INTERVIEW: Remember David Crosby’s name
Photo: David Crosby, the legendary singer-songwriter, is the subject of the new film David Crosby: Remember My Name. Photo courtesy of Edd Lukas and Ian Coad / Provided by Sony Pictures Classics with permission.
David Crosby is one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the last 50 years. He is a man who has provided so many powerful vocals to classic tunes, and his collaborations with The Byrds, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young are the stuff of musical legend. Whether it’s “Wooden Ships,” “Long Time Gone” or “Guinnevere,” the tunes that have been crafted or sung by Crosby over the years have served as the soundtrack for a generation of music lovers and social activists.
A new documentary, entitled David Crosby: Remember by Name, dives deep into the history, influence and current work of this iconic singer. The film, directed by A.J. Eaton, is currently playing New York City’s Film Forum and other theaters throughout the United States.
“I met David when he was 69 years old, and he was in the midst of an album called Croz,” Eaton said about the early days of his collaboration on this cinematic project. “That was his first solo album in 20 years, and my brother, Marcus Eaton, was one of the new, young musicians that was working with him on this album project. My brother is this really, really great guitarist, and my brother invited me over. He said, ‘You’ve got to come meet Croz.’ And I was like, ‘Well, that ought to be interesting.'”
Eaton knew many of the headlines of Crosby’s career, including some of the less-than-desirable ones concerning jail and drugs, but he was captivated by the opportunity to meet the man behind the music. He headed over and was absolutely floored by Crosby’s willingness to talk and the creativity he was pouring into this new solo effort.
“I heard what they were playing and writing, and I was just totally astonished by this beautiful, luscious music that they were making,” Eaton said. “And I was equally as astonished at how lucid and just funny and vibrant Crosby was. He was just thriving in his nucleus, so we became friends.”
Crosby was open about the musical choices he was making, right down to the chord changes and the jazz influences, and as Eaton was soaking in the stories, he started to think that a camera should be rolling, if for no other reason than posterity.
“He was agreeable to that, and boy as soon as I focused a camera on him, I realized he can tell a great story,” the director said. “So for a couple of years I was shooting footage of him. Like he would go on the road, or he would go and play a show or whatever. … As the movie says, he openly admits that he’s living on borrowed time, so I felt like I should be capturing this footage. That’s kind of how the premise began.”
Crosby has been extremely productive in the past five years, a time span that has seen the singer record four albums, and he’s halfway through a fifth. All of this despite some difficult health realities, which are also covered in the film.
“So he’s very excited about talking about this new music, but I could see that the new music was kind of a window into the past,” Eaton said. “And that’s when I ran out of money and was almost ready to lose my apartment.”
Eaton had these great conversations and a willing subject, but the documentary had not found any funding or direction for eventual distribution. So he hit the pavement and started holding meetings with various agencies in Hollywood. The results were less than stellar.
“They thought he was a has-been,” Eaton said. “There was one company that said that they would finance it if they could put in a number of their hip-hop clients in the movie, make the movie about Crosby working with these artists. I was like, ‘That’s never going to happen.’ Finally I met Cameron Crowe through our awesome executive producer.”
The executive producer, Jill Mazursky, had a long-standing relationship with J.J. Abrams and his production company, Bad Robot. Eaton went to a meeting at Bad Robot, and that’s where he met Crowe in the hallway.
“I was like, that’s it,” he remembers. “That’s what we need, and Jill went and advocated on my behalf. And Cameron said, ‘Yeah, I’ll meet with him,’ and he was just floored by the idea that a) Crosby was being cooperative on this project, and b) he’s such a huge fan of Crosby’s. As it turns out, he’s been interviewing Crosby for 40 years. One of his first gets as a young journalist was his interview with Crosby, and Crosby’s answers, as Cameron will tell you, were honest and candid.”
Crowe has always been grateful for that honesty and candor over the course of 40 years of interviews, so when Eaton met with him, the brainstorming started almost immediately on how best to tell Crosby’s story.
“We started talking about things that we would both like to see in the documentary, and Cameron and I both agreed let’s not do a parade of talking heads,” Eaton said. “Let’s let Crosby be the sole narrator of his life story, as if he was writing a letter to a long lost friend. Cameron got so excited about that, that he was like, ‘Let me do the next interview. Let me do an interview for you just kind of as a gift.’”
Eaton could tell as soon as Crowe and Crosby sat down that there was a mutual respect and trust between the two. Then, Eaton, sitting in the background, realized he had his documentary.
“We could now go to the places that the documentary needed to go, that I was kind of hovering around for the first couple years of capturing Crosby in his third-act renaissance,” the director said. “There was not one question that was asked by Cameron that Crosby didn’t answer or passed on. He was completely honest the entire time.”
The results of those sessions are now David Crosby: Remember My Name.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
David Crosby: Remember My Name, directed by A.J. Eaton and released by Sony Pictures Classics, is now playing in movie theaters, including the Film Forum in New York City. Click here for more information.
