Legend opens up: David Crosby wants to comeback one more time

David Crosby poses for a portrait to promote the film David Crosby: Remember My Name during the Sundance Film Festival. Photo / AP

The documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name was one of the breakout hits at Sundance this year, and understandably so: in this film, the pioneering folk-rock musician — who soon will turn 78 — emerges less as a lion in winter than a tiger in full attack mode, as often as not against himself.

Haloed by a nimbus of cottony white hair, still sporting the walrus moustache he made chic in the 1960s, Crosby presents a reflective, irascible, observant and irresistibly candid figure in a documentary that ostensibly chronicles one of his many comeback tours but becomes something far more introspective.

The film joins a cohort of nostalgic music movies that have glutted US theatres this northern summer, and it spares few musical pleasure points: when Crosby reminisces about forming the Byrds, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, those glorious harmonies burst forth with the same abandon baby boomers thrilled to when they first heard them.

But Remember My Name isn't content simply to dance down memory lane. Prodded by interviewer Cameron Crowe, Crosby delivers honest verdicts on his behaviour as a young, cocky star who mistreated the women in his life and became a heroin and cocaine addict before doing jail time in the 1980s.

"I was a difficult cat," Crosby notes, a verdict seconded by former Byrds-mates Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn. Still, Nash and Young are present only in the form of past interviews, having ruptured with Crosby years ago.

Although Crosby exhibits self-awareness when it comes to his faults — and makes himself vulnerable when he revisits the tragic death of his great love Christine Hinton, whose loss led him to record the cult freak-folk album If I Could Only Remember My Name — there are moments when the viewer craves more, when platitudes such as "They loved me better than I loved them," or "I was an a**hole" feel more like dodges than fearless admissions. But leaving some things unresolved also seems right for a man who, although vexed by numerous health issues and a fear of dying, seems to be enjoying a personal and artistic resurgence despite his own gloom and doom.

Directed with sensitivity and resourcefulness by AJ Eaton, Remember My Name treats viewers to a sensory survey of life in Los Angeles in the 1960s, when Crosby led a group of musicians to settle in the Laurel Canyon hills and form a legendary songwriting colony.

Where the earlier film Echo in the Canyon largely ignored the material and social culture of that time and place, Eaton uses gorgeous archival footage and music to give us a rich, detailed portrait of the era, including a present-day visit to the house where Crosby and Nash first harmonised. (He also includes a prolonged and fascinating sequence on Joni Mitchell, who was unfortunately omitted from Echo.)

Famously prickly, Crosby never gets really angry in Remember My Name, although at one point he yells at Eaton about the filmmaker not being able to set up a good shot (Crosby comes by the expertise honestly: his father, Floyd Crosby, was an Oscar-winning cinematographer.)

He's mellower now and clearly revelling in the music he's making with the young musicians he tours with throughout the film. But the rage simmers just under the surface, especially when it comes to his self-destructive impulses.

"Why me?" he moans towards the end of the film, invoking lost comrades such as Cass Elliot, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. Well, why not? He has too much left to do to stop now.