David Crosby Wrote This CSNY Classic in Prison, Called It Best Song He Wrote Sober

In the early 1980s, folk rock icon David Crosby found the silver lining of his five-month prison stay in the form of a new life and one of the best songs he’s ever written. His sentence came after years of constant drug use, culminating in a Dallas arrest in 1982.

After he failed to hold up his end of a plea bargain, Crosby found himself in Huntsville’s Texas State Prison on a nine-month sentence. Halfway through his sentence, Crosby got out on parole. The song he wrote from his prison cell would later find its way onto Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1988 record American Dream.

David Crosby Wrote His “Best Sober Song” In Prison

During a 2021 conversation with Vulture, David Crosby reflected on his decades-long career and the music he created within it. When considering the best song he wrote while sober, he quickly settled on track No. 11 from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1988 release American Dream, titled “Compass.”

“I wrote it in prison about waking up from drugs,” Crosby explained. “It was when I realized that I was going to come back, I was going to get sober, I was going to be able to handle it. And then, I was going to write again—which was crucial. I was sober for the first time when it was released. It was a whole other ball of wax and a completely new world for me.”

Within the context of Crosby’s story, the lyrics to “Compass” cut that much deeper. I have wasted ten years in a blindfold, he begins, seemingly lamenting his decade of near-constant drug use. Ten-fold more than I’ve invested now in sight. I have traveled beveled mirrors in a fly crawl, losing the reflection of a fight.

The Folk Rock Icon’s Return From The Bottom

Police arrested folk-rock icon David Crosby in a Dallas nightclub in the spring of 1982 for possession of a firearm and freebasing c******. The former contraband was unusual for Crosby but indicative of the times. Despite having spent years as a supporter of pacifism, the musician felt the need to arm himself following the senseless murder of his colleague, John Lennon, two years prior.

Crosby’s drug use had been spiraling since the death of his girlfriend, Christine Hinton, in 1969. Shortly after his 1982 arrest, an anonymous friend close to the musician told People, “David [freebases] pretty much from when he gets up to when he collapses. I think you can safely say that David has smoked up everything he owns—all the cars, everything” (via Ultimate Classic Rock).

Following Crosby’s arrest, he attempted to make a plea bargain by agreeing to go to a New Jersey rehabilitation facility. But after learning the facility wouldn’t allow instruments, he walked out, leading to his second arrest and imprisonment in the Texas State Prison in Huntsville. Despite how difficult this time was for Crosby, he took it as a second chance at life—something he clearly acknowledges in the chorus of “Compass.”

But like a compass seeking north, there lives in me a still, sure, spirit part. Clouds of doubt are cut asunder by the lightning and the thunder, shining from the compass of my heart.

Photo by Andrew Putler/Redferns