David Crosby is a music legend known for his solo performances as well as his work with the Byrds, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In this interview, he recounts how the music industry has changed over his career. "When it all started, record companies -- and there were many of them, and this was a good thing -- were run by people who loved records," he says. "Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. … The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died." Crosby also argues that the quality of music has suffered because of corporate interference. "It doesn't matter that Britney Spears has nothing to say and is about as deep as a birdbath," he says. This interview was conducted on March 4, 2004.

I think it was, you know, it was important to us because it launched our career, but--

Describing Woodstock as the "big bang," I think that's a great way to describe it, because the important thing about it wasn't how many people were there or that it was a lot of truly wonderful music that got played. The important thing was it's the moment when all of that generation of hippies looked at each other and said, "Wait a minute, we're not a fringe element. There's millions of us! We're what's happening here!" It was that self-awareness, you know, that, up to that point, it really hadn't happened. …

We, in the purpose of this film, think of Woodstock as the kind of "big bang" moment. It was where culture and politics and everything all kind of came together…

There are several flippant answers to that that I will try to avoid. I think very early on. My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it. I felt a calling. You know, it was like having something come into your head and tell you that you needed to do this, very strongly. It was a calling and it was unequivocal. That was too much joy, you know what I'm saying? I loved singing.

And when did you know it was what you were going to do with your life?

When did I decide to go into business? Well, it wasn't a business, when I decided. It was simply a need to sing. I started singing in coffeehouses when I was still in high school, in Santa Barbara. I took a job washing dishes and busing tables in the coffeehouse, so I could be there, and would beg permission to sing harmony with the guy who was singing onstage. That was the first time I ever got on a stage in front of people. Of course, I didn't get paid, but for me it was the big time.