and didn't hendrix go on at some weird time like yeah he went out like five o'clock in the morning or something it time took a a vacation there yeah for a while were you close with him yeah relatively yeah i liked the guy a lot he was much quieter and much nicer than you would think seeing him being flamboyant on stage sure uh

01:05:30Guest:But if his hand could touch the keyboard, he could play anything.

01:05:37Guest:Anything.

01:05:38Guest:He could play Bach.

01:05:39Guest:He could play babies crying.

01:05:40Guest:He could play a war.

01:05:41Guest:He could play planets colliding.

01:05:44Guest:It didn't matter what it was.

01:05:46Guest:He could make it happen if that one hand could touch that keyboard.

01:05:50Marc:The one thing I don't talk to a lot of people about, like James Taylor was in here, and he's very- Yeah, James.

01:05:55Marc:Yeah.

01:05:56Guest:One of my favorite people.

01:05:57Marc:Well, it was just one of these things where he was very candid about the struggle with heroin.

01:06:03Marc:Like he laid it out.

01:06:05Guest:He's a program guy, so he's really honest.

01:06:07Guest:Right, right.

01:06:08Guest:That's what they taught us.

01:06:09Guest:You go in those rooms, and they tell you that the way to deal with it- Is be honest.

01:06:14Guest:Is be honest, look at it very straight on, and then set it down.

01:06:18Marc:Right, but he don't have to do that publicly.

01:06:20Marc:I was just nice because I'm a program guy that he was able to do it.

01:06:23Guest:He's been that way from the get-go, man.

01:06:25Guest:He's a very honest, very high ground human being.

01:06:31Guest:He's one of the people I admire most in the whole business.

01:06:34Guest:I'm so happy he made that record.

01:06:36Guest:That last record was so good.

01:06:37Marc:It was good.

01:06:38Marc:The newest one.

01:06:39Marc:Oh, man.

01:06:40Guest:Awesome record.

01:06:41Marc:It's kind of wild, you know, because, like, you know, people, you wonder, like, what's that guy be doing?

01:06:44Marc:And he's like, he's been doing great stuff just like he always has.

01:06:46Guest:Hey, man, it was the number one record.

01:06:48Guest:It's the first one he's ever had.

01:06:49Marc:The last one.

01:06:50Guest:Yeah.

01:06:50Marc:No kidding.

01:06:51Guest:Yeah.

01:06:51Guest:And he's as old as I am.

01:06:53Marc:Yeah.

01:06:53Guest:And that was a big encouragement to me.

01:06:55Marc:Yeah.

01:06:55Guest:I see him, you know.

01:06:57Guest:functioning on the very highest level writing superb songs singing incredibly well playing better than anybody there's nobody can play in that style as well as he does yeah and uh and i admire him tremendously he's been a friend for a long time and i really love him well but the yeah it was i mean we've sung with him a bunch yeah you know uh mexico yeah that's me and nash yeah yeah yeah lighthouse yeah bottom we've sung with him a bunch of times

01:07:23Marc:It's a perfect match in a way, right?

01:07:25Marc:Yeah.

01:07:26Marc:But I guess my point was is that one thing that people don't talk about intimately, and I touched on it with Neil a little bit, but it was in passing, and just being as we are program guys, it's just like how hard...

01:07:41Marc:that generation of performers got laid out by fucking dope and by you know like in that that people like they glorify it or romanticize it but it must have been horrible to not be able to help anybody you can't help anybody it was horrifying and it was and it it didn't just screw us up it killed us

01:07:59Guest:One time, Mark, I took this page, you know, one of those double yellow legal tablets, you know, big ones like this?

01:08:07Guest:Yeah.

01:08:08Guest:I took one of those and I started writing down, I think I started with Cass.

01:08:13Guest:Yeah.

01:08:14Guest:And then I wrote Jimmy.

01:08:15Guest:Cass Elliott?

01:08:16Guest:Yeah.

01:08:16Guest:Close friend.

01:08:17Guest:Yeah.

01:08:17Guest:Real good human being.

01:08:19Guest:Uh-huh.

01:08:20Guest:then i wrote hendrix then i wrote janice these are all my friends and and i i was getting close to the end of the second page when i finally stopped because i couldn't stand it of people who passed yeah it killed us man dope killed us yeah cocaine and heroin just freaking killed us

01:08:38Guest:And, you know, our experience coming into it, we'd been smoking pot and taking psychedelics, and they didn't do any harm to you.

01:08:45Guest:Right.

01:08:45Guest:Unless you were already psycho.

01:08:47Guest:Right.

01:08:47Guest:Then taking acid, probably not a good idea.

01:08:49Guest:Right.

01:08:50Guest:But I remember, you know, people telling me, oh, cocaine's not addictive.

01:08:56Guest:You can just, which is utter nonsense.

01:08:58Guest:Sure.

