David Crosby: The Folk Singer Who Became an FBI Fugitive

The man who made sweet, soft, harmonious music with Stephen Stills and Neil Young was actually a crazy rock ‘n’ roll animal. Listen to hear how David Crosby wound up addicted, escaped authorities, and went on the lam. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠. This previously exclusive episode was originally published on May 22, 2025. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter) ⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 2:14Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:29Jake Brennan?

  This is the story about one of the craziest rock and roll animals to ever do it. A man whose transgressions were as low down and wild as, I don't know, pick your wild rock star, Keith Moon, Ozzy Osbourne, almost as lunatic and gross as Gigi Allen, almost. But this rock star sang sweet, soft, harmonious music. But music that in real life soundtrack a gunshot to the face. A home invasion. One of the gnarliest freebase addictions you'll ever hear about. And an escape from authorities that made this man an FBI fugitive. A man who, I can't believe I'm saying this, but that's what getting older does to you, I guess. A man who made great music.

• 3:15Jake Brennan?

  Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Three Way, The Hard Way, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "We Built This City" by Starship. And why would I play you that specific slice of "Marconi Plays the Mamba Cheese"? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on November 28th, 1985, Thanksgiving Day. And that was the day that rock star David Crosby made a fateful decision to use the last couple of dollars he had to hire a plane to fly him across the country to escape the long arm of the law.

• 3:59Jake Brennan?

  On this episode, heroin, cocaine, grass, and LSD, guns, so many guns, even more arrests, paranoia, and David Crosby. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 4:45Jake Brennan?

  New York City, 1963. Ronald Van Emson walked his doberman up Bleecker Street. It was after midnight, and the path ahead was blanketed in shadow.

• 4:58Jake Brennan?

  But Von Emson knew his way around, as did his dog. The two took the same stroll, same route, every night, just after the last folk singer had plied his or her trade at Cafe Raphael, the coffee house Von Emson owned. Raphael was a hipster hangout, though admittedly not as hip as Gertie's, or the Gaslight, or Cafe Wa, where the Midwestern import Bob Dylan was turning the whole scene on its head. Von Emson didn't care much for Bob Dylan. If Von Emson was being honest, what with that nasal whiny voice of his, instead, he preferred the more traditional vocal stylings of the young 20-something David Crosby,

• 5:41Jake Brennan?

  who had grown up singing harmonies in a musical family. Crosby also had an anti-authority streak that a 31-year-old Von Emson could relate to. Counterculture, shit-stirring beatnik that Von Emson was. But to some, Von Emson himself was an authority figure. And one of those people was now standing directly in front of him in his doberman, blocking the way. Von Emson knew this man as well, an Italian immigrant in his 70s. Part of New York's Old Guard, a man who was about to lose his apartment because the hipster Ronald Von Emson had plans to tear it down in order to expand his burgeoning folk coffeehouse empire, which sat right next door to this 70-year-old dude's place.

• 6:27Jake Brennan?

  In one hand, the old man held his eviction notice, and in the other, he held a .38 revolver. "You leave me alone," the old man was shouting. "I've lived here my whole life. You don't touch my apartment." He crushed his eviction notice into a ball in his fist, and then raised his gun and shot Ronald Von Emson right between the eyes.

• 6:53Jake Brennan?

  You had to be cold-blooded and cutthroat to make it in a scene that was nowhere near as harmonious as the New York folk scene of the early 1960s appeared to be. Cutthroat like Ronald Von Emson, whose ambition got him killed, and cold-blooded like Bob Dylan, that snake in the grass who was about to show to the world that he didn't want anything to do with the movement that made him. David Crosby didn't want to be the next Dylan, as many of his peers did. Though, as he'd prove just two years later, in 1965, as a member of The Byrds, that's B-Y-R-D-S with a Y, he did want to be the guy who took Dylan to the next level. And he did do that.

• 7:38Jake Brennan?

