album, If I Could Only Remember My
Name. “I was having trouble making it
from one day to the next, and they all
showed,” he says.
But over the next 15 years Crosby
anesthetized himself with heroin
and cocaine. “The longer I did hard
drugs, the less I wrote until it ground
to a halt,” he says. Having alienated
his CSNY bandmates, Crosby grew
closer to girlfriend Jan Dance.
Together they slid deeper into addic-
tion, and legal problems began to
mount. Finally the state of Texas
issued a warrant for his arrest, and
soon Crosby was wanted by the FBI.
Out of options, he turned himself in.
Crosby spent Christmas 1985 in a
Texas prison, detoxing without even
an aspirin. “I woke up in a cell and
remembered who I am,” he says. “I
started fooling around with a guitar
in this little cinder-block room, and
my brain started to work again.” He
joined the prison band and slowly
resumed writing. Days after his
release in August 1986, he played his
first sober show in decades.
Dance also got clean while Crosby
was in prison, and the pair rebuilt their
lives together after a sympathetic judge
reversed a court-ordered separation
resulting from their drug arrests. The
pair were married on May 16, 1987, in
Los Angeles. “Jan loved me in ways that
I didn’t love myself,” Crosby reflects in
the documentary. Together they raised
a son, Django, 24. (The singer has three
other children from previous relation-
ships and was later revealed to be the
sperm donor for the two children of
singer Melissa Etheridge and her
then-partner, Julie Cypher.)
Today Crosby lives on a Santa Ynez
ranch with Dance and their many dogs,
cats and horses. Constant touring
remains a financial necessity, and the
road is “very hard” on his tenuous
health. Having undergone a liver trans-
plant in 1994, he also has eight stents in
his heart. “I don’t think people know
how sick he really is,” Dance says in the
film. “I have to say, ‘Go honey, go have
fun,’ and I might not ever see him
again.” But Crosby says, “The three
hours I’m onstage are heaven. Having
almost lost music, I treasure it more. I
got a new chance.” •
TRUE
LOVES
Happiness at
Home
“My family and doctors
all are trying to get
me to be restrained
and behave myself,”
says Crosby (with wife
Jan and son Django in
2007). “I’m trying.”
Best Buds
A passionate animal
lover, Crosby credits
dogs with adding “love
and joy” to his life.
“If you’re going to
raise a kid, you’ve got
to have a dog.”
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