01:08:59Guest:It's the most addictive substance on the planet.

01:09:00Guest:Yeah.

01:09:02Guest:And it destroyed us.

01:09:03Guest:Yeah.

01:09:03Guest:It killed just...

01:09:06Marc:shot us down in rows well most a lot of people were doing the coke and then doing the dope to take you down yeah yeah classic thing yeah so but but it seems like you know out of the the bunch of you like uh just in terms of csn land that you were the the hardest right yeah yeah well i i you know went down the tubes of cocaine and then i found out you could smoke it

01:09:28Guest:smoke coke yeah yeah and uh that's when it really got grubby yeah uh you know that's that's the quickest nastiest slide to the bottom there is is free basing and were you doing dope too yeah yeah yeah both and which believe me trying to kick cocaine and heroin in a texas prison cell is not fun

01:09:49Marc:Well, here's a good question.

01:09:51Marc:And this is like the weird question because, you know, being recovered, you know, as we are, that, you know, you don't know at the time that, you know, if someone's in that, there's nothing you can fucking do to stop them.

01:10:03Marc:So you're a guy that- You can set an example.

01:10:05Marc:Right.

01:10:06Marc:But I mean, but when you're- That's the one thing you can.

01:10:07Marc:When you're spiraling, like at the time, I mean, you were still, you know, on and off the road with CSN, right?

01:10:14Marc:Yeah.

01:10:14Marc:I mean, you were an older dude.

01:10:16Marc:You were in your 40s, right?

01:10:18Yeah.

01:10:18Marc:Yeah.

01:10:18Marc:So, like, you'd made it through your 20s and 30s having a good time.

01:10:22Guest:I was going downhill very rapidly.

01:10:24Guest:And people tried to help.

01:10:27Guest:You know, the intention was there.

01:10:29Guest:Jackson and my pal, Carl Gottlieb, and Nash and some other people tried to do an intervention.

01:10:37Marc:Were you just holed up?

01:10:38Marc:Like, in your house?

01:10:40Yeah.

01:10:40Marc:paranoid and fucking... Yeah, it was a mess.

01:10:44Guest:And very little higher consciousness still available to me, which was very bad.

01:10:50Marc:Yeah.

01:10:52Guest:Then I went to prison.

01:10:54Marc:You got busted in Texas.

01:10:55Marc:What were you doing in Texas to begin with?

01:10:56Marc:Playing.

01:10:58Marc:Solo?

01:10:58Guest:Yeah.

01:10:59Guest:and uh and i went to prison and and it was horrifying hey rock star how are you you look terrible bet you wish weren't here now huh hey hey look look rock star sick again some bitch ain't that grand really it was horrible they didn't didn't have any meetings in in the prison but was there any respect for you or is it zero

01:11:22Marc:It was probably the opposite.

01:11:24Guest:Yeah.

01:11:24Guest:It worked against me.

01:11:28Guest:But I got through it.

01:11:28Guest:And the point is, it takes what it takes, as you well know.

01:11:32Marc:Sure.

01:11:32Marc:It takes whatever it takes.

01:11:33Marc:Jails, institutions, and death.

01:11:34Guest:Yeah.

01:11:35Guest:And so that's what it took.

01:11:37Guest:And I don't regret it.

01:11:39Guest:I don't regret that year.

01:11:40Guest:It saved my life.

01:11:41Marc:I just remember those pictures.

01:11:42Marc:I remember when it first happened, when you first got busted.

01:11:44Marc:They had the before and then after where they cut all your hair off.

01:11:47Guest:Yeah, it was horrible.

01:11:48Marc:Yeah.

01:11:49Guest:Yeah.

01:11:51Guest:But...

01:11:53Guest:I'm here.

01:11:54Marc:Did people come see you in prison?

01:11:57Guest:Carl did, my friend Carl.

01:11:58Guest:He did.

01:11:59Guest:I don't think anybody else did.

01:12:03Guest:Carl's the one who wrote my autobiography, the first one, and the second one.

01:12:06Guest:There's two of them.

01:12:08Guest:Long time gone, and then later on, another one called Since Then, which are remarkably honest books.

01:12:15Guest:partly because they taught me to be honest about it, and so I was.

01:12:20Guest:Other people's biographies have been notably lacking in that quality.

01:12:27Marc:But what about the guns?

01:12:28Marc:Why were you carrying guns around?

01:12:29Guest:You know, where I came from,

01:12:31Guest:Yeah.

01:12:33Guest:Like when I moved out of L.A., we moved up to a farm in Carpinteria.

01:12:36Guest:And when you turned 12, you got a .22.

01:12:38Marc:Sure.

01:12:39Marc:I get it.

01:12:40Marc:I just wondered if it was paranoia or you were just... Well, it was after a while.

01:12:44Guest:But I was raised with a whole different viewpoint about it was just part of life.

01:12:49Marc:Right.

