David Crosby: Remember My Name **** / *****
Directed by: A.J.
Eaton.
Over the
years, we’ve seen many documentaries about aging rock stars in their later
years – decades after the height of their success and fame. For the most part,
these docs are structured as inspiration – showing you the career that you know
(or don’t, depending on how young you are) – while following the aging star as
they embark on a new album, a new tour, etc. – in a defiant display of the star
basically declaring “I’m not dead yet”. Usually, there are glowing talking head
interviews with others – bandmates, friends, contemporaries, etc. who sing the praises
of the subject – and if there was bad blood somewhere along the way, it’s been
buried and forgotten. Many people, it seems, calm down with age – and let hurts
and resentments go.
None of
that describes A.J. Eaton’s David Crosby: Remember My Name, his doc about the
77-year old musician, famous for his time with The Byrds and Crosby, Stills and
Nash (and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young). Well, that’s not entirely true – the
structure is basically the same – it is a look back and Crosby’s career, and it
does document a new tour and album. But Crosby is not the kind hearted elder
statesman at the film’s core you expect – he’s as crotchety and stubborn as ever
– revealing that it’s basically his fault that both versions of his most famous
band, both with and without Young, blew up because of him – and just in the
last few years. There aren’t any other talking heads saying nice things about
Crosby, perhaps because Eaton couldn’t find any – certainly as Crosby admits
everyone he made music with hates him, and his track record with women isn’t
much better. He doesn’t hesitate to tell a story of how when he was dating Joni
Mitchell, she came into the room with him and many of their friends, announced
she had a new song to sing – and then sang it – and it basically amounted to a
giant fuck you to Crosby himself. When she finished, she starred at him with hard
for a few seconds – and then sang it again.
So it’s
pretty clear that no matter what you can say about David Crosby – and that’s a
lot – he knows he’s an asshole, and while he doesn’t like that about himself,
he also knows it’s not about to change now. The film documents the way that
Crosby hasn’t changed over the years – he’s always been this way, and he has
burned many bridges with his behavior – pushing boundaries with his political opinions,
or just being an asshole. Then the drug addiction, which he spiraled into, and
ended up in jail for. And yet, through that all, the one thing that hasn’t left
him is his voice. It’s still there, and he still sounds great. And, working
solo again, he has found an artistic rebirth of sorts.
As a
director, A.J. Eaton does a good job of editing this thing together from the old
footage, to present day Crosby – and some interviews from other sources about
Crosby, since they aren’t in the film in other ways. The interviews with Crosby
himself as done by producer Cameron Crowe, who has been interviewing Crosby
since the 1970s, when he was a reporter for Rolling Stone. Perhaps it is that
level of familiarity that allows Crosby to open up so much – then again,
opening up is what Crosby seems to be best at. It’s shutting up he cannot do.
The
result is one of the best docs of its kind in recent memory – because it isn’t
really a celebration of David Crosby – or at least not just a celebration of
David Crosby – but something far thornier than that. Few musicians would open
themselves up like that – but Crosby did.
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