Graham Nash Says David Crosby Died After Contracting COVID-19 – Billboard

Graham Nash is sharing new details about David Crosby‘s death.

Following the announcement of his passing on Jan. 19, Crosby’s family noted that the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer died following a “long illness,” but did not elaborate on the exact cause.

In a new interview, the Crosby, Stills & Nash singer says that his former bandmate had contracted COVID-19 for a second time prior to his death.

“He was rehearsing for a show to do in Los Angeles with a full band,” Nash said during the Kyle Meredith With… podcast. “After three days of rehearsals, he felt a little sick. And he’d already had COVID, and he had COVID again. And so he went home and decided that he would take a nap, and he never woke up. But he died in his bed, and that is fantastic.”

Nash aded that Crosby was lucky to have lived as long as he did.

“I mean, the fact that he made it to 81 was astonishing,” he said. “But [his death] was a shock. It was kind of like an earthquake, you know? You get the initial shock and then you figure out that you survived. But these aftershocks kept coming up, and they’re diminishing in size as I go along.”

Nash said earlier this year that he and Crosby — who were famously estranged for years before the pioneering folk-rocker’s passing — were in the midst of making peace just before Crosby died.

“The fact is that we were getting a little closer at the end. He had sent me a voicemail saying that he wanted to talk to apologize, and could we set up a time to talk,” Nash told AARP magazine in February. “I emailed him back and said, ‘Okay, call me at 11 o’clock tomorrow your time, which is 2 o’clock on the East Coast.’ He never called, and then he was gone.”

Nash told AARP that he suspected Crosby may have known the end was near. “Since his liver transplant and all his stents. He had seven stents. His body was really failing,” he said of Crosby, who was open about his long struggle with drug addiction. “But once again, I can only try to remember the good times, because we had many of them.”

Following Crosby’s death, Nash shared a statement about his “friend” Crosby on social media.

“I know people tend to focus on how volatile our relationship has been at times, but what has always mattered to David and me more than anything was the pure joy of the music we created together, the sound we discovered with one another, and the deep friendship we shared over all these many long years,” he wrote on Instagram.