{"id":167762,"date":"2025-09-19T14:26:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T14:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/167762\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T14:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T14:26:08","slug":"the-story-behind-the-only-song-phil-collins-and-david-crosby-co-wrote-then-later-performed-with-graham-nash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/167762\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story Behind the Only Song Phil Collins and David Crosby Co-Wrote Then Later Performed With Graham Nash"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time Phil Collins<\/a>\u00a0met Crosby, Stills & Nash\u2019s David Crosby<\/a>, he asked him to sing on his next album. Collins, who had been a fan of his since his days in the Byrds, had previously crossed paths with\u00a0Graham Nash<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Stephen Stills<\/a>\u00a0but never with Crosby until an Atlantic Records 40th anniversary party in the late \u201980s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018I\u2019ve got to meet David,\u201d recalled Collins<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019s a big hero of mine. So they introduced me to him, and I went backstage and I said, \u2018Can you sing on my next album?\u2019 He said \u2018Sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1994, both had become close friends, and Collins even paid for Crosby\u2019s liver transplant surgery that year, shortly after he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. \u201cThis man is my friend and I\u2019m very proud to have him as a friend,\u201d said Collins, introducing the CSN legend during their 1998 A&E special, Phil Collins & David Crosby \u2013 Another Day in Paradise.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is a wonderful guy and one of the least affected musicians that I know by stardom,\u201d Crosby said<\/a> of Collins during an interview on Later with Bob Costa years earlier in 1991. \u201cHe\u2019s as big as you can get and he\u2019s just as real as you can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

[RELATED: 4 Songs You Didn\u2019t Know Phil Collins Wrote for Other Artists]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cHero\u201d<\/p>\n

Crosby and Collins had already started a nearly decade-long collaborative run by the late \u201980s. On …But Seriously, Crosby ended up singing on two tracks, Collins\u2019 No. 1 hit \u201cAnother Day in Paradise\u201d and \u2018That\u2019s Just the Way It Is.\u201d A year before David Crosby underwent liver transplant surgery, he released his third solo album,\u00a0Thousand Roads, which was his last album for 21 years before releasing\u00a0Croz\u00a021, and his final,\u00a0For Free, before he died in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thousand Roads\u00a0features songs written or co-penned by\u00a0Joni Mitchell\u00a0(\u201cYvette in English\u201d),\u00a0John Hiatt\u00a0(\u201cThrough Your Hands\u201d), and opens on \u201cHero,\u201d a song Crosby co-wrote with Collins. Produced by Collins, who also played drums, keyboards, and drum machine on the track, the song covers the good versus evil within human nature.<\/p>\n

It was one of those great stories
That you can\u2019t put down at night
The hero knew what he had to do
And he wasn\u2019t afraid to fight<\/p>\n

The villain goes to jail
While the hero goes free
I wish it were that simple for me<\/p>\n

And the reason that she loved him
Was the reason I loved him, too
And he never wondered
What was right or wrong
He just knew, he just knew<\/p>\n

Phil Collins\u2019 \u201cHero\u201d and Graham Nash<\/p>\n

In 1993, Collins also released a demo version of \u201cHero\u201d with his vocals only as a\u00a0B-side\u00a0to \u201cWe Wait and We Wonder\u201d from his fifth album,\u00a0Both Sides.<\/p>\n

Five years after releasing\u00a0Thousand Roads, Crosby delivered a live album with his jazz trio, CPR, alongside guitarist\u00a0Jeff Pevar and Crosby\u2019s son, keyboardist James Raymond. Recorded at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles in November 1998,\u00a0Live at the Wiltern\u00a0features Crosby\u2019s CSN bandmate Graham Nash is also a special guest, joining him and Collins on a live version of \u201cHero.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo: Lester Cohen\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first time Phil Collins\u00a0met Crosby, Stills & Nash\u2019s David Crosby, he asked him to sing on his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[101002,88,216,101003],"class_list":{"0":"post-167762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-david-crosby","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-phil-collins"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}