Gravelly voiced blues rocker Melissa Etheridge and her partner, filmmaker Julie Cypher started a family in the late 1990s. Daughter Bailey Cypher was born in 1997, and son Beckett Cypher followed in 1998. The couple made that possible with donated sperm but refused to reveal the identity of their children's biological father until a February 2000 Rolling Stone cover story. Posed alongside Etheridge, Cypher, and their babies was the recognizable face of rock legend David Crosby.
A few years earlier, Etheridge and Cypher had popped over to Crosby's home and mentioned that they were thinking of having kids. "And Jan [Crosby's wife] said, 'What about David?' " Etheridge recalled. After a year mulling it over, they officially asked Crosby to help them out. Tragically, on May 13, 2020, Etheridge announced that Beckett had died. "Today I joined the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones to opioid addiction," Etheridge wrote of Beckett (via USA Today), who was just 21.
Crosby has another child for whom his parentage was once shrouded in secrecy. In the 1960s, he was briefly in a relationship with a woman, and when she became pregnant, they gave the child up for adoption, as per The Baltimore Sun. Crosby and his son, James Raymond, a keyboard player and composer, were reunited in 1994. Raymond played in Crosby's backing band.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunB%2Bj3Jucm5fqbWmedSnq6iklGLBs8HToWSonl2Zrre1w2aaq6ejl8Zw