  Well, The Byrds did, with their very first single, an electrified version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," a number one hit on the pop chart that may have also single-handedly invented the term "jangle rock," but I digress. Like Bob Dylan, David Crosby was a hardcore cutthroat, but of his own particular California vintage. And by that, I mean a Santa Barbara prep school kid who spent his teenage years pursuing transgressive extracurriculars. He liked to steal his best friend's dad's pink Thunderbird and take it for joy rides or break into dimly lit houses just for the fuck of it. He was expelled from boarding school, but was soon allowed back in because of that

• 8:22Jake Brennan?

  charm of his, which, when necessary, could take the wheel while his arrogance and punk ass indifference took a backseat. These qualities of David Crosby's were often on display simultaneously, but that wasn't the only reason Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman kicked Crosby out of The Byrds, the band that David Crosby had co-founded. Crosby was looking and sounding increasingly like a fucking lunatic, at least in the eyes of his bandmates, airing his conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination to the crowd at Monterey Pop. And he was writing songs like "Triad" about a threesome allegedly inspired by his own unquenchable thirst for sex, kinky, freaky sex, in which nothing was taboo or off the table.

• 9:06Jake Brennan?

  Perhaps The Byrds were musically progressive, but when it came to sex and politics, the far-out Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman were actually more aligned with the status quo. So David Crosby was sacked from The Byrds. So what? It was the late 60s, Los Angeles, California, and David Crosby had an open road ahead of him.

• 9:33Jake Brennan?

  He traversed that road at extremely high speeds on the motorcycle that his friend, the actor Peter Fonda, had gifted him. You couldn't miss David Crosby on that bike. There, he's the one with the bushy mustache and the long cape flapping wildly behind him. He raced that bike to his place in Beverly Glen, nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains, and then over to Laurel Canyon, where he scored some acid for the Beatles. A trip that would inspire John Lennon to write "She Said She Said." And it was also in Laurel Canyon, at the house of Peter Torque of The Monkees, or maybe it was at Joni Mitchell's place whom Crosby was dating, he couldn't remember. But somewhere along the way, he met Stephen Stills, whose band, The Buffalo Springfield,

• 10:18Jake Brennan?

  had just broken up, as well as Graham Nash, who had just left The Hollies. They sang in three-part harmony, and it was like the heavens suddenly opened up. Maybe that was just the grass talking, or was it the jacks? Jacks were pharmaceutical junk imported from the UK. Heroin, heroin in pill form, that David Crosby crushed up and snorted with his buddy Mama Cass Elliot in secret, hiding in a closet during one of Peter Torque's wild parties. Maybe that was it. Because just as the New York folk scene in the early 60s wasn't all sunshine and roses, neither was the rock and roll scene in California in the late 60s, just all about marijuana and LSD.

• 10:59Jake Brennan?

  And David Crosby needed the harder stuff, seeing as he was dumped not only by The Byrds, but then by Joni Mitchell. And not dumped in the traditional way, but in the way that only Joni Mitchell could, in a song. A brand-new song she performed, not just for Crosby, but for a room packed with their peers. That was awkward. And Crosby rebounded with his typical punk-ass indifference with sexually liberating adventures featuring an increasingly eclectic harem of women, and then with his new buddies and their sweet harmonies. First, their debut studio LP, 1969's Crosby, Stills & Nash, which made them all-stars,

• 11:39Jake Brennan?

  and then the next year with the album Déjà Vu, a number-one smash hit that generated $2 million in pre-sales while adding Stills's old Buffalo Springfield bandmate Neil Young into the mix. But for David Crosby, becoming one of the most recognizable players in the burgeoning folk-rock movement, not to mention the cuddly avatar for the peace and love movement, none of that could dull Crosby's transgressive, schoolboy-in-disgrace ways. He was busted in front of the whiskey at Gogo when a cop found a kilo of grass and a loaded gun in his Volkswagen. A legal search and seizure got him off in the long run, and at that point Crosby was pulling up stakes at Beverly Glen.

