The 1982 Crosby, Stills, & Nash Song Jackson Browne Helped David Crosby Stay Away From Drugs Long Enough to Finish

Stephen Stills‘ “Southern Cross” and Graham Nash’s “Wasted on the Way,” which peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, may have been the standout tracks on Crosby, Stills & Nash’s album, Daylight Again, the band’s third and last album together as a trio, but it was the side A closer “Delta” that stuck most with David Crosby. 

When Crosby started writing “Delta,” he was in a downward spiral with his cocaine addiction, a struggle and vulnerability, heard through his lyrics.

Waking, stream of consciousness
On a sleeping street of dreams
Thoughts like scattered leaves
Slowed in midfall into the streams
Of fast-running rivers of choice and chance
And time stops here, on the delta
While they dance
While they dance

I love the child who steers this riverboat
But lately, he’s crazy for the deep
The river seems dreamlike in the daytime
Someone keeps thinking in my sleep
Of fast-running rivers of choice and chance
And time stops here (And it seems as if time stops here)
On the delta

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[RELATED: How George Harrison Inspired David Crosby’s 1971 Song “Laughing”]

Warren Zevon’s House

While Crosby was writing the song, he remembers his friend Jackson Browne helping him stay away from drugs long enough to finish writing it.

“It’s possible that this is the last song I wrote,” Crosby shared. “I was in a pretty terrible state at the time, which you can tell from the song; it sounds lost. Jackson Browne came by the house where I was. I didn’t have a piano, so I just sang him what I had, and he said, ‘Jesus, that’s a really good one, David, you need to finish that.’”

At the time, Crosby was sunk into his addiction to freebase cocaine. “I didn’t especially want to go outside because I didn’t want to bother with anything except taking more drugs, but Jackson really insisted and brought me to Warren Zevon‘s house, where there was a piano,” remembered Crosby. “He sat me down at that piano and pulled this song out of me. Whenever I wanted to get up to go to the bathroom and take some more dope, he would say, ‘No, no, finish the song,’ and he kept me there until I did it.”

He added, “Now, when we sing it, I thank Jackson for helping me get it out.”

In his 1988 autobiography, Long Time Gone, Crosby remembers Brown not allowing him out of his sight. “Jackson wouldn’t let me up or let me at the pipe,” recalled Crosby. “He just stood there, looking over my shoulder, holding me at the bench, forcing me, slowly and painfully, to give birth to the song, not the lyrical fragment or the convenient phrase. It was an act of love and great caring; he showed concern for me, for my work, for seeing me get my work done.”

“Delta” ended up being the last complete song Crosby said he wrote for years. “I was the child, crazy for the deep,” said Crosby. “Without Jackson, the song would never have happened.”

Photo: Luciano Viti/Getty Images