Crosby Sings Praises of His Autobiography

“Not bad for an old fat guy.” That’s how David Crosby--rock star-turned-fugitive-turned-convict turned- around-- summed up his own performance Monday night at the Anaheim Hilton during the American Bookseller Assn.’s annual bash.

Crosby was there to whip up interest in his autobiography, “Long Time Gone,” which Doubleday has scheduled for release in November. But rather than merely talk about the book or sign autographs, Crosby served up one of the few solo shows he’s done since he was paroled from a Texas prison in 1986 after serving several months of a five-year sentence for possession of drugs and weapons.

Several hundred conventioneers attended the 80-minute concert, and judging from the standing ovations and emotional outpouring offered by these standard-bearers of things literary, Crosby accomplished his goal.

“You’re a wordsmith--we’re wordsmiths,” one retailer said, nodding and beaming a beneficent smile born of the 1960s. “We understand you.”

Crosby’s shoulder-length, dirty-gray hair was a little stringier, his trademark walrus mustache was even bushier and his singing voice was more secure than it has been in years. After he stepped off stage, Crosby, 46, leaked a few hints of comeback insecurity, humbly asking well-wishers: “Did you like the new songs?”

But for the most part, he made no attempt to mask his elation at a performance that reflected the dramatic personal and professional turnaround of a man who for years appeared just a step outside the gate to Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven.

Introducing “Compass,” (a new song that opens: “I have wasted 10 years . . . “), Crosby said: “In the last two or three years when I was addicted, I didn’t write. . . . I figured I was going to die on drugs. When I did wake up, it was like coming out of a coma. I was real surprised to be alive.”

When he strolled on stage, some members of the audience who hadn’t followed his career in recent years also seemed surprised--but mostly at his weight.

“He’s fat,” one woman said aloud.

But it didn’t take Crosby long to shift the audience’s focus from his belt size to his music, presenting several new songs to back up his claim that his writing skills are revitalized.

His offerings included a stinging political indictment of U.S. policy in Central America in “Nighttime for the Generals (Nighttime for Noriega)” along with “Compass’ ” equally tough critique of his own dark years.

He quickly warmed up to the bookish crowd: “All right--words people! Usually when you try to play a song with any meaning in the words, you get about halfway through and some guy in the front row yells, ‘Boogie! Where’s Neil?’ ”

After the set, Crosby admitted that he had paid little attention while his famous cronies were sending him warnings about his downward spiral from drug use.

One of those messages was Neil Young’s “Hippie Dream,” a 1986 song with the lyric: “The wooden ships were just a hippie dream”--a sour reference to “Wooden Ships,” a Crosby anthem of the Woodstock generation.

Said Crosby: “That wasn’t just about wooden ships--it was about me going down the tubes. Graham Nash wrote ‘Glass and Steel.’ . . . It was their way of tapping me on the shoulder and saying, ‘Excuse me, but you’re killing yourself.’

“I certainly don’t mind--they meant it in kindness. But what actually woke me up was being put in prison.”

His jab at the “Where’s Neil?” crowd didn’t stop a backstage admirer from asking: “So where is Neil?”

Politely, Crosby responded that he had seen Young--and Nash and Stephen Stills--over the weekend when the fabled foursome finished recording the much-discussed new Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album. Crosby said it is on target for release this fall.

Given that the “Long May You Run” album in 1976 by the Stills-Young Band reportedly started out as a CSNY project (Young erased Crosby and Nash from the master tapes, or so the story goes), Crosby said he still is not 100% certain what configuration will end up on the new record.

“We could wind up with a Crosby & Nash record. . . . But we’ll probably wind up with a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young record because it was so much fun.” Given the tumultuous history of the on-again, off-again group, he added, “I would have bet money that it wouldn’t work.”

Bill Siddons, Crosby’s longtime manager, said the first draft of his autobiography will be finished “in the next few days.” Before the book is published, Crosby will hook up once again with Stills and Nash--but not Young--for a tour in August and September, Siddons said.

“Long Time Gone,” titled after another of Crosby’s Woodstock-era songs, promises to have plenty of grist for the gossip mongers.

Co-author Carl Gottlieb--a veteran screen and television writer who has been a friend of Crosby’s for 25 years--said he has interviewed the women for whom Crosby penned “Triad,” his ode to a menage a trois. (Gottlieb quotes one of the women as saying: “David is absolutely worth waiting for--he’s just not worth standing in line for.”)

And there will be a lot about his drug abuse. “He discovered free-base cocaine in 1977 before anyone knew what it was,” Gottlieb said. “Someone said, ‘Did you know you can smoke this stuff?’ That was at the time he learned he had a perforated septum from sniffing it. That was the beginning of the slide. . . .

“The prologue is simply a medical history that was taken in 1983. It’s frightening--you don’t have to say anything else.”

Gottlieb insisted, though, that the book is more than a rock ‘n’ roll kiss-and-tell tome of the ‘60s. It’s “the story of his generation. Everyone got trashed, and we’ve recovered in various ways. . . . It’s a balance of the lurid events against the times and states of David’s mind that created those events. David is lucky--his story has a happy ending.”

Gottlieb said Crosby’s attitude toward drugs in the book is that of the sadder-but-wiser man. “He can point out things about drugs and say, ‘This is why it’s bad for you’ because he has firsthand experience. Nobody knows better than him, because nobody’s done more drugs than David--and lived.”

“He put off even doing the (book-publishing) deal for about a year to make sure that he was really sober,” Gottlieb said.

If it all starts to sound a bit like the Gospel According to David, Crosby realizes it. During his performance, he told the audience, “It’s very difficult to write about recovering from being a drug addict without getting preachy--and that’s a drag.”

The next few months look to be active ones for Crosby. Besides the book, the CSNY album and the CSN tour, he’ll be finishing a new solo album--his first since 1971--and lining up a solo tour. (The handful of solo shows he did immediately upon his prison release--including one in Santa Ana for former operators of the Golden Bear--were strictly “to repay old debts--dates he had booked and had to cancel,” Siddons said. This would be his first official post-prison solo tour.)

After all that--”maybe sometime next year,” Siddons said--there could be a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tour.

Not bad for an old fat guy.