• 12:24Jake Brennan?

  The Grateful Dead sent their road crew to move him out to their neck of the woods in Marin County, to a small city called Mill Valley. Crosby, however, was not one to be landlocked. On the Mayan, his 59-foot schooner, he sailed to Jamaica, to the Bahamas, to Panama, with his ex, Joni Mitchell, and her new boyfriend, Crosby's bandmate, Graham Nash. Just the three of them and some guns, a few rifles, and some weed, and some LSD, and a film canister filled with cocaine. Luckily, Graham and Joni weren't there when the feds raided the boat. Again, charges dropped, this time due to a lack of evidence.

• 13:07Jake Brennan?

  The evidence being all the marijuana that had been flushed down the schooner's toilet, and marijuana which was now floating out of sight along the coastline. The feds, the cops, these people were, for a hipster-turned-head like David Crosby, just an occupational hazard. The real concern, once the 60s gave way to the 70s anyway, was not law enforcement, but instead David Crosby's own tribe, so to speak. The hippies, the peaceniks, all lovers and no fighters. Ever since crazy Charlie Manson made it witchy up on Cielo Drive, turned the place into a horror show stained with the blood of a pregnant Sharon Tate and her unborn baby, a place which was previously the home of one Terry Melcher, a man who had produced Crosby's

• 13:51Jake Brennan?

  first two albums with The Byrds, well, guilt by association and all that. It was enough to make the coolest cat in the room a little paranoid. And David Crosby, for one, did not do cool. He had no chill. He slept in his Mill Valley house with one of his many guns on his nightstand, his Colt 45, which was predictably there one evening, when he woke violently to the sound of breaking glass, his pregnant girlfriend freaking out by his side, and armed men in ski masks standing over his bed.

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• 15:48Jake Brennan?

  Debbie Donovan was screaming. Her boyfriend, David Crosby, just seconds ago fast asleep at her side, was being shaken awake by the blood-curdling noise she was making, and also by the sound of shattering glass. He opened his eyes to see a masked man knocking out the window of a nearby French door with the butt of his revolver. Crosby wasted no time, neither did Debbie. She was more than prepared. Her mind immediately went back to all the training Crosby had given her, where they kept the guns, and how to load them, and how to shoot them, and how to count the rounds as the weapon was fired, and what to do if someone ever broke into their place like those crazy Manson freaks broke into the love house on Cielo. The two put their training into action.

• 16:33Jake Brennan?

  Crosby grabbed the Colt 45 from his bedside table, rolled on a bed, put the masked man in the crosshairs, and fired. He missed. The bullet pierced wood and glass along the wall, splinters went flying, the shot spooked the intruder, who turned tail and made a run for it. As he did, Crosby noticed that there was more than one of these fuckers inside his house, and nevertheless, he was undeterred. With the 45 warm in his hand, Crosby took off in a spring, and as he did so, his bare feet were torn into a bloody mess by all the broken glass on the floor beneath him. But the pain did not stop him. There was no pain, only adrenaline. Debbie felt that rush of adrenaline too, but more acutely, she was six months pregnant,

• 17:17Jake Brennan?

  her belly bulging. She easily located the shotgun and readied it. She also prepared a fresh clip for the Colt. And Crosby quickly returned to the bedroom, bloody footprints in his wake, and accepted Debbie's reinforcements. At this point, however, the crisis was waning. Within seconds, they could see men in masks and warm-up suits running from the house, across the lawn, and into the winding canyons of Mill Valley. Fending off would-be attackers was the most exciting thing that had happened in Crosby and Debbie's relationship for a long time. Even though she was close to delivering Crosby's child, the flame had long since gone out. Their inevitable end was as drawn out as the end of Crosby's previous relationship

• 18:02Jake Brennan?

  had been sudden. In that relationship, Christine Hinton was only 21 years old when she died instantly, head-on, in a car crash. Crosby routinely surrounded himself with women, many women, women on demand, and when they didn't want to be on demand anymore, they were replaced by other women. But there was always a number one, in his house, in his bed. That had been Christine once, and when she died unexpectedly and violently, Crosby turned to drugs to dull the pain. Cocaine, heroin, all that had been readily available as early as the first Crosby, Stills & Nash record back in 69.

