CROSBY AND PALS WILL 'LIGHT IT UP' IN L.A.

Byline: Theo Douglas Staff Writer

BY THE TIME he gets to Los Angeles ...

David Crosby, one fourth of a famous quartet of men using their last names - seminal folk-rockers Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - is sitting in a hotel in Phoenix, agonizing about playing his hometown. Or at least it sounds that way.

``Los Angeles is usually hard. Los Angeles and New York get every show in the world,'' says the man whose classic ``Long Time Gone'' has been embraced around the globe.

As part of a lengthy U.S. trek begun last year, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young return to Southern California - the group's birthplace - for concerts Saturday at Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim and Monday at Staples Center in Los Angeles. This is still where it's at, Crosby says, speaking in rich, slightly nasal tones punctuated with an occasional light cough.

``If you're anybody and you're going to play anywhere, you're going to play there. Los Angeles and New York are a little jaded and a little hard to impress,'' he continues. ``There's a lot of scrutiny. We succeeded in New York, though, and they tell me Rolling Stone wrote a good review - which is amazing because they never say anything nice.''

Which is amazing to hear - you'd think rock's bible would harbor a soft spot at its heart for a group like CSNY, the legendary foursome whose songs helped define and give voice to the generation that came of age in the '60s. Not so, says Crosby, the man who penned some of the group's standards.

``They really don't even like having people like us still around,'' he says. ``They want to sell the newest product. 'This is shiny and new.' '' CSNY keeps on adding to its body of work - the current set list includes six new songs by members - but obviously, the music industry has passed the band by, towing Britney et al. in its wake.

``There's some good people out there, but there's a lot of fluff (too). Things like 'N Sync and Britney. These people are about as deep as a birdbath,'' says Crosby, a founding member of Los Angeles folk-rock band the Byrds. Together with bassist Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield and guitarist Graham Nash of The Hollies, he founded Crosby, Stills & Nash, later expanding it with Stills' fellow Buffalo member Neil Young.

Though they've had their squabbles, members of this supergroup have rarely been accused of being shallow.

Then and now

Crosby spent much of the '70s and '80s locked in an outlaw lifestyle of drugs and drug deals that led - finally - to a jail term and successful stint in drug rehab in 1985. As he got clean and started writing and touring again, his legion of fans took another look in the eyes his ex-lover, Joni Mitchell, described as ``star sapphires'' - and found much to fall in love with all over again.

``It varies from show to show,'' says Crosby, 60. ``They've been basically going crazy.'' Many of those fans out beyond the footlights are, naturally, folks who remember hearing the Byrds in the '60s on KRLA-1580 AM. But this isn't just a simple nostalgia trip, Crosby says. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the band saw a need and actually pushed up the start of its tour.

``When a thing like that goes down, there's a period of shock. Then they realize how many people they lost and there's a period of mourning,'' says Crosby, who's been blessed with new life energy by a 1994 liver transplant. ``Then there's a period where people want to reach out to other people and unite. Music's fantastic for that.''

Tenor of the times

And true to form, CSNY had a hand in commemorating the attacks in music; guitarist Neil Young was inspired by the heroics of Flight 93 passengers to pen ``Let's Roll,'' a song inspired by passenger Todd Beamer's reported call to action.

This isn't the first time the band members have captured the tenor of the times in their own close, warm harmonies. As the '60s drew to a close, Stephen Stills - then in Buffalo Springfield - wrote ``For What It's Worth,'' about the Sunset Strip riots of 1966-67.

When National Guardsmen in Ohio fired on and killed several students at Kent State University in 1970, Young wrote ``Ohio'' in their memory, and he and Crosby recorded it in Los Angeles the same night. In 1995, when two men detonated a truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Graham Nash sat down and wrote ``Half Your Angels'' about the incident.

``He wrote (it) after Oklahoma, but it sounds like it could have been written after 9/11,'' says Crosby, noting that it's one of the six newer songs that augment the band's classics on this tour. ``We do Stephen's 'Feed the People,' and there's four of Neil's that are off his record that just came out. We do everything from the Byrds to things we did last week.''

Many people turning out for CSNY's shows this time around know all the words, the guitarist says - but quite a few are younger than his own kids. This is good, he says.

``Kids get into music first, and what they hear first, a Michael Jackson or whatever, gets them going. But it's like a joke that's funny once,'' says Crosby, who in 2000 served as the biological father to rocker Melissa Etheridge's two children. (He says the kids are ``wonderful and they're loved and that's it.'')

He expands on the theme of kids and music: ``After they've been happy for a while, they get bored and they go for something more complex. They go for a Steely Dan or they hear us or they hear Jackson (Browne) or Bonnie (Raitt) or they hear (Bob) Dylan.''

This doesn't always happen - but it does often enough that Crosby isn't really concerned about the band's two Southern California shows. The band members (accompanied here by seminal soul outfit Booker T & the MG's) have enough water under the bridge to simply go with the flow. And the audience, he's sure, will be listening.

``We'll see how we do in old 'Lost Angeles,' '' Crosby says jauntily. ``I know what to do. We'll light it up.''

CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG

Where: Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim; Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles.

When: Saturday at Arrowhead Pond; Monday at Staples Center; 8 p.m. both nights.

Tickets: $40.50 to $226. Tickets through Ticketmaster, [phone] or [phone], or online at www.ticketmaster.com

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1) no caption (David Crosby)

(2) no caption (Stephen Stills)

(3) no caption (Graham Nash)

(4) no caption (Neil Young)