01:12:50Guest:Sure.

01:12:50Guest:Being a rifleman was a normal thing.

01:12:52Guest:Yeah.

01:12:54Guest:So then the...

01:12:57Guest:the Manson thing happened.

01:12:59Guest:And that was a half a mile away from my house at Terry Meltzer's house.

01:13:03Marc:Who you knew?

01:13:04Guest:He was one of the producers of The Birds.

01:13:06Marc:Terry was.

01:13:07Guest:I'd been to that house.

01:13:09Guest:About a half mile from my house.

01:13:11Guest:And I said, you know, that's not okay.

01:13:14Guest:I'm getting a 12-cage.

01:13:15Marc:Did you know of Manson previous?

01:13:17Marc:No.

01:13:17Marc:He wasn't around.

01:13:19Guest:Never met him.

01:13:20Marc:Yeah.

01:13:20Guest:Grateful I didn't.

01:13:22Guest:It was horrible.

01:13:23Guest:Don't want to get any of that on you.

01:13:27Guest:But, yeah, that's where the guns came from.

01:13:31Guest:I did get scared about it, and I got more scared when they shot John Lennon.

01:13:35Guest:But, you know, it's...

01:13:41Guest:Guns is a funny thing.

01:13:42Guest:It's not the gun.

01:13:43Guest:Yeah.

01:13:44Guest:It's the nut behind the wheel.

01:13:45Guest:Sure.

01:13:46Marc:I agree.

01:13:48Guest:I know a lot of people would like it to be the gun because that makes it external.

01:13:54Guest:Right.

01:13:54Guest:But the problem's internal.

01:13:56Guest:Sure.

01:13:57Guest:And I don't understand why we have the problem of violence that we do in the United States.

01:14:02Guest:Because here, and this is an interesting thing.

01:14:04Guest:i you know was ready to put it put it down to the cultural matrix yeah to people see you see somebody get shot every 10 minutes on tv constantly uh i mean it's all about that um movies and tv are just constant gun violence yeah um however

01:14:27Guest:The Canadians watch the same TV and the same movies, and they don't have anywhere near the rate.

01:14:31Marc:No, no, absolutely.

01:14:32Guest:Not even close.

01:14:32Marc:No.

01:14:33Marc:And there's hunting guns around in Canada.

01:14:36Guest:There's tons of guns in Canada, and they don't have anywhere near the rate that we do.

01:14:40Guest:And they're watching the same TV and the same movies.

01:14:43Guest:So that kind of discounts my theory that it was cultural metrics.

01:14:47Guest:I'm...

01:14:49Guest:You know, I've debated back and forth about this with people over and over and over and again.

01:14:55Guest:And I think it's just something you have to work out for yourself.

01:14:58Guest:You know, I don't think, I know this.

01:15:00Guest:If they made guns illegal, it wouldn't work.

01:15:03Guest:Because they're in two-thirds to three-quarters of the houses in the United States of America, and nobody's going to give them up.

01:15:08Guest:They will all tell you the same thing I would, which is you first.

01:15:11Marc:Yeah.

01:15:12Marc:And they're not going to.

01:15:13Marc:But you lived through, like, there was definitely, I mean, were you guys at Altamont?

01:15:17Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:15:19Marc:I mean, you know, that was sort of between Manson and Altamont, that was sort of the end of it.

01:15:25Guest:Yeah, you know, it was a low point, no question.

01:15:32Guest:You know what went wrong with Altamont?

01:15:33Guest:It was very simple.

01:15:34Guest:The Grateful Dead management who put that show on, they put that show together.

01:15:39Marc:Was that Bill Graham?

01:15:40Marc:No.

01:15:41Marc:No, it was their management.

01:15:44Okay.

01:15:44Guest:they hired the Hells Angels to be the security.

01:15:49Guest:Now, I'm the only one that defended the Hells Angels afterwards.

01:15:53Guest:Everybody else was, oh, they're terrible Hells Angels, and they shot that guy, and they killed him, and it was so terrible.

01:15:59Guest:So the biggest radio station in San Francisco calls me up and says, what do you think, Dave?

01:16:05Guest:And I said, you know what?

01:16:07Guest:If you don't want the tiger to eat your lunch guests, don't invite the tiger to lunch.

01:16:13Right.

01:16:13Guest:uh these are house angels they fight yeah it's what they do you know it's part of their life they're it's a normal thing for them to fight uh so if you invite them in give them a job they don't know how to do and put them in confrontational situation

01:16:29Guest:there's going to be a fight.

01:16:31Guest:And you're stupid if you don't know that in the first place.

01:16:35Guest:So I blamed the situation and the management completely publicly.

01:16:40Guest:And for a long time, there was a picture of me on the wall in the Oakland mother chapter.

01:16:46Marc:We like Dave.

01:16:47Guest:Hey, well, you know, I told it like it was.