• 18:44Jake Brennan?

  Only now, five years later, blow and junk weren't just readily available, they had become necessary to David Crosby's daily routine. They were a line item on the huge Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tour that year in 1974, the so-called "Doom Tour," as Crosby put it, because doom was everywhere you looked. It was in the packs of Marlboro Reds, which had been painstakingly emptied of tobacco and replaced with weed. It was in the vitamin C capsules, which had been liberated of vitamin C and filled with cocaine. It was on the lips of the multiple women who were providing oral service to David Crosby even while he was busy rolling another joint. And doom was there in David Crosby's home, where Christine Hinton was dead, where Debbie

• 19:28Jake Brennan?

  Donovan was now gone, that shotgun-wielding mama taking her newborn baby girl with her. In her place came Jan Dance, Crosby's new number one, the one who got on the ride with him. You didn't have to be this tall to ride the ride, but you did have to have no fear. Because this ride was never-ending. It was a plunge, a wooden roller coaster on rickety old tracks, from eight miles high all the way to ground zero. A trip of paranoia and delusion, of open sores and open wounds, fingernails blackened, torsos either bloated, that's Crosby, or emaciated, that's Jan, and now increasingly burn marks on the hands and burn holes on the mattress, because David Crosby, in his

• 20:12Jake Brennan?

  ride-or-die Jan, had become freebase addicts. Freebase was the way to go, because Crosby had blown a hole in his nose from starting so much cocaine. You could dissolve the drug in distilled water or wine and drink it, but the high just wasn't the same. Not like a base high. Freebase, when done regularly, took Crosby to that place. Place where the wind rattled the leaves and the trees, and where birds flapped their wings. And but wait, was that a bird, or was that an angel?

• 20:48Jake Brennan?

  David Crosby's eyes opened and he tried to stand. And as he did so, he felt a pair of hands hold him down on the bench where he was sitting at a piano. And he looked around. He knew this place. Warren Zevon's house. He looked at the 88 black and white keys in front of him. Warren Zevon's piano. But where was Warren? Didn't matter. Crosby just wanted to hit the pipe. But every time he tried to stand up to do so, those hands pushed him back down. And he turned his head and locked eyes with Jackson Brown, standing behind him. Dark hair, handsome face. The face of the new Laurel Canyon. The new guard. Just like Ronald Von Impson had once been the new guard. Back in New York City's Village scene.

• 21:32Jake Brennan?

  But Crosby didn't want to shoot Jackson Brown dead. He just wanted to get high. Jackson increased the resistance and sprinkled in some compliments for good measure. "The song you're writing is really good, David." And Jackson was saying as his hands bore down on Crosby's shoulder. "Don't get up until you finish it." Fucking Jackson Brown. Goody two shoes, motherfucker. Crosby closed his eyes and heard that wind again. The sound of the angels' wings calling out to him. It kept calling to him as he finished writing the song. The one Jackson Brown thought was so worth it. And it was calling to him again when he was in the studio trying to cut the damn thing. And the engineer wanted Crosby to do another take.

• 22:13Jake Brennan?

  And as the tape rewound to the beginning of the track, Crosby went to another place. That desperate place. Where he, the one-time cuddly avatar of the peace and love movement. He of the birds. He of Crosby Stills Nash and Sometimes Young. He who sang sweet three-part harmony like no one else, was once again broke and needed a score. He picked up the phone in the studio and called a guy. And he kept the call real brief. "You owe me a hundred bucks, motherfucker." And he picked at the scabs on his face as the guy on the other end of the line told Crosby to go get fucked. It was humiliating. But not as humiliating as the solo tour David Crosby soon embarked upon.

