Retro Video of the Week: "Hero" by David Crosby

It's been awhile.  And no, that doesn't mean a Staind song is going to be the Retro Video of the Week.  After all, it's outside the parameters of the "MTV Era" that I have wholly concocted.  Anyway, due to the holidays, travel, kids' activities, work, cult obligations, and the like, I haven't posted anything in nearly a month -- and for that, I sincerely apologize.  I've missed you, even if I don't know who you are.

It was slim pickins for albums or songs released this week during the MTV Era that had videos.  But I'll be damned if Tuesday didn't mark the 25th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine disclosing that David Crosby was the biological father of Melissa Ethridge and her partner Julie Cypher.  So that gives us something to go on.

Seven years prior, back in 1993, Crosby put out his third solo studio album, Thousand Roads.  The lead single from the album was "Hero," co-written by Crosby and Phil Collins, the latter of whom provides backing vocals, drums, and keyboards on the track.  The song just missed the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #44, but it did top the Canadian Adult Contemporary chart and went to #4 on the regular Canadian pop chart.

I have no recollection of this song or the video, but the video is ridiculous.  It features Crosby -- who was 52 at the time, mind you -- in prison, presumably for some drug-related offense, but we don't know for sure.  He is visited by his baby momma and their son, who appears to be 7 or 8 and objectively has one of the worst haircuts of all-time.  It's bad enough that everyone makes fun of you because your dad's behind bars, but your mom gives you a haircut that appears to be some sort of combination of Damien from The Omen and Slade guitarist Dave Hill?  This kid was literally the only person on the face of the Earth in 1993 with that haircut.  But don't worry, the video ends with the kid walking alone in the middle of some train tracks, obliviously picking up rocks and throwing them at nothing in particular, fading to black before his miserable existence is brought to a merciful end by the unforgiving fury of a 55-car freight train.