01:16:49Guest:Yeah.

01:16:49Guest:Can I say?

01:16:50Guest:This guy's not on the hit list.

01:16:51Guest:No, definitely not.

01:16:53Guest:Definitely not.

01:16:54Marc:But it seems to me that like, you know, a lot of your musical development as you came into your own really revolved around that San Francisco scene.

01:17:02Marc:Yeah, it did.

01:17:03Marc:That sort of improvisational and jazz driven element that was part of Jerry and part of, you know, who else up there?

01:17:13Marc:But it just seemed the looseness of it.

01:17:15Marc:The real hippie ideal of what music could be with adventure was there.

01:17:19Guest:It was about being open to stretching the envelope and going for new...

01:17:27Guest:new stuff and they were all wide open to it and did you stay friends with uh with them all the way are you still friends with the dead guys oh yeah yeah oh yeah you and phil talk you share liver stories yeah we do uh phil's an anomaly man he's a completely unusual human being and i like him a lot smart guy yeah i like bob i like i like mickey i like you know

01:17:51Marc:Yeah.

01:17:52Marc:All of them.

01:17:52Marc:They're all good cats.

01:17:53Marc:But you probably knew Pigpen too then, right?

01:17:56Guest:I met him, yeah.

01:17:57Guest:I didn't get to know him the way I got to know the other guys because he was the first of the many keyboard players they lost.

01:18:01Marc:Right.

01:18:02Marc:I know.

01:18:02Marc:It's weird, right?

01:18:03Marc:It's totally weird.

01:18:04Marc:Yeah.

01:18:05Marc:Keith.

01:18:06Guest:Yeah.

01:18:06Guest:I mean, it was like...

01:18:08Marc:Every once in a while.

01:18:09Marc:Oh, our keyboard player exploded.

01:18:11Marc:Yeah, right.

01:18:11Marc:It's like Spinal Tap.

01:18:12Marc:Yeah.

01:18:13Marc:But you found freedom in that environment in the Bay Area.

01:18:16Guest:Enormously.

01:18:16Marc:Yeah.

01:18:17Guest:Because they didn't give a shit about show business.

01:18:20Guest:Mm-hmm.

01:18:21Guest:And that really resonated with me.

01:18:23Marc:It's so funny because like, you know, as CSN, as you guys got older, you were definitely a show business act.

01:18:28Marc:No kidding.

01:18:29Marc:And that's what got me to want to get out of the band.

01:18:31Marc:But also you knew though, like if a couple years went by and things got a little lean, it's like, well, let's go do a couple dates.

01:18:37Guest:Yeah.

01:18:38Marc:Yeah.

01:18:38Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:18:39Guest:I'm right with it.

01:18:39Guest:Turn the smoke machine on.

01:18:42Guest:Yeah, I'll do Almost Got My Hair again.

01:18:43Guest:No problem.

01:18:45Guest:Want me to sing it twice?

01:18:46Guest:No, I was right there.

01:18:49Guest:It's the path of least resistance, man.

01:18:52Guest:It's a devolving thing that happens to all bands.

01:18:56Guest:I call it the turn on the smoke machine and play your hits thing.

01:19:00Guest:And it's...

01:19:03Guest:the excitement in a band that's a new band when you're playing new music and you're exciting to people and it's a joy to do it, that fades.

01:19:12Guest:Yeah, it does.

01:19:14Guest:And at a certain point, you should go on to the next thing, which I was forced to do a couple of times and chose to do a couple other times.

01:19:23Guest:And truthfully, man, I'm very proud of the work that I did there.

01:19:28Guest:I'm very proud of the work that we did there, but I don't want to have anything to do with it.

01:19:32Guest:It's not.

01:19:33Guest:There's no forward motion.

01:19:34Guest:There's no room to stretch.

01:19:37Marc:Right.

01:19:38Marc:And I need that.

01:19:39Marc:Sure.

01:19:39Marc:And also you need to sort of like now, like, you know, given that you are where you're at economically and you are where you're at creatively, but you do have the tools and the resources and the.

01:19:49Marc:the compassion and energy to just continue creating.

01:19:54Marc:Why not just do it?

01:19:55Marc:Why not do it?

01:19:56Marc:Yeah.

01:19:57Guest:Truthfully, the biggest thing that being a success gives you is access to the tools, and you don't know that going in.

01:20:04Guest:You think it's getting laid or being famous, or being famous is really a pain in the ass.

01:20:10Guest:And our culture in the United States is aimed at service rather than substance.

01:20:16Guest:and the surface stuff the this whole thing that's going on now where people are just famous for being famous yeah you know uh what's the name of those idiots kanye west married one of them kardashians yeah yeah i don't know what did they create i don't know nothing who did they help i couldn't even identify them in a picture who did they help no one what what have they brought to society what have they like what positive force have they been none

01:20:45Guest:Nothing.

