David Crosby Was Working On New Music Up To His Death
David Crosby was working on new music and rehearsing for planned live shows right up to his death, his collaborators have told Variety.
“David didn’t think he was gonna last for years, which he joked about all the time. But there was no sense that we weren’t gonna be able to do this show and these tours,” guitarist Steve Postell said. “We were talking tour buses, and what kind of venues, and the whole team was all back together again — the road manager and tour manager and sound guys — on top of this band we’d put together. There was not even a remote sense that we weren’t about ready to hit the world. And it’s a shame people didn’t get to hear it. This was something else. This was as close to the original thing” — specifically, the original sound of Crosby, Stills and Nash — “as we were gonna get. It was very powerful.”
Postell claims that Crosby, “seemed practically giddy with all of it… He was showing us new songs, like, ‘What do you think of these lyrics?’ He hadn’t lost the fire. I’d like people to know that he was on it. He was writing, playing, singing his ass off and preparing a fantastic show. That’s what he was doing. He was not lying in a bed for two years, out of it. That’s not what happened at all.”
Meanwhile, Sarah Jarosz revealed on social media just after Crosby’s death that earlier in the week she’d been in the studio recording vocal and mandolin parts for his next album.
“I never got to actually be in the studio with him when I was recording those vocals,” Jarosz told Variety, “but he and James had reached out to me about a month ago saying they were working on this new album, and he really wanted me to sing on a new song, Talk Till Dawn. It had just been a few days since I sent the vocal off [before Crosby died], but the way James made it seem to me is that he did get to hear it before he passed, which is obviously extremely emotional for me. I guess the way that I would describe the song is quintessential David Crosby — interesting chord movement and just a beautiful, stunning vocal performance.”
Jarosz continued, “He just wanted to create until the very end, and that was always my impression of him in our conversations. He was so full of music, and it always struck me because, as a young musician myself, I think it’s easy to sometimes look at someone who’s had a long life and incredible career and think: How can they still just have that drive and that fire within them? I always was just so inspired after talking to him because it just seemed like he had endless music within him and worked so hard to just keep making it, obviously up until the very end. I’ll always hold onto that.”