• 22:56Jake Brennan?

  One where he was openly mocked, heckled, even spit on by the audience. Kids who called him a has-been, nothing but a fat, washed-up, burnt-out casualty. A tour which took place in a van with a gross amount of McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts trash in the back, right next to the equally disgusting bed on which Crosby slept. A mattress riddled with burn marks from all of his reckless freebasing. A tour on which David Crosby suffered his first grand mal seizure. Brought on by his non-stop drug use. A tour which concluded with an intervention by his friends. Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, whoever they could beg and plead with him all they wanted. David Crosby wasn't going back. Not to the old Crosby.

• 23:40Jake Brennan?

  The one who was not yet a pathetic drug addict. Not to the fabled garden that his one-time girlfriend Joni Mitchell sang about. David Crosby was not stardust. He was not golden. He was riding in a van, sleeping on a mattress riddled with holes, sleeping next to a pile of rotting fast food, hooked on freebasing cocaine with no end in sight. It was 1982, and it would be another three years until things got any better. And until then, things just kept getting worse.

• 24:20Speaker 06

  We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

• 24:30Jake Brennan?

  David Crosby was holding. He figured, no one here would be the wiser. But that was just the twisted logic of a junkie talking. Because here was Fair Oaks Hospital. A drug rehabilitation center located in Summit, New Jersey where a judge had ordered Crosby to go after numerous run-ins with the law. First, there was that incident on the 405. Crosby and his red Ford Grenada, on the way to perform a set with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash at a No Nukes rally in Orange County. Crosby's knees hugging the wheel so that he could use both hands to freebase while doing 65 miles per hour. And the seizure hit him hard and fast, and out of nowhere as usual. Next thing he knew, the blood was running down his face, and the Grenada was up against

• 25:15Jake Brennan?

  the center divider, and a cop was confiscating his stash and his loaded 45. Just a few weeks later, in a Dallas nightclub backstage in a shitty green room before a solo show, he was busted again. This time, by a couple of good old boys who waltzed right in while he was freebasing, and once again with that loaded 45 by his side. "Why do you carry a loaded weapon at all times?" People wanted to know of David Crosby. And Crosby replied with just two words. "John Lennon." It was 1985, and five years had passed since Beatle John was gunned down in the street by a lunatic. But David Crosby wasn't thinking about any Beatles right now.

• 26:00Jake Brennan?

  He wasn't even thinking about his girlfriend Jan, who had taken the fall for his drugs while at the airport and was currently going through her own legal ordeal. He was thinking solely about himself. He was thinking about his luck, seeing as how his backstage bust in Dallas had since been deemed unconstitutional, unreasonable search without a warrant and all that. But also thinking of how the overturned conviction didn't stop the judge from ordering him to a rehab facility. And finally, as he was being admitted into the Fair Oaks Hospital, he was thinking specifically about the cocaine and heroin he had stashed. In his cheeks. In his cheeks, while walking into a drug rehab center. Cocaine and heroin. Of course, he was wrong.

• 26:44Jake Brennan?

  People were the wiser about what he was doing. I mean, just look at him. His skin infections, his ankle infections, his fucked-up teeth. The staff immediately clocked the contraband Crosby was trying to smuggle inside, and then got to work getting him clean. Weeks went by. Seven long weeks. Sober weeks. Weeks in which David Crosby, a man who did not like to be told what to do, not by Stephen Stills, not by Neil Young, and most certainly not by some haircut at Fair fucking Oaks in Summit fucking New Jersey, he just wanted to get out, get back to the grind, play some shows, make some money, buy some cocaine, and freebase his brains out. So Crosby did the good behavior thing. That good behavior, in turn, afforded him some privileges.

• 27:28Jake Brennan?