01:20:46Guest:They are nothing.

01:20:47Guest:They are nothing.

01:20:48Guest:And they're famous for being famous.

01:20:50Guest:It's all about celebrity.

01:20:52Guest:That's what TMZ is about.

01:20:53Guest:The most surface thing in the world.

01:20:56Guest:You know, it's nonsense.

01:20:57Guest:It's just total crap.

01:20:59Guest:I have no patience for it at all.

01:21:01Guest:I have no patience for Kanye West.

01:21:03Guest:I think the guy's a total poser.

01:21:06Marc:I like a couple of his records.

01:21:07Guest:Well, you know, everybody makes mistakes.

01:21:11Marc:I think he's kooky, but at least he's put some things out in the world that were, you know.

01:21:17Guest:Bad percussive poetry done to other people's music.

01:21:20Guest:Okay.

01:21:23Guest:It's not that, look, the guy who did Hamilton,

01:21:26Guest:He can rap.

01:21:28Marc:Lin-Manuel, that's a great show.

01:21:29Guest:Did you see what he did?

01:21:30Guest:I think it was on... I didn't, I gotta watch that.

01:21:33Marc:Was it on Colbert?

01:21:35Guest:Yeah, one of those.

01:21:36Guest:The rap that he did about Puerto Rico, it will knock your dick in the dirt.

01:21:40Marc:I saw the show recently.

01:21:41Guest:You can't believe how good it was.

01:21:43Marc:He's a sweet, creative man, that guy.

01:21:45Marc:It's a great show.

01:21:46Marc:Did you see the show?

01:21:47Guest:He's goddamn good at what he does.

01:21:48Guest:I did not see the show.

01:21:49Marc:That's great.

01:21:50Guest:I am noted for not liking rap music.

01:21:53Guest:Right.

01:21:53Guest:And, you know, my son did that to me.

01:21:56Guest:My younger son, Django, forced me to look at.

01:22:00Guest:And, you know, now I listen to somebody like this Lynn guy, and it's undebatable.

01:22:06Guest:There isn't any question that he is.

01:22:08Guest:Oh, you've got to see that show.

01:22:09Guest:You'd love that show.

01:22:09Guest:I would.

01:22:11Guest:You can't deny that.

01:22:12Marc:Sure, of course not.

01:22:13Marc:It's real shit.

01:22:14Marc:Well, yeah, everybody's doing what they do.

01:22:16Marc:There's room for everybody who's doing being creative.

01:22:18Guest:There is.

01:22:18Guest:And I shouldn't rag on the entire, you know, it's like saying all, you know, all Chinese are bad drivers.

01:22:26Guest:It's really nonsense.

01:22:27Guest:No group of people bigger than 100.

01:22:29Marc:It's a little old guy stuffy for an old open-minded dude.

01:22:33Guest:It isn't open-minded.

01:22:35Guest:It's dumb.

01:22:36Guest:Because if you get 100 human beings, they got everything in there from ax murderers to angels.

01:22:41Guest:And that's true of every possible conglomeration of human beings.

01:22:45Guest:There's a spread there.

01:22:47Guest:There's people I don't want to have anything to do with and I think are dumb.

01:22:49Marc:But the truth is, the beauty of it is that people can put their shit out in the world relatively inexpensively exactly the way they want it.

01:22:58Marc:And either people will come or they won't.

01:23:00Marc:And that's not horrible.

01:23:01Marc:That's a good thing.

01:23:02Marc:That's a good thing.

01:23:02Marc:Yeah.

01:23:03Marc:So now what we've come to is that, so you're happy with the stuff you're doing now?

01:23:11Marc:Oh, very happy.

01:23:12Marc:CSN is not going to do any more shit.

01:23:15Guest:Well, that's what Nash says.

01:23:17Marc:Okay.

01:23:17Guest:Stills and I haven't said a word.

01:23:18Marc:Okay.

01:23:19Marc:Are you friendly with Stills still?

01:23:21Guest:Relatively.

01:23:24Guest:We've been together 40 years.

01:23:26Guest:I know.

01:23:28Guest:How much bro do you think there is left?

01:23:30Guest:You know, it's like you grate on each other's nerves.

01:23:33Guest:We are very different human beings.

01:23:35Guest:We have different agendas and different values.

01:23:39Guest:Sure.

01:23:39Guest:All three of us.

01:23:40Guest:And Nash has publicly announced, you know, that CSN is over.

01:23:44Guest:He's never going to do it again, ever.

01:23:46Guest:I think mostly just because it's the only thing he can say that will get attention, and he needs the attention.

01:23:52Guest:He's got a record out there.

01:23:54Uh-huh.

01:23:54Marc:Well, you know, we'll see what happens with all that.

01:23:56Marc:But, you know, so you're not saying never.

01:23:59Marc:No, I never do.

01:23:59Marc:Yeah.

