David Crosby was one of the finest singer-songwriters of all time, a driving force in The Byrds and CSNY who also left behind a catalogue of genius solo records when he died at the beginning of 2023. Towards the end of his life, though, Crosby added some new strings to his bow, gaining a reputation as a masterful and prolific Twitter user, sharp, funny and full of magnificent putdowns. Speaking to this writer in 2018, the icon known affectionately as “Croz” said that he wasn’t very good at censoring himself on the site.
“I tend to shoot my mouth off,” he explained. “If I say something, that’s actually me.” He was getting better at holding back, though, he said, and had recently stopped himself posting something that he thought went too far. “I do shoot my mouth off on there but I did think about something I was gonna say and thought it was too unkind, so I didn’t say it. I don’t mind being pretty out-front about most of the things I think. I’m a very opinionated guy and people know that, so I don’t mind it. It’s been quite a while since I tweeted something I regretted. I try to be careful. I don’t filter my opinions. I filter whether I’m being kind of not. I try not to be deliberately unkind, unless I’m talking about somebody that deserves it, like the President [Trump], he totally deserves it, or Ted Nugent deserves it, or Kanye West deserves it. I’m perfectly happy to be unkind to them. They deserve it.”
