The David Crosby documentary Remember My Name comes out on Blu-ray on October 22. In honor of its release, SPIN is premiering the above clip of the rock icon turned entertaining Twitter curmudgeon discussing the time he heard John Coltrane perform in a men’s room.
According to Crosby, he was at a jazz club for a Coltrane show. Crosby recalled being exceedingly high and on the verge of a freak out when he decided to hide out in the men’s room to collect himself.
“I’ve got my head against this puke green tile. I can still remember the color,” Crosby recalls. As he’s reassuring himself that things are going to be all right, Crosby heard the door open with a loud “Bam!”
“It’s ‘Trane!” Crosby exclaims in the clip, referring to Coltrane. The spirited impression the Croz then does of Coltrane wailing on his sax is worth the price of admission alone. According to Crosby, Trane was playing “at the most intense level you could ever imagine in your life.”
“He never stopped soloing. He’s still soloing. And he’s like burning in this bathroom,” Crosby says. “He doesn’t even know I’m there. He never even saw me. I’m thinking I’m gonna slide right down this tile. I’m thinking my nose is gonna open and my brain is gonna rush out onto the floor. It was so intense. I never heard anyone be more intense with music than that in my life.”
The doc was produced by Cameron Crowe, who has a long history with the Croz, beginning when Crowe was a precocious teen journalist for Rolling Stone. “I knew him when he was the kid in Almost Famous and we or Led Zeppelin were the band,” Crosby told the magazine. “Both of us stuck joints in his mouth and introduced him to girls, and that was that.”
Check out the trailer below:
For more Croz stories about run-ins with jazz legends, check out SPIN’s interview with the former Crosby, Still, Nash & Young member from September 2017.