01:24:00Guest:Because you don't know.

01:24:01Guest:Yeah.

01:24:02Guest:If Neil called, and Neil said there's never going to be any more CSNY, too.

01:24:06Guest:But if Neil called Stephen and me and Graham and said, you know, okay, so all right, maybe we should.

01:24:15Guest:You know, I'd probably do it if there was music there.

01:24:19Guest:If everybody could bring some music.

01:24:21Guest:Do you like singing with them?

01:24:22Guest:Yeah.

01:24:23Yeah.

01:24:23Guest:yeah hell yes yeah sure yeah uh but there has to be some music there are you sailing anymore no so sad so sad i sailed i had a boat for 50 years and i loved that boat and last year i had to pretend to be a grown-up for a minute yeah which there was a rumor i was going to grow up uh-huh it didn't pan out no

01:24:46Marc:You seem almost grown up.

01:24:48Guest:Nearly, sometimes, nearly.

01:24:51Guest:What happened is I got my boat to be pretty perfect.

01:24:54Guest:I had it about 50 years, sailed it all over the Pacific, all over the Caribbean, through the canal a bunch of times.

01:24:59Guest:It's just been a big part of my life, a big sanity factor, big health factor, big spiritual factor for me.

01:25:09Guest:Last year...

01:25:10Guest:It was in very, very good shape, and I knew that I couldn't keep it that way.

01:25:15Guest:I don't make enough money to do that.

01:25:21Guest:That's hard.

01:25:22Guest:I met a guy, wanted the boat, had millions and millions and millions of dollars, could keep it perfect, could keep her in perfect shape.

01:25:30Guest:And he knew what she was.

01:25:31Guest:He knew that she was an Alden schooner.

01:25:33Guest:He's a schooner sailor.

01:25:34Guest:He knew how beautiful she was.

01:25:36Guest:He knew exactly what her value in the world was.

01:25:40Guest:And I had to sell it.

01:25:44Guest:And I regret it because I miss her every day.

01:25:49Guest:Will he let you use it?

01:25:51Guest:No, he'd take me sailing on it.

01:25:55Guest:But you can't really go backwards on that.

01:25:57Guest:I haven't been sailing since then because it's just pretty painful.

01:26:01Marc:Would you go out alone and sail?

01:26:04Guest:No, I'm not really into sailing alone.

01:26:06Guest:I like sailing with other people because I like sailing bigger boats, big sailboats.

01:26:10Guest:You got a crew.

01:26:12Marc:Where are you at now health-wise?

01:26:16Guest:Well, I'm old.

01:26:17Guest:No, I know.

01:26:18Guest:I've been through a lot.

01:26:19Marc:92, right?

01:26:19Guest:Yeah, 92.

01:26:20Guest:Yeah.

01:26:21Guest:And, well, pretty well considering.

01:26:27Guest:I mean, I had hepatitis C. That's gone.

01:26:30Guest:That's gone.

01:26:30Guest:They finally came up with a cure at $1,000 a pill, ladies and gentlemen.

01:26:35Marc:How many pills do you need?

01:26:36Guest:If you think big pharma is your friend, consider that one.

01:26:40Marc:So you had to treat that after the liver transplant or before?

01:26:42Marc:Yeah.

01:26:43Marc:After?

01:26:43Guest:They treated it with a transplant, which really was just a hair spread the way from dying.

01:26:50Guest:So that's done.

01:26:51Guest:I'm diabetic, which is a rough one.

01:26:52Guest:That'll probably get me.

01:26:54Guest:I've had a couple of heart attacks.

01:26:55Guest:That's probably going to get me.

01:26:59Marc:you know i really try to stay as healthy as i can but it's i mostly try to celebrate the fact that i am breathing right now yeah and you sing and you write songs and you work with uh well i know you did stuff with a lot of people but you did some fairly recent work with david gilmore

01:27:18Guest:yeah yeah i i like david a lot yeah he's one of my most favorite musicians he's a fantastic guitar player no really wild yeah unbelievable his tone his touch yeah spectacular and he's a nice man yeah and what do you you sing with him

01:27:33Guest:Yeah, I've sung with him and done shows with him.

01:27:36Guest:I sang with him here at the Hollywood Bowl.

01:27:39Marc:I miss that show.

01:27:40Marc:And that was big fun.

01:27:41Marc:And Phil Collins is a friend, right?

01:27:43Guest:Yeah.

01:27:44Marc:He got you a liver?

01:27:46Guest:Yeah, he helped.

01:27:48Guest:We wrote a song together called Hero, which was as close as I came to having a radio hit.

01:27:53Guest:He produced it and we sang it together and stuff.

01:27:56Guest:It's real good.

01:27:58Guest:Phil's an incredible singer.

