Singer David Crosby skewers Enron on new CD

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http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate...ss/9395179.htm

HOUSTON - He was intimate with the counterculture in the 1960s and a Texas prison in the 1980s. Now the current decade has prompted David Crosby to train his pen and his voice on corporate crime - primarily Enron and its founder, Kenneth Lay.

The 5 1/2-minute song "They Want It All" that Crosby wrote for a new CD with Graham Nash, "Crosby-Nash," faults corporate leaders for bleeding companies of money and ripping off employees and investors.

On lyric says: "These people that they stole from whose lives they laid to waste/They should meet them all face to face/And explain just why their mama didn't teach them not to steal/If you want us to believe in justice, justice better be real."

Neither Enron nor Lay are mentioned by name, but Crosby told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday, "It's about Enron, no question. When I introduce it, I say it's about Enron."

The two-time inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said he was inspired by what he saw as plodding justice for Lay and other executives accused of crimes that led to Enron's collapse.

"If they can bust me, they can bust him," Crosby said. "The law should work for everybody."

Crosby, 62, a founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, spent nearly a year in the Dallas County Jail and a Texas prison on a conviction of drug and gun possession charges. He was paroled in 1986 and the conviction was overturned more than a year later. Last month Crosby pleaded guilty to a gun charge in Manhattan and fined $5,000, after a March arrest on marijuana and gun possession charges at a New York hotel.

"I may have broken the law, but there weren't victims," Crosby said.

Crosby, whose hits with Stills and Nash include "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Marrakesh Express" and, with Neil Young, "Teach Your Children" and "Our House," said his main function is to entertain rather than preach.

But he said the fallout for Enron workers whose retirement savings evaporated upon the collapse made writing the song "a valid thing to do and I couldn't emotionally not do it."

Michael Ramsey, Lay's main criminal lawyer, didn't immediately return calls for comment on the song.

Earlier this week Ramsey described charges of conspiracy, fraud and lying to banks filed last month against Lay as "tissue-thin." Lay told The Associated Press last month he grieved for those hurt by Enron's fall and he didn't know some of his trusted executives were committing crimes.

Enron shattered in December 2001 amid revelations of hidden debt, inflated profits and accounting trickery. Thousands of workers lost their jobs and company stock became worthless. The implosion was the first in a string of corporate scandals that shook Wall Street and investors throughout 2002.

Crosby and Nash have performed "They Want It All" on their current tour with Stephen Stills. The duo plans to further promote "Crosby-Nash" with concerts later this year after the Crosby, Stills and Nash tour - which has no dates in Texas - wraps in September.

Eric Eden, a Crosby fan and a former Enron computer programmer, said Friday he was "thrilled" by Crosby's song.

"David Crosby has always had the ability to insert huge meaning and understanding in a few words of poetry. By not mentioning Enron specifically, he allows everyone to relate to his lyrics and take them as their own," Eden said.

But a review of a July 18 Crosby, Stills and Nash concert in Pittsburgh published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called "They Want It All" the "low point of the evening" with cliched lyrics.

The song, written last year, also has an outdated verse: "They don't get prosecuted, don't even get charged/They're somewhere in the sunbelt living it large/The government says we can't prove they did it at all/Besides they've got these underlings who're ready to take the fall."

Thirty individuals have been charged since the government launched its investigation more than two and a half years ago. Most are former mid-level managers or alleged conspirators outside Enron. But so far this year those from Enron's top echelon - Lay, former CEO Jeffrey Skilling and former top accountant Richard Causey - have been indicted on charges including conspiracy and fraud. All three have pleaded innocent