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thewizard
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In 2008 singer-songwriter-guitarist David Crosby (August 14, 1941-January 18, 2023) told "Sunday Morning" a key to understanding the power and longevity of his music: "The best songs take you a while to digest, and no two people get exactly the same picture from them because they incite a little fire. They ignite a little fire in your imagination.",
Since the 1960s, Crosby has fired up lots of imaginations. Crosby dropped out of college to pursue his passion for music, and in 1964 he joined The Byrds, but his stint with the band came to an unhappy end, when he was thrown out. "I wasn't that easy to handle," he said. "I had a big ego, and I wanted them to play my songs. I was starting to write pretty good songs.",
He'd performed with Buffalo Springfield, before teaming with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash (and, for a time, Neil Young), to record some of the most essential music of the era, including the albums "Crosby, Stills & Nash" (1969), "Déjà Vu" (1970), the live album "4 Way Street" (1971), and "CSN" (1977). When Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young started touring in the summer of '69, the second gig they ever played was a little gathering called Woodstock. ,
The production of "Déjà Vu" came at a particularly fraught time for each of the band's members. For Crosby, his girlfriend, Christine Hinton, had been killed in a car crash. "I was in terrible shape," Crosby told Anthony Mason in 2021. "I was damn near destroyed. I'm just really lucky we were making that record, because it gave me a raison d'être … It's what kept me alive.",
Crosby would record 17 studio albums with The Byrds, CS&N and others. He also released eight solo studio albums, including 1971's "If I Could Only Remember My Name." Among the songs for which Crosby is credited as writer or co-writer are "Renaissance Fair," "Everybody's Been Burned," "Wooden Ships," "Long Time Gone," "Déjà Vu," "Guinnevere," "Almost Cut My Hair," "Long Time Gone," and "Laughing.",
In the 1980s addiction led to drug charges and a year-and-a-half in prison, during which he went cold turkey, and came out vowing to remain sober. In later years he received a liver transplant and underwent heart surgery. But he also recorded four albums as part of the trio CPR (in which he performed with session guitarist Jeff Pevar, and keyboardist James Raymond, a child he'd had out of wedlock and given up for adoption in 1962, with whom he'd reunited).,
The only child of Elvis Presley, Lisa Marie Presley (February 1, 1968-January 12, 2023) lived with her mother, actress Priscilla Presley, after her parents split up in 1973, when Lisa Marie was four. But she remembered her father during frequent visits to Graceland, including when he'd make his entrances. "He was always fully, fully geared up," she told The Associated Press in 2012. "You'd never see him in his pajamas coming down the steps, ever. You'd never see him in anything but 'ready to be seen' attire.",
Lisa Marie was just nine when Elvis died, but he loomed large over her life, as she embarked on a career as a singer-songwriter, even mixing her voice with his in a video of his 1969 ballad, "Don't Cry Daddy." She performed on stage with such artists as Pat Benatar and Richard Hawley, and recorded three albums, two of which – "To Whom It May Concern" and "Now What" – hit Billboard's Top 10.,
Robbie Bachman (February 18, 1953-January 12, 2023) was drummer for the Canadian hard rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, whose hits in the 1970s included "Takin' Care of Business" and "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet." Robbie and his brothers, Randy and Tim, were Winnipeg natives who'd played music since childhood. After Randy abruptly left The Guess Who following their success with "American Woman," the three Bachmans teamed up for the group Brave Belt, joined by bassist/vocalist Fred Turner. Brave Belt would eventually morph into Bachman-Turner Overdrive (the word "Overdrive" pinched from the cover of a trucker magazine). ,
In 2014, when BTO was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Robbie explained the music's appeal, and what differentiated it from other rock at the time, to the Toronto Star: "We didn't tell anybody they were wrong or anything was bad or don't do this. It was basically, have a good time, fun music. … Just coming out of the '70s with the Vietnam War and all the political things going on — in Canada with Trudeau, and Richard Nixon and stuff like that — we just basically had enough of that stuff.",
He performed with artists as varied as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper, Wynonna Judd, Rod Stewart and Luciano Pavarotti. He recorded 17 albums, including "Truth," "Beck-Ola," "Jeff Beck Group," "Beck, Bogert & Appice," "Blow by Blow," "Wired," "There & Back," "Emotion & Commotion," and "18." As a guest artist he performed on numerous recordings, including by Tina Turner ("Private Dancer"), Mick Jagger ("She's the Boss"), Diana Ross ("Swept Away"), ZZ Top ("Hey Mr. Millionaire"), and Ozzy Osbourne ("Patient Number 0"). ,
The son of a New Hampshire plumber, novelist Russell Banks (March 28, 1940-January 7, 2023) often wrote, in such acclaimed works as "Affliction," "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Continental Drift," about the world of trailer parks and debt-plagued people barely hanging on – "People who perceive themselves and are pretty much perceived as outside the mainstream wanting to get in or, having failed that, trying to figure out how to live outside," he told "Sunday Morning" in 1995.,
A professor emeritus at Princeton University, Banks was raised in the Northeast, and lived near the burial ground of abolitionist John Brown, in North Elba, New York. He told the Associated Press in 1998 of walking past his grave often enough that Brown "became a kind of ghostly presence" – the subject of his ambitious 1998 novel, "Cloudsplitter," a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. ,
A moralist writing about the marginalized, Banks said of his work, "I'm operating out of a belief that all lives are interconnected and that we're all implicated in each other's fates in significant ways and bear terrible responsibilities toward and for each other, most of which we abandon and run from. But I believe it."