01:27:59Guest:yeah he's got problems being able to play drums now because he's got problems with his hands but he's still one of the great singers and you are a hall of famer for two bands yeah that's should be three yeah yeah because csn y is a totally different band yeah i mean it's totally different you add neil young to the mix and you just added nitroglycerin uh-huh it's not not the same band as krosby's also national

01:28:21Marc:At all.

01:28:22Marc:But you seem to have, despite personal history, you seem to have a lot of respect for everybody, for him anyways.

01:28:29Guest:If you look back over the work we did, which is the only thing that counts, is the songs, we did some good work.

01:28:37Marc:four-way street's pretty amazing yeah there's some really fine work there and i and i and i'm sorry yeah i i keep uh uh saying the name of your solo record wrong if i could only remember my name that rec do you know that record has been resurrected by hipsters as being uh yeah it's kind of it's it what do they call it a cult classic yeah they people love it it has a vibe it was a gold record though anyways right yeah well that's good that's like a hit yeah

01:29:04Marc:Kinda.

01:29:06Marc:That's not a radio hit.

01:29:08Marc:That doesn't exist anymore.

01:29:09Marc:There's no more radio hits.

01:29:10Guest:I guess.

01:29:11Guest:I don't know.

01:29:11Guest:It's funny to watch how the business changed.

01:29:14Guest:The biggest change was that the record companies didn't know what the word digital meant.

01:29:19Guest:They had no idea.

01:29:21Guest:They thought it was a different kind of cassette.

01:29:23Marc:Right, right.

01:29:24Guest:It's like, well, it's like going from 8-track to cassette, right?

01:29:28Marc:Got away from them.

01:29:29Guest:Digital analog, that was a little beyond their capacity to understand.

01:29:34Guest:So analog, for those of you out there who don't know what we're talking about, Mark knows, but here's the deal.

01:29:40Guest:analog, you make a copy, it loses something.

01:29:43Guest:It's called going down a generation.

01:29:45Guest:You do it again, you lost another generation.

01:29:47Guest:By the time you make the tenth copy, it's useless.

01:29:50Guest:By the time you make the thousandth copy of a digital, it's exactly the same.

01:29:56Marc:But there's problems with that.

01:29:58Guest:Well, the problem is that the record companies didn't understand it, and as soon as you put out a CD, people can make 1,000 copies of it, and they're exactly the same.

01:30:06Marc:And also, the integrity of the spectrum of sound is bad.

01:30:10Marc:They were compromised.

01:30:12Guest:It used to be.

01:30:12Marc:Yeah.

01:30:13Guest:Digitally, now, really digital, you can get it up to the same quality if you slice it fine enough.

01:30:18Guest:Yeah.

01:30:19Guest:If you get a high-res, you know, 24-bit, 192, you know, that's good shit.

01:30:25Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:30:26Guest:That sounds good.

01:30:26Guest:Uncut.

01:30:28Guest:You and I both like vinyl.

01:30:31Guest:I mean, it has a quality to it.

01:30:33Guest:Vinyl has a certain way that it approaches you, and I like that.

01:30:40Guest:But digital, if you get high-res digital, it's terrific.

01:30:44Guest:If you're using MP3s, I'm sure Neil went here.

01:30:46Guest:He hates MP3s.

01:30:47Marc:No, he's selling his new thing, the Pono.

01:30:50Guest:Pono, I have one.

01:30:51Guest:There's one in my bag right out there.

01:30:53Guest:It's a high-res player.

01:30:55Guest:you like it right yeah it's good yeah uh i i you know i have every member of my family has one really good yeah uh but then you know the record companies just flat didn't understand it and then things went downhill from there uh the the streaming services

01:31:14Guest:are an abomination they're totally wrong totally bad if if spotify if you played one of my tunes on spotify 10 000 times yeah i could buy you lunch well that's yeah they're not paying the the the artist is a shitty thing

01:31:31Guest:Yeah, it is.

01:31:32Guest:Because how the hell do you think other people are going to be artists if they look at it and say, well, I can't even make a living.

01:31:37Guest:I couldn't even put my kids in school.

01:31:39Guest:How are you going to do it?

01:31:41Guest:Someone's making money.

01:31:42Guest:Someone is.

01:31:44Marc:Someone is.

01:31:45Marc:They actually, the motherfuckers that were screwing musicians to begin with have now evolved into a digital fucking... Bigger motherfuckers.

01:31:53Guest:And, you know, there are a lot of people fighting back.

01:31:57Guest:Yeah.

01:31:59Guest:But the...

01:32:00Guest:And it's a really, really crappy situation.

01:32:04Guest:I just signed a letter that my pal Walsh sent me that Don Henley generated.

01:32:11Guest:Joe?

01:32:12Guest:Yeah, Joe's a good guy.

01:32:13Guest:Yeah.

01:32:14Guest:He's a solid human being.

01:32:17Guest:He's one of my favorite people in the whole music business.

01:32:19Guest:He's a good friend.