  Like walks around the yard. Like phone calls. And the most important phone call he made wasn't to Jan, and it wasn't to his buddy Graham Nash either. No, David Crosby called the sketchiest dude in his little black book and told him to drive around back of Fair Oaks and for the love of God, keep the car running. At the agreed-upon day and time, David Crosby, on one of his daily walks around the yard, kept on walking. Right out the front door and into the waiting getaway car. But 100% not what the doctor ordered. David Crosby couldn't believe how easy it was. As easy as harmonizing with his on-again, off-again musical brothers. His acquaintance put it in gear and peeled out.

• 28:11Jake Brennan?

  Then they hit the city, and Crosby made his next call. This one to his guy Mort. Mort was a somewhat recent addition to Crosby's circle and was, well, I don't know what you call Mort exactly, a dealer slash manager, an enabler, a leech? David Crosby and Mort had a joint bank account into which Mort would advance Crosby cash in addition to providing him with drugs. And in return, Mort received a hefty chunk of Crosby's future royalties and income. Even some of that Big Crosby, Stills and Nash and Sometimes Young money ended up going to Mort. And seeing how Mort was back in California, Crosby asked him to find a hookup pronto so that he could put his forced sobriety bullshit behind him.

• 28:53Jake Brennan?

  And Mort did as he was told, and Crosby was soon back at that place where the wind blew through the trees and the wings of angels rustled next to his head. But soon, the winds and the wings died down. Not even 48 hours after his escape, the DEA, with the help of the NYPD, found David Crosby. And once again, he was doing mandatory cold turkey. He spent two weeks at Rikers before he waived extradition, and Texas put their big ugly mitts on him for that thing back in Dallas. And now, the prison in Dallas, it had no windows. And the fluorescent lights hummed at all hours of the day and night. And Crosby thought he was losing his fucking mind. And Graham Nash took pity and put up bail.

• 29:34Jake Brennan?

  Nash, along with Stephen Stills, needed David Crosby for another tour. Even if Crosby's involvement came with a series of conditions. And the conditions were this. One, during each show, he was allowed to leave the stage twice while the others carried on so that he could freebase backstage. Two, when he went backstage, there could be no one in uniform, no security guards, no janitors, no nothing. Crosby's paranoia was at a fever pitch, and if anyone so much as looked like a cop, he would lose it. And three, Crosby needed to be pulling down like five grand a day just so he could pay for his drugs. For his girlfriend Jan's drugs too, and for Mort's drugs. Don't forget about Mort. Also for Mort's sister's drugs, if you can believe that.

• 30:17Jake Brennan?

  And drugs for whatever chick Mort was fucking that week. David Crosby got what he wanted, but he also got what he didn't want. Shame and humiliation. Delivered in the form of a bucket of ice water that Stephen Stills dumped all over him after one show in which Crosby left the stage to get high and never came back. The tour ended a few months later, and David Crosby, perhaps without purpose, or at the very least without a distraction, was once again in trouble. And this time, not just for possession and a 45 pistol, but for a hit-and-run after he ran his car into a fence and fled the scene. He knew if he showed up for his day in court, he'd get sent back to Texas and back to that

• 31:02Jake Brennan?

  same judge. That judge who would show him no mercy this time. This time would be real time. Hard time. It was Thanksgiving weekend, 1985, and David Crosby was now wanted for failing to show up at his own hearing. Authorities descended onto his Mill Valley home where they found the piles of dirty dishes, and the unclean cat litter boxes, and the rotten stench. But no David Crosby. Crosby was long gone. He'd offloaded one of his last personal effects that he'd yet to sell for drugs, the grand piano, in exchange for $5,000. And with that money, he chartered a plane.

• 31:45Jake Brennan?

  So while the cops were scratching their heads in Mill Valley, California, the now fugitive David Crosby was in the air, with Jan by his side, the freebase pipe in his hand, en route to Florida, where he planned to get on his boat and flee the country.

• 32:23Jake Brennan?

