Page 2 July 25, 2019
Facing the Music in David Crosby: Remember My Name
By Jane Greenstein for Cinemacy
How is David Crosby still alive? The
mystery of how the singer has conquered
drug addiction, multiple health scares,
jail time and heartbreak will undoubtedly
draw fans to David Crosby: Remember My
Name. Confronting his mortality, Crosby,
77 – previously part of two supergroups
The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash (and
sometimes Young) – is here to make peace
and offer something of a mea culpa.
Director A.J. Eaton’s documentary opens
with Crosby sprawled on the couch, therapystyle,
humorously recounting a drug-addled
encounter with legendary jazz musician
John Coltrane in the bathroom at one of the
saxophonist’s gigs. But Crosby isn’t here
to dish about his famous friends.Instead, he
focuses on making amends to his family,
both biological and musical.
On the receiving end of Crosby’s
warts-and-all confessions is Almost Famous
writer, director, and rock journalist
Cameron Crowe, who was drafted by Eaton
to coax the talkative Crosby into baring
his soul. There is a lot to cover besides
Crosby’s rock ‘n roll stardom, including
his arrest on weapons and drug charges in the
1980s, and his 32-year marriage to adoring
wife Jan Dance -- also a recovering addict.
One foot in the past and the other in the
present, the time not with Crowe is spent
on a road trip with Crosby driving to pivotal
David Crosby: Remember My Name, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
places along his musical superhighway.
These include stops on the Sunset Strip, a
reluctant trip up Laurel Canyon, and to Kent
State, Ohio.
Despite all the fertile material, Remember
My Name may disappoint some by what’s
omitted: Major life events don’t even garner
a mention, including Crosby’s liver transplant
in 1994 that occurred within months
of his reunion with a son who was given
up for adoption 32 years prior. Crosby also
served as the sperm donor for singer Melissa
Etheridge, resulting in two more children.
Crosby’s complicated family tree could be
a movie itself.
At the film’s end, you’re left to decide
how you feel about Crosby and whether
he’s sufficiently made amends. Indeed, of
all the recent music films that came out this
year capturing the 1970s musical landscape
-- from Amazing Grace to Echo in the
Canyon -- the one that Remember My Name
shares a common lineage is, bear with me,
the over-the-top biopic Rocketman. Crosby
and Elton John burned bright in the 1970s
and went down strikingly similar paths. Both
speak of their loveless fathers and find solace
and redemption through music. Both men
achieve massive stardom and succumb to drug
addiction before coming out the other side.
These films ask us to either empathize
with or at the very least better tolerate the
havoc their subjects wreaked (on themselves
and others.) Whereas Rocketman concludes
with a montage of John’s triumphs since
sobriety, we’re just grateful at the end of
Remember My Name that Crosby is alive to
sing another day. That, the filmmakers seem
to say, is enough. •
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