Review: ‘David Crosby: Remember My Name’| 3 ½ out of 4 Stars | Rated R
By Kyle Osborne
“I was an asshole,” David Crosby says about himself in the revelatory documentary ‘David Crosby: Remember My Name’, and, indeed, the next 90 minutes don’t offer anyone who will argue against that point. In fact, Crosby points out that no one with whom he famously made music will even speak to him.
People like Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, for instance.
Crosby, Stills and Nash
Though directed by A.J. Eaton, it is Cameron Crowe who asks the questions off camera, and every frame of the movie has traces of Crowe’s signature sensibilities. We will learn that Crowe and Crosby have something of a history, and one suspects that is why he can ask uncomfortable questions and elicit self-aware responses and not a punch in the nose.
Cameron Crowe and David Crosby
If Crosby looks and sounds like an aging Hippie, it’s because he is one. Nearly 78, Crosby has improbably survived heroin addiction, jail time and every pitfall imaginable to a musician who came of age in the 60s. The fact that he is more than willing to reckon with all of this, admitting guilt, dodging very little, is what makes this a compelling watch—even if you don’t know his musical history.
Crosby, Stills and Nash and later Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were at ground zero for the Woodstock generation, though their popularity endured far beyond many of their contemporaries. There is ample archival footage for Eaton to work with as we are carried through Crosby’s days with The Byrds to his most recent “comeback tour” and recordings. He is living history, if just barely ( we learn of his numerous health issues and his own resignation that the end can’t be far off) and while re-tracing of those steps feels like well-trodden territory, it’s probably the only element that feels like scores of other music docs you’ve seen. There are things you might not have known about him, even if you’re a fan, and I’ll leave those bits for you to discover.
He might look like a kindly Grandpa, but we see flashes of his storied crankiness in small moments (“Turn here!” he barks at the driver) and mischief in the gleam of his eyes. He’s complicated. He’s dramatic. He’s moody.
He’s a great subject for a documentary. Don’t forget it.
Rated R (for language, drug material and brief nudity) 95 Minutes