  At the end of 1985, 20 years after the Byrds first pioneered the so-called folk rock sound, and 16 years after Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young played their second public show ever at Woodstock, after selling millions of records, sleeping with hundreds of women, smoking an unknowable amount of cocaine, 44-year-old David Crosby was in sunny Florida, where he'd been flown on a chartered plane he paid for with the last of his money. He didn't know how much time he had. He did know that it was only a matter of time before the feds caught up to him, and he had to move fast. But moving fast at this moment

• 33:03Jake Brennan?

  was a challenge. The money was running out, as were the drugs. He had no place to stay, as any friend who would normally have taken him in was afraid to do so, what with the risk of aiding and abetting and all that. He looked out on the water at his schooner, the Mayan, which was docked here, waiting to take him on the next leg of the journey, all the way to Costa Rica, where Crosby hoped he could elude, capture indefinitely. Jan stood next to him. Months earlier, the crew on the Crosby, Stills & Nash tour came up with a new pet name for Jan. They called her Death. They called her Capital D Death because she looked like death, standing there in 90-degree heat, clothed in a heavy jacket,

• 33:48Jake Brennan?

  long-sleeved shirt, a wool cap, the kind of outfit one would wear in the dead of winter, not on a sweltering summer tour. And despite this outfit, despite the humid conditions outside, she shivered uncontrollably. And now, Capital D Death stood next to David Crosby, the two of them shivering not just from the dope sickness, but from the crushing realization that Crosby's schooner was in just as bad shape as they were. The vessel was far from seaworthy. And if Crosby couldn't take the Mayan out on the water, he couldn't sail to Costa Rica, and he couldn't escape the long arm of the law, which, minute to minute, hour to hour, was getting closer. The fact that Crosby was standing on the

• 34:32Jake Brennan?

  edge of the earth, his boat unable to take him any farther, was a fitting metaphor. For as he wrote later in one of his memoirs, "It wasn't that he simply couldn't continue down this path. It was, quote, 'There was no more path,' unquote." The open road that once stretched out in front of him, the one that he took at high speeds on his motorcycle back in the 1960s, that cape flapping in the wind behind him, a road of free love and hard dope, that road was gone. All that was left was the road's heavy toll, and payment was due. David Crosby, the transgressive prep school kid, the arrogant

• 35:12Jake Brennan?

  punk, the anti-authoritarian, that guy now had to do something that went against every fiber of his being. Because at this moment, faced with the vastness of the sea and the horizon bearing down, standing in the shadow of death which would gladly cut him down with one more false move, Crosby had only one choice. He didn't even put on his shoes. He walked away from the ocean and bummed a ride to West Palm Beach, where he walked into the local branch of the FBI and turned himself in. From there, it was Texas and prison, where David Crosby began to see another road materialize, as his body slowly came

• 35:55Jake Brennan?

  down from years of abject cocaine and heroin abuse. This road would take Crosby somewhere new, somewhere far, far away from the ultimate disgrace.

• 36:10Jake Brennan?

  I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 36:27Jake Brennan?

  All right, guys. Thanks for checking out this episode on David Crosby. I want to know from you guys, what's your favorite supergroup? If it's not Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, it doesn't have to be a massive band like that. It can be just an indie band. It doesn't have to be Van Hagar. It can be just a more interested in different, really great, super musicians coming together and banding in a new form. Who do you got? Hit me up, 617-906-6638. Question is, what's your favorite supergroup? Voicemail and text, you might hear your answer on the upcoming bonus after-party episode of Disgrace Land, at DisgraceLandPod. On the socials, [email protected]. Email, here comes some credits. Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

• 37:10Jake Brennan?

  Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at DisgraceLandPod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to DisgraceLandPod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgrace Land ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand-new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit DisgraceLandPod.com/membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook, at DisgraceLandPod, and on YouTube, at YouTube.com/DisgraceLandPod.

• 37:55Jake Brennan?

  Rockerola.

• 37:58Speaker 07

  He's a bad, bad man.

• 38:02Speaker 07

  I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast, the true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week, I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I could talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.