David Crosby Died While Battling Covid-19, Per Graham Nash

After legendary musician David Crosby died on January 19, social media turn, turn, turned with some wild speculation about the cause of his death. A number of anonymous social media accounts fueled such speculation by spewing claims without providing any real evidence to support their claims, as I reported for Forbes at the time. Well, now someone who actually was with the 81-year-old Crosby not too long before Crosby had died has offered more light on what had happened. During an interview on the Kyle Meredith With podcast, Graham Nash who had co-founded the folk-rock group Crosby, Stills & Nash with Crosby revealed that Crosby had caught the Covid-19 coronavirus once again.

Nash told the host the following about Crosby: “He was rehearsing for a show to do in Los Angeles with a full band. After three days of rehearsals, he felt a little sick.” Nash went on to say, “And he’d already had Covid, and he had Covid again. And so he went home and decided that he would take a nap, and he never woke up. But he died in his bed, and that is fantastic.” Back in January, Crosby’s wife Jan Dance had said in a statement that Crosby had died following a “long illness,” but did not offer more details at the time. That left the outhouse door open for some on social media to claim that Covid-19 vaccines for Crosby’s death even though there was no evidence that vaccines were involved. Actually, even if Crosby’s family had provided a clear non-vaccine cause of death in January, anti-vaxxers would have probably still found some way to have blamed vaccines.

Nash, of course, knew Crosby better than most people on social media knew Crosby. Back in 1968, Crosby, Nash, and Stephen Stills had formed Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN), which as you may know wasn’t a law firm but instead became a very influential musical group that eventually got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. CSN was considered a supergroup because all three founders had already been key members of very successful bands. Crosby had essentially gotten the bird from the Byrds in late 1967, after fellow members had asked him to leave. The breakup of Buffalo Springfield had left Stills buffaloed as to what to do next. And Nash was at a metaphorical bus stop, figuring out what to do after leaving The Hollies, the band that Nash had founded. CSN eventually got Young, meaning that they added Stills’ former Buffalo Springfield bandmate Neil Young as a full member. As a result, CSN became CSNY or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Over much of the 2010s, Nash and Crosby weren’t exactly BFFs. On the podcast, Nash indicated that during their estrangement he didn’t “want anything to do with Crosby at all.” But in recent years, they did manage to reconcile for a time before Crosby’s death. Nash added, “I mean, the fact that he made it to 81 was astonishing.” Nash may have been referring to Crosby’s lengthy history of health challenges over the past several decades that included struggles with drug and alcohol addiction previously, receiving a liver transplant in 1994 after suffering from a chronic hepatitis C infection, Type 2 diabetes, and undergoing a cardiac catheterization in 2014. On top of that, in 2022, Crosby had had previous bout with Covid0-19. He had described his Covid-19 experience to a journalism class in 2022, saying, “It has been awful. COVID is a very weird disease. It makes you feel absolutely freaking awful. It has been thoroughly unpleasant…it’s no fun at all. You want to avoid it if you possibly can.”

Nash continued by saying on the podcast, “But [Crosby’s passing] was a shock. It was kind of like an earthquake, you know? You get the initial shock and then you figure out that you survived. But these aftershocks kept coming up, and they’re diminishing in size as I go along.”

Nash’s revelation about Crosby’s second battle with Covid-19 is a reminder that you can get Covid-19 even though you’ve had it before. Although the details of Crosby’s latest battle haven’t been revealed, it’s important to keep in mind that subsequent bouts with Covid-19 can be severe as well. Having gotten Covid-19 previously won’t necessarily protect you 100% against more severe Covid-19 in the future.