Since the 1960s, Crosby has fired up lots of imaginations. Crosby dropped out of college to pursue his passion for music, and in 1964 he joined The Byrds, but his stint with the band came to an unhappy end, when he was thrown out. "I wasn't that easy to handle," he said. "I had a big ego, and I wanted them to play my songs. I was starting to write pretty good songs.",
He'd performed with Buffalo Springfield, before teaming with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash (and, for a time, Neil Young), to record some of the most essential music of the era, including the albums "Crosby, Stills & Nash" (1969), "Déjà Vu" (1970), the live album "4 Way Street" (1971), and "CSN" (1977). When Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young started touring in the summer of '69, the second gig they ever played was a little gathering called Woodstock. ,
The production of "Déjà Vu" came at a particularly fraught time for each of the band's members. For Crosby, his girlfriend, Christine Hinton, had been killed in a car crash. "I was in terrible shape," Crosby told Anthony Mason in 2021. "I was damn near destroyed. I'm just really lucky we were making that record, because it gave me a raison d'être … It's what kept me alive.",
Crosby would record 17 studio albums with The Byrds, CS&N and others. He also released eight solo studio albums, including 1971's "If I Could Only Remember My Name." Among the songs for which Crosby is credited as writer or co-writer are "Renaissance Fair," "Everybody's Been Burned," "Wooden Ships," "Long Time Gone," "Déjà Vu," "Guinnevere," "Almost Cut My Hair," "Long Time Gone," and "Laughing.",
In the 1980s addiction led to drug charges and a year-and-a-half in prison, during which he went cold turkey, and came out vowing to remain sober. In later years he received a liver transplant and underwent heart surgery. But he also recorded four albums as part of the trio CPR (in which he performed with session guitarist Jeff Pevar, and keyboardist James Raymond, a child he'd had out of wedlock and given up for adoption in 1962, with whom he'd reunited).,
The only child of Elvis Presley, Lisa Marie Presley (February 1, 1968-January 12, 2023) lived with her mother, actress Priscilla Presley, after her parents split up in 1973, when Lisa Marie was four. But she remembered her father during frequent visits to Graceland, including when he'd make his entrances. "He was always fully, fully geared up," she told The Associated Press in 2012. "You'd never see him in his pajamas coming down the steps, ever. You'd never see him in anything but 'ready to be seen' attire.",
Lisa Marie was just nine when Elvis died, but he loomed large over her life, as she embarked on a career as a singer-songwriter, even mixing her voice with his in a video of his 1969 ballad, "Don't Cry Daddy." She performed on stage with such artists as Pat Benatar and Richard Hawley, and recorded three albums, two of which – "To Whom It May Concern" and "Now What" – hit Billboard's Top 10.,
Robbie Bachman (February 18, 1953-January 12, 2023) was drummer for the Canadian hard rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, whose hits in the 1970s included "Takin' Care of Business" and "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet." Robbie and his brothers, Randy and Tim, were Winnipeg natives who'd played music since childhood. After Randy abruptly left The Guess Who following their success with "American Woman," the three Bachmans teamed up for the group Brave Belt, joined by bassist/vocalist Fred Turner. Brave Belt would eventually morph into Bachman-Turner Overdrive (the word "Overdrive" pinched from the cover of a trucker magazine). ,
In 2014, when BTO was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Robbie explained the music's appeal, and what differentiated it from other rock at the time, to the Toronto Star: "We didn't tell anybody they were wrong or anything was bad or don't do this. It was basically, have a good time, fun music. … Just coming out of the '70s with the Vietnam War and all the political things going on — in Canada with Trudeau, and Richard Nixon and stuff like that — we just basically had enough of that stuff.",
He performed with artists as varied as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper, Wynonna Judd, Rod Stewart and Luciano Pavarotti. He recorded 17 albums, including "Truth," "Beck-Ola," "Jeff Beck Group," "Beck, Bogert & Appice," "Blow by Blow," "Wired," "There & Back," "Emotion & Commotion," and "18." As a guest artist he performed on numerous recordings, including by Tina Turner ("Private Dancer"), Mick Jagger ("She's the Boss"), Diana Ross ("Swept Away"), ZZ Top ("Hey Mr. Millionaire"), and Ozzy Osbourne ("Patient Number 0"). ,
The son of a New Hampshire plumber, novelist Russell Banks (March 28, 1940-January 7, 2023) often wrote, in such acclaimed works as "Affliction," "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Continental Drift," about the world of trailer parks and debt-plagued people barely hanging on – "People who perceive themselves and are pretty much perceived as outside the mainstream wanting to get in or, having failed that, trying to figure out how to live outside," he told "Sunday Morning" in 1995.,
A professor emeritus at Princeton University, Banks was raised in the Northeast, and lived near the burial ground of abolitionist John Brown, in North Elba, New York. He told the Associated Press in 1998 of walking past his grave often enough that Brown "became a kind of ghostly presence" – the subject of his ambitious 1998 novel, "Cloudsplitter," a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. ,
A moralist writing about the marginalized, Banks said of his work, "I'm operating out of a belief that all lives are interconnected and that we're all implicated in each other's fates in significant ways and bear terrible responsibilities toward and for each other, most of which we abandon and run from. But I believe it."