01:32:21Marc:Good songwriter.

01:32:21Guest:oh excellent songwriter excellent player excellent singer and a totally great guy that's good uh sober too yeah and you want to talk to him because he will crack your ass totally up yeah he invited me out to uh santa cruz island a couple weeks ago uh he's on the board of the the conservancy out there yeah and we we spent a couple of days out there just laughing our asses off he's a wonderful he seems like everyone has good things to say about oh no he's a wonderful cat

01:32:51Guest:i remember when he was a quarter day drunk yeah and and i i loved watching him blossom the weed as you know he and richie uh married two sisters right richie starby yeah you know ringo yeah so they married two sisters

01:33:06Guest:yeah and they're both sober yeah and they hang out together yeah the two sisters and and joe and and richie and so we went to joe did a favor for the la county museum of art yeah it was supposed to be a benefit and somebody wouldn't show it so he plugged in and covered it so they owe him so and richie can't go to the museum during open hours okay yeah

01:33:33Guest:uh so they let him go afterwards uh-huh and the three of us and our wives all went and we we laughed ourselves silly yeah we had more fun at that that museum together and it's a great night and we had dinner there afterwards it was a joy just tell somebody you want to talk to i'd like to talk to him i'll put a plug in for you okay that'd be great

01:33:57Marc:Well, you know, it's amazing about talking to you and even like when we when we talked on the phone a week or so ago was that like your spirit is is fully intact, you know, given, you know, how how how far you dragged it, how much you almost tried to kill it.

01:34:11Marc:And your ego seems in check.

01:34:13Marc:And, you know, you just you have a vitality that is rare in people of any age.

01:34:18Marc:And it was beautiful to talk to you.

01:34:19Guest:well you know i i'm lucky man i've got a great family and i've got a fantastic job so i believe me i enjoy talking to you if you want to do it again yeah uh i'll do it again this is fun we haven't even covered half the we could talk about like we haven't talked about nuclear power yeah well you're against it oh totally are you kidding are you kidding no yeah it was well i mean no i mean

01:34:42Guest:human beings make mistakes yeah a yeah b we have no place to put the waste yeah none zero we have no way to deal with the waste yeah uh and c mother nature can knock down anything we can build that's true that's and in california she's gonna yeah that's not a matter of if it's a matter of when yeah that's gonna happen that's the funny thing is that you know uh humans might not survive but mother nature will be fine

01:35:06Guest:Yeah.

01:35:10Marc:She can absorb.

01:35:10Marc:She can take the hit.

01:35:11Marc:Giant cockroaches.

01:35:13Marc:Big ones.

01:35:14Guest:Yeah.

01:35:14Marc:It's not going to be a pretty world after we're done.

01:35:16Guest:No, but it'll be here.

01:35:18Guest:Yeah.

01:35:19Guest:I want us to grow up and go out into space and find out who's in the neighborhood.

01:35:23Guest:That's my dream.

01:35:23Marc:All right.

01:35:24Marc:Well, maybe they'll actually, you know, you've got the new liver.

01:35:27Marc:Maybe they'll figure out a way before you check out to take the brain and make you expand your consciousness that way.

01:35:35Guest:I'd do it in a second.

01:35:36Guest:I'd be a brain chip in a second.

01:35:37Marc:Yeah.

01:35:38Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:35:38Marc:I bet, right?

01:35:39Marc:Oh, hell yes.

01:35:40Marc:Well, you said it here, folks.

01:35:41Marc:If anyone's out there working on that, David Crosby is available for brain chipping.

01:35:46Guest:Yeah.

01:35:46Guest:We need that spaceship.

01:35:47Guest:Yeah.

01:35:47Guest:And we need it now.

01:35:49Guest:Okay.

01:35:49Marc:Thanks, man.

01:35:50Guest:You're welcome.

01:35:56Marc:That was David Crosby and myself chatting.

01:35:59Marc:Lovely man.

01:36:00Marc:I like just looking at David Crosby across the table with his white hair and white David Crosby mustache.

01:36:08Marc:It's almost like he invented that mustache.

01:36:11Marc:And that hair to some degree.

01:36:13Marc:Also, we've got something special for you on Wednesday.

01:36:16Marc:A brand new Mark and Tom show with me and Tom Sharpling.

01:36:21Marc:If you subscribe to WTF, you'll get it Wednesday morning.

01:36:24Marc:So enjoy that.

01:36:25Marc:Me and Mr. Sharpling chatting as the lights dim.

01:36:30Marc:That's a mortality reference.

01:36:32Marc:We're okay.

01:36:33Marc:I'm older than him.

01:36:35Marc:It doesn't matter.

01:36:36Marc:We're just trying to figure shit out.

01:36:39Guest:You want me to play some redundant guitar?

01:36:58Guest:Boomer Lives!

01:37:07Guest:Boomer Lives!